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Nike and other corporate sponsors are running away from "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee Olympian who South African prosecutors charged with premeditated murder on Feb. 19.
A Nike spokesman told The Associated Press that the Oregon sportswear
company had no plans to use Pistorius, who is accused of murdering
girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, in future advertising campaigns.
The company has already pulled an ad that shows Pistorius, breaking out
of the starting block, with a tagline that says, "I am the bullet in
the chamber" (pictured).
Prosecutors said on Tuesday that Pistorius fired four shots through a
locked at Steenkamp as the woman cowered in a bathroom at the runner's
home.
"Nike felt it was appropriate to take the ad down from Oscar's website
recognizing the sensitivities of the situation," spokesman KeJuan
Wilkins said.
Nike, still reeling from its relationship with disgraced cyclist Lance
Armstrong, had responded cautiously immediately after Steenkamp's death.
The company offered sympathy to the families of everybody involved in
the incident but said it would not comment any further.
Nike and other companies began distancing themselves from Pistorius
just hours after his agent Peet van Zyl told reporters that sponsors
were standing by the alleged murderer.
"All sponsors are still on board, and they have give us their
commitments toward Oscar, based on the relationships that they have
formed with him over the past years," van Zyl said. “They are quite
happy to allow the legal process to take its course before they make any
other further and formal announcements on the relationships that they have formed with him over the past years,"
van Zyl said. “They are quite happy to allow the legal process to take
its course before they make any other further and formal announcements
on it.”
Oakley, meanwhile, announced on Monday that it was also cutting ties with Pistorius.
“In light of the recent allegations, Oakley is suspending its contract
with Oscar Pistorius, effective immediately," the sunglasses company
said in a statement.
The French fashion house Thierry Mugler announced that it would
withdraw all products featuring Pistorius, including a cologne launched
last year to commemorate the London Paralympics. The company has also
deleted references to Pistorius from its website.
"Out of respect and sympathy to the families involved in this tragic
case, Thierry Mugler Parfums has removed all campaigns featuring Oscar
Pistorius," the company said in a statement.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
