Role of Media in Ensuring Corporate Governance

THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN ENSURING CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Table of ContentsAcknowledgement.......................................................................................................................................2

List of tables and figures..............................................................................................................................3

Abbreviations..............................................................................................................................................4

Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................................5

Introduction to Corporate Governance.......................................................................................................5

Objective.....................................................................................................................................................6

Scope of the Study.......................................................................................................................................6

Limitations of the Study...............................................................................................................................6

Methodology...............................................................................................................................................6

Need for Corporate Governance in India.....................................................................................................7

Good governance....................................................................................................................................7

Characteristics of good governance:.......................................................................................................7

Social Reporting in Corporate Governance..................................................................................................9

Principles of Good Governance.................................................................................................................10

Social Performance of Business in India....................................................................................................12

Introduction of Media...............................................................................................................................13

Types of media......................................................................................................................................13

Response for media in India:.....................................................................................................................17

Role of media............................................................................................................................................18

Theoretical Framework.............................................................................................................................22

Other Institutional Factors.........................................................................................................................32

Empirical Results.......................................................................................................................................33

A case in Russia..........................................................................................................................................37

Findings.....................................................................................................................................................42

Recommendations/suggestions................................................................................................................43

Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................43

References.................................................................................................................................................44

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Acknowledgement

I hereby convey my deep acknowledgement to all those who made it possible for me to

complete this independent study, by extending their support and continuous co-operation.

I would like to acknowledge the consistent encouragement extended by Dr. Kamal Ghosh

Ray, Director and Dr. Ch. S. Durga Prasad, Dean-Academic Planning of Vignana Jyothi Institute

of Management. I would also like to thank my faculty members and my coordinator Col. (Retd.)

Saeed Ahmad.

Finally I would like to thank all my friends, batch mates and staff members without

whom this project work would not have been successfully completed

2


List of tables and figures

Names ………………………………………….….page

1) Characters of good governance……………………….7

2) Response of media in India………………………........17

3


Abbreviations

1) OECD------------ ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT

2) ACC---------------ASSOCIATED CEMENT COMPANIES

3) BHEL------------ BHARAT HEAVY ELECTRICAL LTD

4) BBC----------------BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION

5) CNN----------------CABLE NEWS NETWORK

6) CNBC-------------CONSUMER NEWS AND BUSINESS CHANNEL

7) PTV---------------PAKISTAN TELEVISION

8) BDNEWS------- BANGLADESH NEWS

9) MRDI-------------MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE

10) FBCCI----------- FEDERATION OF BANGLADESH CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND

INDUSTRY

11) PSPD------------ PEOPLE’S SOLIDARITY FOR PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

12) CalPER-----------CALIFORNIA STATE PENSION FUND FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEE

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Executive Summary

In this paper, we discuss the role of the media in pressuring corporate managers and

directors to behave in ways that are “socially acceptable”. Sometimes this coincides with

shareholders’ value maximization, others not. We provide both anecdotal and systematic

evidence that media affect companies’ policy toward the environment and the amount of

corporate resources that are diverted to the sole advantage of controlling shareholders. Our

results have important consequences for the focus of the corporate governance debate and for the

feasibility of reforms aimed at improving corporate governance around the world with the help

of media.

Introduction to Corporate GovernanceCorporate Governance has emerged as a response to many of corporate failures and

widespread dissatisfaction about the functioning of the corporate sector. They are powerful

system by which corporate bodies are directed and controlled. Primarily concerned with Power

and Accountability of Corporate.

The Corporate Governance refers to relationship between Owners, Directors and

Managers. BODs are the Centre of Corporate Governance. Serves not only the company’s

interest but also the society at large. Distribution of Rights And Responsibilities among different

participants-Board, Manager, Shareholders, Stakeholder It covers issues like- The legal issues of

investors, The system of Electing the BODs, The Composition of Board and its various

Committees, System of Checks and balances, Ethics, Maximization of Owners wealth by

Managers, The ability of the board to maintain Surveillance.

