/ world today news/ In the midst of the financial storm, the banking institutions were not criticized by the media.
In 2008, the mortgage crisis occurred in the USA, the collapse of “Lemon Brothers” on September 15 and the spread to European banks. The negative spiral is accelerating. It leads to a debt crisis, a crisis in the Eurozone, a crisis of governance in Europe… At that time, the history of the financial crisis was written daily by the media, which did not foresee what was about to happen at all, used to this moment rather to praise the happy world of finance and to criticize excessive government regulations. The press then experienced almost a “cultural revolution”, as it had to put on the front page topics reserved for the economic pages or for specialized gadgets intended for connoisseurs.
Despite the scale, a study published at the end of April by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford shows that, in media terms, banking institutions have gone through the crisis relatively calmly. The research reports and analyzes mainstream media coverage of the banking and financial sectors in the UK, Germany, Italy and France from 2007 to 2013. A total of 140,000 articles were reviewed. In France, “Mond” and “Eco” occupy a central place in the study. The researchers simultaneously analyzed the headlines, the photos, the tone of the articles, their sources, the indicated references, as well as the development of the tone of the specialized journalists in the coverage of the banking sector in the considered period.
No lynching of financial institutions
Of course, one can debate the results of a study that is limited to tracking the so-called representative media that do not have a reputation of being hostile towards the financial circles, as well as the choice to classify the articles in a binary way – “negative” and “positive” , with only some of them placed under the rubric “ambivalent”. However, the results, which can be said to be surprising, show that even after the bankruptcy of Lemon Brothers, the critical view of the banking sector is far from gaining ground in the European press.
Despite the scale of the financial crisis and the number of scandals related to banks (Lemon Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale, Royal Bank of Scotland, etc.), only 25% of the articles contained “negative ” view of the banking sector. However, the “negative” tone began to increase after the collapse of Lemon Brothers. The average percentage of critical articles rose to 27% from just 17% before the shock, which speaks volumes for the complete lack of anticipation of the crisis or even a warning from the banking sector.The same percentage of articles contain a positive view.The rest are judged as neutral.
“There is no evidence that the media as a whole pursued a ‘vendetta’ against the bank or other financial institutions,” the authors of the study explain. Also, there is much less analytical journalism on “financial issues” than on political issues. Thus, financial journalism is mainly based on facts. So it’s all good as long as nothing happens… The authors diplomatically explain that financial journalists are “reluctant to alienate their regular readers by being too critical of their industry”. In fact, it is gratitude for the hand that feeds you.
With 20% of the information coming directly from the banks, the German media proved to be the “most obedient” conductors. In France, the “reprinted” banking information is 17%, which at least partly refutes the idea that the media are completely subordinate to the hand that feeds them.
Large national companies are protected
The research highlights the adoption of a not particularly negative tone by newspapers towards national companies, focusing in particular on the case of Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the oldest British banks, which had to deal with toxic assets of a dizzying value and which in 2008 declared bankruptcy. The British government became the majority shareholder, acquiring €20 billion worth of shares in the financial institution. The coverage of this crisis by the British media has been relatively lenient compared to other European media, which belies the widespread opinion of the ruthless Anglo-Saxon press. The research shows the ability of the communication services of these institutions to “sell” stories to journalists, the proximity of public relations departments and journalists, but also the historical attachment of journalists to these national institutions.
Before the crisis, Royal Bank of Scotland was one of the “favourite” institutions of the British media, who praised its international ambitions, its rapid growth, etc. Once the difficulties of the institution became clear, there was a sharp change in tone – from that moment her international ambitions become a sign of arrogance and imprudence. While the authors conclude that there is no such thing as a mass lynching of a financial institution, the example of Royal Bank of Scotland proves that the power and history of this bank allows it to receive even more positive coverage than other distressed ones. institutions.
The Italian press turns out to be the fiercest, and the German gets a gold medal for leniency. France is in the golden mean of Europe. But the authors point out the relatively “homogeneous” coverage of the financial crisis in the main European newspapers and come to the conclusion that the big banking institutions can think about global communication strategies at the European level. “Public relations play an important role in the coverage of financial issues, mainly by providing background information and figures,” the study’s authors note. This is also proof that communication has become a real financial bet and that providing pre-digested content to the media pays off.
Behind this homogeneity of the European press, we can see a media tendency to react enbloc (suck together, lynch together) or a form of caution on the part of the media that feeds, expands, accelerates, sometimes irrationally, the movements they describe in the financial sector.
Although the crisis has had a long-term positive impact on media coverage of the banking sector (mainly due to a sustained increase in the percentage of “negative” articles and greater space for news from the banking sector), the research shows that the analyzed media are not looking for ” actively” “negative” information in the financial sector. Is it because the media are incapable of real long-term investigations and prefer to stick their noses in the wheel at the risk of not seeing the next wave arrive?
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The study on the coverage of the crisis in the banking sector by the European media was carried out by the University of Oxford.
London / Great Britain
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