Roger Cowe: 15 minutes of fame?

February 01, 2002

New York is not Davos. That seems to have been the main media conclusion from this year’s meeting of the World Economic Forum rather than thoughts on the broader social issues which the summit tried to address. The move to New York to show solidarity with the mourning city seems to have left the great and the good who normally gather in the Swiss mountains somewhat underwhelmed.

The British media were also somewhat underwhelmed. Coverage was muted, and mostly concerned with the world’s economic prospects.

Perhaps some very practical reasons prompted the lower interest than in recent years. US-based staffs have been preoccupied with the Enron affair, while commentators and columnists were less able or willing to nip over to New York than they would have been to make the shorter trip to Davos.

But a major aspect to the lack of coverage must be the “rumpus factor” – or rather the absence of it. Last year the Davos meeting followed the media-friendly confrontations in Seattle and Prague – and more or less lived up to the confrontational billing. The “alternative” summit in South America helped to add spice. The media need for high-profile (and preferably photogenic) events is a continuing handicap to coverage of CSR. It is one of the issues identified in an analysis of the role of the media in CSR and sustainable development (SD), published recently by a consortium of the PR firm Ketchum, the SustainAbility consultancy, and the UN Environment Programme. Their report Good News and Bad, observes: “The media are abysmal at covering critical – but slow-burning – issues”.

It suggests that SD/CSR is “the biggest story of our times”. If that is true, there is no journalistic case for ignoring it. Unfortunately it is true only in the historical sense, looking at the long view. It is the biggest slow-burning story. But over the weekend that the world’s business leaders were meeting in New York, Enron was a bigger story. Detailed analysis in the SustainAbility/Ketchum report of coverage through the 1990s shows a fascinating picture of waves of media interest in CSR/SD issues. The graphs show three waves, peaking initially with the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, then during Shell’s Brent Spar/Nigeria affair in 1995, and thirdly the burgeoning anti-globalisation movement at the end of the decade. Encouragingly, each wave has begun from a higher point than the previous one, thus delivering an uneven but upward trajectory.

There is more to the role of the media than CSR coverage – or lack of it. The report rightly points out that questions have to be asked about the media’s own social responsibility – beyond its coverage or otherwise of CSR. The media industry is incredibly powerful, and that power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of just a few media moguls. So while it would be good to see newspapers and TV programmes doing more to develop accountability and transparency in the business world at large, media companies are also part of that world. They should take a lead, because of their special role in ensuring accountability and transparency.

The report calls for better governance, clear codes of conduct, stakeholder engagement and triple bottom line reporting. There are some media leaders who are ahead of the game – outside the US and UK. For example, Axel Springer and Bertelsmann from Germany both report on social and environmental matters, and Vivendi is not far behind. But Rupert Murdoch and many other media moguls will probably not be rushing to read and respond. Indeed, they may not be aware of this analysis of their responsibilities. With beautiful irony, the report has barely been covered, thereby proving its thesis. Its one bright spot is the finding that the business pages are leading the way on CSR. Perhaps that is where the media moguls will begin to feel the pressure.

Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 62 – February, 2002

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