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ObjectiveIs to study the role of media in ensuring corporate governance in the present world and to

study the what is the power of media in ensuring media especially in India.

Scope of the Study The study deals with the role of media in ensuring corporate governance which is a vast

subject. So the scope of the study mainly focus on guidelines of various areas like Media,

Environment, Human Rights, Shareholders value, Case etc. What will be its impact on corporate

governance? Due to time constraint it was able to meet some media consultants of Hyderabad

and secundrabad only.

Limitations of the Study1) The main limitation of this study is that the media people will not provide any type the

information.

2) Now a days every big company is coming with there own channel, newspapers, or any

other type of media. So they are not ethical and wont provide correct information.

Methodology The methodology adopted for this study is exploratory using the open-ended approach.

This open ended questions are posed to media persons and other industry persons. The primary

data collected would be complemented by secondary data such as Articles, Journals books,

magazines, corporate governance text book and data collected from official web sites.

Need for Corporate Governance in IndiaPost liberalization period (1993-1995) was a boom period, Capital through Public issues,

Many Fake companies came in, which are now nowhere, Indian companies getting Global thus

more transparency demanded by Foreign investors, Collaborators, buyers. Stories of Accounting

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Juggleries, Family owned business (family leaders appointed directors which are teethless),

Growing awareness towards Good Corporate Governance, Improving Ethical climate, Shadow

Directors.

Good governance

Good governance has 8 major characteristics. It is participatory, consensus oriented,

accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follows

the rule of law. It assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into

account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making. It is

also responsive to the present and future needs of society.

Characteristics of good governance:

Participation

Participation by both men and women is a key cornerstone of good governance.

Participation could be either direct or through legitimate intermediate institutions or

representatives. It is important to point out that representative democracy does not necessarily

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mean that the concerns of the most vulnerable in society would be taken into consideration in

decision making. Participation needs to be informed and organized. This means freedom of

association and expression on the one hand and an organized civil society on the other hand.

Rule of law

Good governance requires fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially. It also

requires full protection of human rights, particularly those of minorities. Impartial enforcement

of laws requires an independent judiciary and an impartial and incorruptible police force.

Transparency

Transparency means that decisions taken and their enforcement are done in a manner that

follows rules and regulations. It also means that information is freely available and directly

accessible to those who will be affected by such decisions and their enforcement. It also means

that enough information is provided and that it is provided in easily understandable forms and

media.

Responsiveness

Good governance requires that institutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders

within a reasonable timeframe.

Consensus oriented

There are several actors and as many view points in a given society. Good governance

requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus in society on

what is in the best interest of the whole community and how this can be achieved. It also requires

a broad and long-term perspective on what is needed for sustainable human development and

how to achieve the goals of such development. This can only result from an understanding of the

historical, cultural and social contexts of a given society or community.

Equity and inclusiveness

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A society’s well being depends on ensuring that all its members feel that they have a

stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of society. This requires all groups, but

particularly the most vulnerable, have opportunities to improve or maintain their well-being.

Effectiveness and efficiency

Good governance means that processes and institutions produce results that meet the

needs of society while making the best use of resources at their disposal. The concept of

efficiency in the context of good governance also covers the sustainable use of natural resources

and the protection of the environment.

Accountability

Accountability is a key requirement of good governance. Not only governmental

institutions but also the private sector and civil society organizations must be accountable to the

public and to their institutional stakeholders. Who is accountable to whom varies depending on

whether decisions or actions taken are internal or external to an organization or institution. In

general, an organization or an institution is accountable to those who will be affected by its

decisions or actions. Accountability cannot be enforced without transparency and the rule of law.

Social Reporting in Corporate GovernanceAs a result of pressure from public interest groups , mandatory social disclosure

requirements and management’s motivation to improve the firm’s image more and more

corporations of developed countries are disclosing social information in some form or another.

This trend has also started in developing countries like India.

Will social information be disclosed regularly by all firms? An answer to this question

will depend either upon the mandatory requirements or upon the demand for social information

by investors and other financial statement users. Until disclosure of social information becomes

mandatory, firms would be encouraged to disclose this information only if the users of annual

statements demand this information and management is convinced that such a disclosure would

be in their best interest.

