The Deviant Organization and the Bad Apple CEO: Ideology and Accountability in Media Coverage of Corporate Scandals

What role do the media play in the identification and construction of white-collar crimes? Few studies have examined media coverage of corporate deviance. This study investigates news coverage of six large-scale accounting scandals that broke in 2001 and 2002. Using a variety of empirical methods to analyze the 51 largest U.S. newspapers, the study tests several explanations for tendencies to run more or less coverage of the scandals in question. The study then examines the substantive focus of coverage. First, the results suggest that scandal coverage was influenced by the political ideology of newspapers, as opposed to economic interests or social structural ties between firms. Second, the analysis shows that attention to the adjudication of individual crimes and the punishment of individual offenders received the bulk of media attention.

[1]  D. Weaver,et al.  The American journalist: A portrait of U.S. news people and their work , 1986 .

[2]  Martin Gilens,et al.  Corporate Ownership and News Bias: Newspaper Coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act , 2000, The Journal of Politics.

[3]  R. Burns,et al.  Assessing Newspaper Coverage of Corporate Violence: The Dance Hall Fire in Qoteborg, Sweden , 2002 .

[4]  Robert L. Jones,et al.  Some Procedures for Estimating “News Hole” in Content Analysis , 1959 .

[5]  S. Iyengar.  Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. , 1991 .

[6]  H. Molotch.  The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place , 1976, American Journal of Sociology.

[7]  M. Fishman.  Manufacturing the news , 1980 .

[8]  Dmitri Williams.  Synergy Bias: Conglomerates and Promotion in the News , 2002 .

[9]  M. Mizruchi,et al.  Size, Concentration, and Corporate Networks : Determinants of Business Collective Action , 1991 .

[10]  Eric Klinenberg,et al.  Lecture: Eric Klinenberg discusses his book, "Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media" , 2007 .

[11]  John Mcmanus.  Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware? , 1994 .

[12]  D. Vaughan.  THE DARK SIDE OF ORGANIZATIONS: Mistake, Misconduct, and Disaster , 1999 .

[13]  P. Dreier.  The Position of the Press in the U. S. Power Structure , 1982 .

[14]  Cindy J. Price,et al.  Interfering Owners or Meddling Advertisers: How Network Television News Correspondents Feel About Ownership and Advertiser Influence on News Stories , 2003 .

[15]  James William Coleman,et al.  Toward an Integrated Theory of White-Collar Crime , 1987, American Journal of Sociology.

[16]  Harvey Molotch,et al.  Accidental News: The Great Oil Spill as Local Occurrence and National Event , 1975, American Journal of Sociology.

[17]  S. Griffin.  Actors or activities? On the social construction of ``white-collar crime'' in the United States , 2002 .

[18]  D. Graber.  Crime news and the public , 1980 .

[19]  R. Ericson,et al.  Representing Order: Crime, Law, and Justice in the News Media , 1991 .

[20]  Stephen D. Reese.  The news paradigm and the ideology of objectivity: A socialist at the wall street journal , 1990 .

[21]  David V. Snyder,et al.  Conflict Intensity, Media Sensitivity and the Validity of Newspaper Data , 1977 .

[22]  W. Breed.  Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis , 1955 .

[23]  Eric Klinenberg,et al.  FIGHTING FOR AIR , 2007, Killer Show.

[24]  Michael B. Blankenship,et al.  The Social Construction of Corporate Violence: Media Coverage of the Imperial Food Products Fire , 1995 .

[25]  Jitendra V. Singh,et al.  The Ties That Bind: Organizational and Class Bases of Stability in a Corporate Interlock Network , 1986 .

[26]  Paul Hammond,et al.  Media Coverage of Chemical Crimes, Hillsborough County, Florida, 1987–97 , 2000 .

[27]  B. Bagdikian.  The media monopoly , 1984 .

[28]  M. Mizruchi.  What Do Interlocks Do? An Analysis, Critique, and Assessment of Research on Interlocking Directorates , 1996 .

[29]  P. Delache,et al.  Making news , 1983, Nature.

[30]  H. Molotch.  The City as a Growth Machine , 1800 .

[31]  W. Weis,et al.  Media Content and Tobacco Advertising: An Unhealthy Addiction , 1986 .

[32]  J. Soloski,et al.  News reporting and professionalism: some constraints on the reporting of the news , 1989 .

[33]  J. Rauch,et al.  All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information Into News , 2006 .

[34]  B. Zelizer.  Taking Journalism Seriously: News and the Academy , 2004 .

[35]  Rush H. Limbaugh,et al.  Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right , 2002 .

[36]  M. Mizruchi.  Similarity of Political Behavior Among Large American Corporations , 1989, American Journal of Sociology.

[37]  Lee Wilkins.  Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time , 2005 .

[38]  Vivek S. Borkar,et al.  Manufacturing consent , 2010, 2010 48th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton).

[39]  Gordon C. Whiting,et al.  What Newspaper Editorials Have Said about Deregulation of Broadcasting , 1986 .

[40]  Geoff Brumfiel.  Chinese students in the US: Taking a stand , 2005, Nature.

[41]  Stephen D. Reese,et al.  Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content , 1995 .

[42]  Tim Groseclose,et al.  A Measure of Media Bias , 2005 .

[43]  Ben H. Bagdikian,et al.  : The American Journalist: A Portrait of U.S. News People and Their Work , 1987 .

[44]  Dennis F. Herrick.  The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century , 2004 .

[45]  Richard J. Lundman,et al.  Newspaper Coverage of Corporate Price‐Fixing , 1983 .

[46]  Roger C. Schank,et al.  What's the point? , 1982 .

[47]  Gabriel Rossman.  Elites, Masses, and Media Blacklists: The Dixie Chicks Controversy , 2004 .

[48]  T. Lim,et al.  Where's the point? , 1998, Plastic and reconstructive surgery.

[49]  Stanley Rothman,et al.  The Media Elite , 1986 .

[50]  J. Hamilton.  All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News , 2003 .

[51]  Michael Ryan,et al.  What Liberal Media? the Truth about Bias and the News , 2003 .

[52]  P. Stephanie.  Market driven Journalism , 2008 .

[53]  G. Cleveland Wilhoit,et al.  The American Journalist in the 1990s , 1996 .

[54]  Pamela J. Shoemaker.  Mediating The Message , 1991 .

[55]  S. Shapiro,et al.  COLLARING THE CRIME, NOT THE CRIMINAL: RECONSIDERING THE CONCEPT OF WHITE-COLLAR CRIME* , 1990 .

[56]  C. T. Salmon.  Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media , 1989 .

[57]  D. Niven.  Objective Evidence on Media Bias: Newspaper Coverage of Congressional Party Switchers , 2003 .