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Bad News Is Good News
(US) Phatgnat was interested to read the highlights of the 1st Annual Business Ethics Summit 'Corporate Scandals, Corporate Responsibility and the Media: Who Should We Believe?' held on April 21st in New York City and hosted by Business Ethics Magazine.
Three separate articles by Peter Asmus were distributed through the Business Ethics newsletter (sign-up online) and captures the essence of the day's proceedings, however, Phatgnat's attention was drawn to 'WSJ, NYT Editors Define and Defend Media Coverage of Corporate Scandals' (the other two articles were 'The Dangers of Over-Simplification and Presumptive Integrity' and 'Business Ethics Survey Rates Media Performance').
In response to the question 'Why doesn't The New York Times run more positive stories about corporate social responsibility?' Lawrence Ingrassia, business editor, responded by saying the role of the Times is to be a watchdog, not a cheerleader. His newspaper 'contributed to the development of business ethics not by writing positive stories, but instead focusing public attention on questionable activities.'
Paul Steiger, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, also defended how his paper covers business scandals—'our mission is to report on capitalism, a terrible system, but one which is better than the alternatives. I see as part of my job to report on the failures, so they can be avoided in the future.'
Whether the above is right or wrong, brands and companies who are trying to highlight their positive ventures or disseminate information regarding their community investment programmes, it seems won't get mainstream media coverage…
Another issue is the fact that traditional news media (such as print) is declining as young people 'skim' news-sites such as Yahoo News and AOL News. Maybe it's time for papers to get radical and start printing 'good' news to see if this has an effect on sales?
Related link—Young People Now's first Positive Images Awards are aimed to celebrate balanced media coverage of young people.
Filed by DK on April 27 2005
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