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According to Keith Devis , “social responsibility begins where the law ends. Social

responsibility refers to businessmen’s decisions and action taken for reasons at least particularly

beyond the firm’s direct economic or technical interest. Thus social responsibility has two rather

different faces.

On the one hand, businessmen recognize that since they are managing an economic unit

in society, they have a broad obligation to the community with regard to economic development

affecting public welfare (such as full employment, inflation and maintenance of competition). On

the other hand, a businessman’s obligation to nature and developing human values (such as

moral cooperation, motivation, and self-reliance in work). Accordingly, the term ‘social

responsibility’ refers to both socio- economic and socio human obligation to others.

Objectives of Corporate social Reporting

The objectives for corporate social reporting can be derived from the rationale for

corporate social responsibility, which is supported by the following two arguments: Social

contract argument and quality of life argument.

Principles of Good GovernanceDuring the past decade, campaigns, lobbying, and research promoted by desires to

stabilize capital markets, protect investors, and promote higher financial, social, and ethical

standards have emerged. Dozens of organizations now represent institutional and individual

investors, social advocacy groups, corporate officers and directors, and company auditors. Their

activities have spawned advocacy centers, research centers, consultants, and newsletters,

magazines, and journals devoted to corporate governance. These groups, as well as stock

exchanges, chambers of commerce, and regulatory organizations have issued guidelines and

regulations to promote practices of good corporate governance.

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An investor that has been particularly active in promoting good corporate governance

practices for many years is the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), one

of the world’s largest institutional investors. It has been particularly active in setting out both

U.S. and international corporate guidelines and other principles and practices for effective

governance (CalPERS, 2004).

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development identified 12 key

standards as principles of corporate governance five years ago (OECD, 1999) and recently

revised and clarified principles in response to contemporary events and comments by relevant

parties (OECD, 2004). OECD is comprised of 30 member countries from developed market

economies in Europe, North America, and Asia. In the wake of accounting and corporate

governance scandals, the U.S. Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) that required

changes in public disclosure and independence of audit committees and auditors.

Approaches to governance have traditionally been diverse in national law among

developed nations and there have been differences in Anglo, Anglo-American, Latin, and

Germanic approaches relating to shareholder primacy, board structure, director duties, and

takeover protections. If one considers the range of views represented by investors, managers,

regulators, and advocacy groups, however, there is general consensus on some basic principles of

good corporate governance.

These include the desire that companies have clear corporate governance principles or

guidelines of their own, that there be appropriate internal and external audit functions and that

auditors be independent, that transparency about governance processes and decisions be evident,

that conflicts of interests are controlled, that shareholders have equitable rights, that there should

be members of boards of directors that are independent from the management, and that

compensation choices of managers be recommended by a committee with independence from the

management.

Social Performance of Business in IndiaMany business organizations in India have also contributed greatly in the area of social

responsibility. Associated cement companies (ACC) has been rendering social service for over

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four decades. The company has set up the schools, health centers, bunds, local countryside and

agro- based industries, and cooperative societies in village with the sole objective of providing

employment and improving the quality of rural life. Following help from ACC, farmers in

Andhra Pradesh have doubled their per acre yield of rice, whereas those in Bihar began to raise a

crop of protein- rich soyabeans as a matter of routine.

ACC is spending approximately Rs. 6 lakh annually on its staff, which works for rural

development programmes with direct investment. The Mafatlal Group follows a slightly different

line in social performance. It spends a huge fund on rural welfare programmes for helping the

poor. It constructs homes for the homeless, provides drinking water, and distributes book,

stationery and scholarships in rural areas.

The Tata Iron and Steel Company is the first industrial organization in the country to

have carried out a social audit of its performance in the year 1979. In the public sector, Bharat

Heavy Electrical Ltd. (BHEL) is endeavoring to play a prominent role in the area of social

responsibility. All division of BHEL, are aware of their social role and have drawn

comprehensive scheme for the welfare of their employees in social role and have drawn

comprehensive scheme for the welfare of their employees in township and for those living in

nearby areas. The company is engaged in identifying specific problems of communities and in

coordinating the efforts with the local bodies, authorities and voluntary agencies in providing

speedy relief to them.

