Media Giant Speaks Out After WGA Attack

As the entertainment industry finds itself well into the second week of the Writers Guild of America strike, Disney takes a stand and defends claims made by picketers outside their store, according to a report by Reuters.

Strikers targeted the top media conglomerate by leafleting at Manhattan's the World of Disney store. The strike is centered around writers' demands to be compensated for work that is reused and distributed over the Internet and other new media formats.

At the Disney store, the WGA union members handed out leaflets that claim that Disney has projected $1.5 billion in digital revenue and suggest that the writers receive none of that. Disney has been quick to deny this information.

The company said in a statement, "The WGA leadership is deliberately distorting the facts. As the WGA knows full well, more than half of Disney's digital revenues are from sales of travel packages and the vast majority of the rest is from online advertising on sites like Disney.com and ESPN.com and through online merchandise sales. The WGA also knows its members have been paid residuals on entertainment content downloaded via iTunes."

The writers, however, continue to defend their position. In the leaflets they claim, "we're barely asking for anything: 2.5% of whatever money the studios make off our work on the Internet or digitally - the delivery system of the future. But the studios are refusing to discuss a fair deal."