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No commercial enterprise need agree with every word that appears under its corporate imprimatur. If Time Warner now intends to be "a global force for encouraging the confrontation of ideas," that's swell. But a policy of allowing diverse viewpoints is not a moral free pass. Pro and con on national health care is one thing; pro and con on killing policemen is another.
A bit of sympathy is in order for Time Warner. It is indeed a "global force" with media tentacles around the world. If it imposes rigorous standards and values from the top, it gets accused of corporate censorship. If it doesn't, it gets accused of moral irresponsibility. A dilemma. But someone should have thought of that before deciding to become a global force.
And another genuine dilemma. Whatever the actual merits of Cop Killer, if Time Warner withdraws the album now the company will be perceived as giving in to outside pressure. That is a disastrous precedent for a global conglomerate.
The Time-Warner merger of 1989 was supposed to produce corporate "synergy": the whole was supposed to be more than the sum of the parts. The Cop Killer controversy is an example of negative synergy. People get mad at Cop Killer and start boycotting the movie Batman Returns. A reviewer praises Cop Killer ("Tracy Marrow's poetry takes a switchblade and deftly slices life's jugular," etc.), and TIME is accused of corruption instead of mere foolishness. Senior Time Warner executives find themselves under attack for -- and defending -- products of their company they neither honestly care for nor really understand, and doubtless weren't even aware of before controversy hit.
Anyway, it's absurd to discuss Cop Killer as part of the "confrontation of ideas" -- or even as an authentic anguished cry of rage from the ghetto. Cop Killer is a cynical commercial concoction, designed to titillate its audience with imagery of violence. It merely exploits the authentic anguish of the inner city for further titillation. Tracy Marrow is in business for a buck, just like Time Warner. Cop Killer is an excellent joke on the white establishment, of which the company's anguished apologia ("Why can't we hear what rap is trying to tell us?") is the punch line.