During the recent podcast of Let's Talk Bitcoin (Episode 134, containing an interview with Jeffrey Tucker) a sponsor inserted commentary on the conflict in Gaza. I'm not interested in the politics of the sponsor's statement or in getting bogged down in a discussion of Middle East politics (I thought that Adam did a good job of placing the statement in context afterwards). Instead, I was wondering what people thought about sponsors buying time to make non-LTB-related political statements. Here are my thoughts:
(1) there is no reason to limit sponsors to selling products. If a sponsor wants to use his LTBCoins to make a statement that is not related to making a profit, so much the better
(2) the market, itself, will generally limit sponsors to making statements related to cryptocurrencies. It would make little sense for someone selling an item unrelated to cryptocurrencies (e.g., a fertilizer manufacturer who only accepts fiat currencies) to waste efforts advertising on Let's Talk Bitcoin. Similarly, a politician running for office in a retirement community where no one cares about Bitcoins or listens to the podcast would be ill served by becoming a sponsor of the podcast.
(3) Despite the above point, the most recent Let's Talk Bitcoin podcast demonstrates that some sponsors will occasionally make political statements unrelated to anything covered by the show. And do people think that this is appropriate? Do you want to be listening to the latest news about cryptocurrencies, and then (for example) to have a sponsor explain why the US should invade Iraq or attack Syria?
I'm inclined to letting speech flow freely, and my initial conclusion is that this will happen rarely enough that maybe the show doesn't need a policy. Nonetheless, the sponsor's statement during the most recent podcast made me do a double-take--not because of where the sponsor came down, but because the statement was so unrelated to the podcast's topics, which is why I listen to the show.
I'm curious to read others' thoughts.
