Comment by dmatech

T&S departments generally exist for one reason: to manage reputational risk. This sometimes involves legal risk, but it usually just means preventing relentless hit pieces about your company enabling something portrayed as horrible. This can result in customers and even employees leaving if the media is relentless enough.

Companies take risks if the reward is considered good enough. In this case, that reward is income from the customer (who can still be dropped if the hit pieces start getting published).