Work related moral dilemma

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

 

I find myself in a situation today that I've never been in with my current

job and wanted to get the opinions of my fellow vegans regarding how best to

handle it and prevent it in the future.

 

Here's the deal: I maintain the websites for a small magazine publisher. One

of my jobs is placing banner ads from our advertisers on the sites. I

received an email today from one of our ad reps with banners that are thinly

disguised propaganda for the National Cattlemans Beef Association. The

banners feature a well known young female sports figure (the website that

the banners are to be placed on is geared towards athletic pre-teen and

teenage girls). When a user clicks on one of these banners, they are taken

to a website that appears to be about said sports figure, but is only a

small part of a cleverly designed site to subliminally (and maybe not so

subliminally) promote beef to young girls. They've clearly put much time,

research and money into this website which promotes the consumption of beef

with words and images on every page.

 

The contract has been signed between the company I work for and NCBA. By not

putting the banners on the website, I'd be breaking the agreement. It seems

like I have no choice but to put the banners on the website. If I had the

money, I'd tell the ad rep to cancel the deal and I'll pay the money out of

my pocket (I'm sure it was not cheap) but that's not within my means. Also,

the printed ad is already in the hands of the magazines' readers. (It's a

package deal-printed ads AND web ads.)

 

What would you do in this situation? I've been thinking of different

possibilities and it doesn't seem like their are too many options in this

case unless I want to risk losing my job. I can talk to management about

running ads like these in the future, but my gut tells me that they're too

bottom line focused.

 

Thanks for reading. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.