The active involvement of BHEL and its employees in the welfare of the surrounding

communities is helping the organization to earn the goodwill of the local population and to have

a better understanding of their problems. Jobs done by BHEL units in this respect include

provision of drinking water facilities, construction of external sewers, roads and culverts,

providing health facilities, improving the quality of life by redesigning jobs, improving

educational facilities and so-on.

Many Indian companies have given ‘Value Added Statement’ in their annual reports in

place of a social reporting. This statement exhibit the contribution and surplus made by them

through their business activities and also disclosure as to how the same has been distributed to

different segment of the society such as employees, government and shareholders, etc. Beside,

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Social Income Statement and Social Balance Sheet given by some Indian companies in their

annual reports would prove very useful to the users and other interested persons. The

government should make it obligatory on the part of the companies to report their ‘Social

Performance’ during the year through statements and/or other means of disclosure.

Introduction of MediaIn general, "media" refers to various means of communication. For example, television,

radio, and the newspaper are different types of media. The term can also be used as a collective

noun for the press or news reporting agencies. In the computer world, "media" is also used as a

collective noun, but refers to different types of data storage options.

Types of media and history

Media especially refers to two main divisions, the print media such as Newspapers &

Magazines and the electronic media such as Radio and Television. The role of the media in a

democratic country is to relay the facts to the people. Media especially categorized in to two

main divisions. One is Print Media and another one is Electronic Media.

1) Print Media would be Newspapers and Magazines.

2) Electronic Media would be Radio and Television.

Different Types of Media in broad:

1)Advertising media: various media content buying and placement for advertising

2)Electronic media: communications delivered via electronic or electromechanical energy

3)Digital media: electronic media used to store, transmit, and receive digitized information

4)Electronic Business Media: digital media for electronic business

5)Hypermedia; media with hyperlinks

6)Multimedia: communications that incorporate multiple forms of information content and

processing

7)Print media: communications delivered via paper or canvas

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8)Published media: any media made available to the public

9)Mass media: all means of mass communication

10)Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass electronic communication networks

11)News media: mass media focused on communicating news

12)Recording media: devices used to store information

13)Social media: media disseminated through social interaction

History of newspapers:

Media in India initiated since the late 1700s with print media started in

1780, radio broadcasting initiated in 1927, and the screening of Auguste and Louis

Lumière moving pictures in Bombay initiated during the July of 1895, is among the oldest and

largest media of the world. Indian media are private media in particular has been free and

independent throughout most of its history. The period of emergency (1975–1977), declared

by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was the brief period when India's media was faced with

potential government retribution.

The country consumed 99 million newspaper copies as of 2007 making it the second

largest market in the world for newspapers. By 2009, India had a total of

81,000,000 Internet users comprising 7.0% of the country's population, and 7,570,000 people in

India also had access to broadband Internet as of 2009 and making it the 12th largest country in

the world in terms of broadband Internet users. As of 2009, India is among the 4th

largest television broadcast stations in the world with nearly 1,400 stations.

James Augustus Hickey is considered as the "father of Indian press" as he started the first

Indian newspaper from Calcutta, the Calcutta General Advertise or the Bengal Gazette in

January, 1780. In 1789, the first newspaper from Bombay, the Bombay Herald appeared,

followed by the Bombay Courier next year (this newspaper was later amalgamated with the

Times of India in 1861).

The first major newspaper in India is The Bengal Gazette was started in 1780 under

the British Raj. Other newspapers such as The India Gazette, The Calcutta Gazette, The Madras

Courier (1785), The Bombay Herald (1789) etc. soon followed. These newspapers carried news

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_of_India

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickey's_Bengal_Gazette

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcutta

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_television_broadcast_stations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_broadband_Internet_users

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_India

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(India)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_broadcasting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing


of the areas under the British rule. The Times of India was founded in 1838 as The Bombay

Times and Journal of Commerce by Bennett, Coleman and Company, a colonial enterprise now

owned by an Indian conglomerate. The Times Group publishes The Economic Times (launched

in 1961), Navbharat Times (Hindi language), and the Maharashtra (Marathi language).

