Companies are not people. Journalists and media outlets need to stop referring to companies as “they”. A company is an “it”.
When a former editor first beat this into my brain, I thought it was merely semantics. A personal preference of his that I needed to abide by. But, then we have Citizens United, and the Hobby Lobby case to illustrate how dangerous it is to personify corporate entities and make that acceptable to average, mainstream communication.
Companies are things. Not people. Companies do not have rights under the Constitution — the people who create, run, and manage the company do. Companies do not have religious beliefs — the people who create, run, and manage the company do.
Granting the company the Constitutional rights and religious beliefs of its founders or executives results in those founders and executives having an unfair advantage. Not only does it essentially give those people two votes — one as an individual citizen and one as the corporate entity — but the corporate entity typically has significantly greater resources and more financial and political sway than an average citizen. Granting the corporation rights and beliefs also empowers that corporate entity to impose those rights and beliefs on its employees and/or customers — thereby potentially infringing on the rights of many other people in the process.
Referring to businesses and corporate entities as “it” instead of “they” won’t reverse Citizens United or change anything overnight. It does, however — in my opinion — normalize the conversation so that it’s clear that a company is a thing and that the people who make up that company already have rights and votes and should not have additional power to influence the political conversation.
