#Maven Media staffers call for shutdown of Blue Lives Matter website

Employees of a media company that owns Sports Illustrated and Maxim want the publisher to shut down a pro-police website.

The call to pull the plug on Defense Maven, a website also known as Blue Lives Matter, came during a staff meeting Friday where Maven Media Brands announced an across-the-board 15% salary cut to counter the deep losses in advertising revenue triggered by the coronavirus, the Daily Beast reported, citing sources at the meeting.

The workers pointed to the nationwide George Floyd protests as the reason behind their demand, Daily Beast reported.

In a chat that took place simultaneously, the Daily Beast said, workers used the words “embarrassing,” “a disgrace” and “horrible” to describe the Blue Lives Matter website and criticized lax editorial restrictions that they said allow readers to make racist comments “with no monitoring” and no fact-checking.

One staffer, the Daily Beast said, pointed out that a commenter called for snipers and armed drones to shoot looters to “set an example for the world to see.”

“Blue Lives Matters’ comment sections are full of people calling for the extermination of people like me,” added another worker cited by the Daily Beast.

Maven’s CEO and founder James Heckman acknowledged the concerns but also stressed the company’s mission to promote an open dialogue and break down ideological bubbles with different perspectives, according to sources cited by the Daily Beast.

Later, during another companywide call, Heckman told workers he would ask Maven’s board to remove the Blue Lives Matter website, the Daily Beast reported.

“I think for sure this is something we have to do,” Heckman said, according to the Daily Beast. “I’m going to make that recommendation to the board, I’m sure the board will be supportive.”