Media Bites – Nike and Mountain Top Mining

In this week’s Media Bites we take a look at a recent ad campaign by Nike in conjunction with the University of West Virginia football team. Nike has contracts with numerous college sports programs and often will do ad campaigns to accompany those contracts.

In this ad Nike attempts to honor miners killed this past April, but the ad really ends up normalizing mountain top coal mining. We point out that not only is the ad misleading, but coal mining is also a burden on working people and taxpayers in general because of the deaths and environmental impact.

We also note that because of public pressure the ad was changed just prior to the opening of the college football season, which was last weekend.