During the 1950s 214 daily newspapers were published in the country.[2] Out of these, 44

were English language dailies while the rest were published in various regional languages. [2] This

number rose to 2,856 dailies in 1990 with 209 English dailies.[2] The total number of newspapers

published in the country reached 35,595 newspapers by 1993 (3,805 dailies).

The main regional newspapers of India include the Malayalam language Malayala

Manorama (published from: Kerala, daily circulation: 673,000), the Hindi-language Dainik

Jagran(published from: Uttar Pradesh, daily circulation in 2006: 580,000), and the Anandabazar

Patrika (published from: Kolkata, daily circulation in 2006: 435,000).[9] The Times of India

Group, the Indian Express Group, the Hindustan Times Group, and the Anandabazar Patrika

Group are the main print media houses of the country.

Newspaper sale in the country increased by 11.22% in 2007. By 2007, 62 of the world's

best selling newspaper dailies were published in China, Japan, and India. India consumed 99

million newspaper copies as of 2007—making it the second largest market in the world for

newspapers.

History of Radio and Television:

Radio broadcasting was initiated in 1927 but became state responsibility only in 1930. In

1937, it was given the name All India Radio and since 1957 it has been called Akashvani.

Limited duration of television programming began in 1959, and complete broadcasting followed

in 1965.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting owned and maintained the audio-visual

apparatus including the television channel Doordarshan in the country prior to the economic

reforms of 1991. The Government of India played a significant role in using the audio-visual

media for increasing mass education in India's rural swathes. Projected television screens

provided engaging education in India's villages by the 1990s.

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Following the economic reforms satellite television channels from around the world

including BBC, CNN, CNBC, PTV, and other foreign television channels gained a foothold in

the country. 47 million household with television sets emerged in 1993, which was also the year

when Rupert Murdoch entered the Indian market. Satellite and cable television soon gained a

foothold. Doordarshan, in turn, initiated reforms and modernization. With 1,400 television

stations as of 2009, the country ranks 4th in the list of countries by number of television

broadcast stations.

History of Indian cinema:

The history of film in India begins with the screening of Auguste and Louis

Lumière moving pictures in Bombay during the July of 1895. Raja Harishchandra a full-length

feature film was initiated in 1912 and completed later. Alam Ara (released 14 March 1931)

directed by Ardeshir Irani was the first Indian movie with dialogs.

Indian films were soon being followed through out Southeast Asia and the Middle East

where modest dressing and subdued sexuality of these films was found to be acceptable to the

sensibilities of the audience belonging to the various Islamic countries of the region. As cinema

as a medium gained popularity in the country as many as 1,000 films in various languages of

India were produced annually.

Hollywood also gained a foothold in India with special effects films such as Jurassic

Park (1993) and Speed (1994) being specially appreciated by the local audiences. Expatriates

throughout the United Kingdom and in the United States continued to give rise to an

international audiences to Indian movies, which according to The Encyclopedia

Britannica (2008) entry on Bollywood continued to be formulaic story lines, expertly

choreographed fight scenes, spectacular song-and-dance routines, emotion-charged melodrama,

and larger-than-life heroes.

