MEDIA LITERACY

Case Study

Covering Business News

The recent financial crisis and subsequent recession spotlighted newspapers’ coverage of issues like corporate corruption. For example, since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, articles have detailed the collapse of major investment firms like Lehman Brothers, the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, the fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, and of course all the scandals surrounding the subprime mortgage/home foreclosure crisis.

But this coverage has not always been so prevalent. Over the years, critics have claimed that business news pages tend to favor issues related to management and downplay the role of everyday employees. Critics have also charged that business coverage favors positive business stories—such as managers’ successes and promotions—while minimizing negative business news (unlike regional newspaper front pages, which often emphasize crime stories). Like other business managers, many news executives prefer not to offend investors or potential advertisers by running too many investigative reports. Even in the recession years, some papers focus more on unemployment numbers, the stock market, and corporate earnings than investigating possible wrongdoing in the business world. Magazines like Rolling Stone have run more in-depth articles about economic issues.

But in an era of bankruptcies, bailouts, and Occupy Wall Street, newspapers must share some of the investigative responsibilities. One of the great scandals of 2011 demonstrates how news literacy often requires sampling multiple sources when delving into stories about corporate corruption. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch was forced to withdraw his $12 billion takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting after a phone-hacking scandal involving key figures in his publishing empire brought down one of the Britain’s oldest newspapers, the News of the World. In the continuing fallout of the phone hacking scandal, Murdoch’s News Corp. announced in 2012 that it would divide its publishing companies (newspapers and books) from its entertainment holdings (television and movie studios).

A rival paper, the Guardian, played a prominent role in publicizing the lurid details of the case. Reporter Nick Davies continued to investigate the News of the World after the police, the government, and the rest of the press accepted the News Corp. story that the hacking of British royal family members, including Prince Charles, was an isolated event. When Davies discovered that James Murdoch paid more than $1 million in hush money to cover up another instance of phone hacking, the scandal took on new life, reaching a tipping point when Davies reported that the News of the World had hacked into the phone calls of Milly Dowler, a missing teenager. Davies revealed that the hackers had deleted Dowler’s voice messages so they could listen to new ones—a transgression that gave her parents false hope that she was still alive. This revelation damaged News Corp. from top to bottom; intrepid reporting from Nick Davies and the Guardian curtailed Murdoch’s stranglehold on British politics and media.¹

Davies, then, demonstrates that courageous reporting can make a real difference on a grand scale, even or especially if it involves standing up to a media conglomerate in the news business. Imagine what might have been avoided if such investigative journalism had addressed the abuses of Wall Street and the too-big-to-fail banks in the lead-up to the financial collapse of 2008. The story of journalism taking on a corrupt conglomerate should inspire business reporters to do more than function as cheerleaders for corporate interests.

APPLYING THE CRITICAL PROCESS

DESCRIPTION Choose two major newspapers and investigate how they covered the phone-hacking scandal and other media business stories. How does the coverage differ in terms of the number of articles devoted to the scandal in May, June, and July of 2011? How many editorial and opinion pieces are devoted to the scandal during this three-month period?

ANALYSIS How do the two newspapers characterize the scandal? Are there differences in the editorial treatment of Rupert Murdoch and his son James?

INTERPRETATION Write a two-to-three paragraph critical interpretation of the “meanings” of the scandal proposed by the two newspapers. Are there differences in the coverage of Murdoch being forced to withdraw his bid for British Sky Broadcasting?

EVALUATION Determine which papers and stories you would judge as good and which ones you would judge as weaker models for how business and media stories should be covered. Are some elements that should be included missing from the coverage? If so, make suggestions.

ENGAGEMENT Contact a business editor from a newspaper and ask how he or she makes content decisions. What kind of business and economic reporting catches the editorial department’s eye? What considerations are made when business editors decide what to cover?