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Response for media in India:

Official Country Name: Republic of India

Population: 1,029,991,145Literacy rate: 52.0%Number of Daily Newspapers: 398Total Circulation: 30,772,000

Circulation per 1,000: 50

Number of Nondaily Newspapers: 98

Total Circulation: 7,774,000

Circulation per 1,000: 13

Total Newspaper Ad Receipts: 35,624 (Rupees millions)

As % of All Ad Expenditures: 50.40

Number of Television Stations: 562

Number of Television Sets: 63,000,000

Television Sets per 1,000: 61.2

Number of Cable Subscribers: 39,112,150

Cable Subscribers per 1,000: 38.5

Number of Radio Stations: 312

Number of Radio Receivers: 116,000,000

Radio Receivers per 1,000: 112.6

Number of Individuals with Computers: 4,600,000

Computers per 1,000: 4.5

Number of Individuals with Internet Access: 5,000,000

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Internet Access per 1,000: 4.9

Role of mediaMedia role can be seen as key to creating awareness of Corporate Governance in business

houses. Communication between Media and Corporate bodies directly and through efficient

public relations or mass communications can be vital to ensure good governance and human

rights. Media must be on the front line in disseminating impartial news for ensuring transparency

in the Corporate sector. Media have a watchdog role to ensure accountability and transparency of

corporate sector. Media also need to improve their capacity to play the watchdog role.

The Media can play a role in Corporate Governance by affecting reputation at least 3

ways that Anyone seeing the ad would read it, Anyone reading the ad would understand it,

Anyone understanding it would feel free to ask questions of any board members they

encountered

Media attention can drive politicians to introduce Corporate Law reforms in the belief

that inaction would hurt their future political careers or shame them in the eyes of Public opinion

In the Traditional understanding of Reputation, Managers wages in the future depend on

Shareholders’ and Employer’s belief that how much advantage they are going to take of the

situation that they are not monitored. Thos concern about Monetary Penalty that they may have

to face they always behave like good managers Image in the eyes of the Public. As given in the

first example, Robert Monk said bout the Advertisement.

Role of Media in pressuring corporate managers and directors to behave in ways those

are socially acceptable. Sometimes this coincides with Shareholder’s value maximization. Media

affects companies’ policy toward the environment and the amount of corporate resources that are

diverted to the sole advantage of controlling shareholders. Here I have quoted two examples

though not Indian but will very well explain the effect of Media on corporate governance.

EXAMPLE 1. In April 1992, the Wall Street Journal published a strange advertisement.

It was a full-page picture of a silhouette (outline) of the board of directors of Sears Roebuck with

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the title “The nonperforming assets of Sears” This advertisement was paid for by shareholders

activist Robert Monks. He exposed all the directors, identified them by name that were

responsible for the poor performance of Sears Stock. The Directors greatly embarrassed by the

advertisement chose to adopt many of the proposals which were given by Robert Monks even

though he had received only 12% of the votes in the previous election for board members and

had failed to get a seat on the board.

EXAMPLE 2. On March 8 1988, all the major US networks broadcast a tape of a

Panamanian tunaboat – the Maria Luisa, killing hundreds of dolphins while fishing for tuna.

Building on Public outrage, the Earth Island Institute, GREENPEACE and the Humane Society

launched a boycott of Tuna.

The Restaurant chains took tuna off the menu and many stopped using tuna until it was

“dolphin safe” i.e. fished with nets that were not killing dolphins. On April 12, 1990, Heinz

announced that it would sell dolphin safe tuna .Within hours the two other largest tuna producers

made a similar commitment. These episodes suggest that the Media may play a role in shaping

corporate policy

EXAMPLE 3: Dhaka, Oct 1 (BDNEWS) - Media's role is crucial to create awareness about

corporate governance in business houses, speakers said at a roundtable in Dhaka Saturday.

Communications between media and corporate bodies directly and through efficient public

relations (PR) or Mass Communications (MC) personnel can be vital to ensure good governance

and human rights, they told the roundtable titled "Corporate Governance: Bridging Corporate

Sector and Media".

Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) organized the roundtable

with support from Manusher Jonno at a city hotel, which was participated by business

association leaders, chief executives/representatives of insurance, mobile phone, cement,

hospitality companies and newspaper editors. Moazzem Hossain, editor of the Financial Express,

moderated the roundtable. Jamal Uddin Ahmad, managing director of Jaroms Industries Ltd said,

CSR is (Corporate Social Responsibility) the vehiclet serve humanity.

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Media must be at the frontline in disseminating impartial news for ensuring transparency

in the corporate sector, said Ahmed, also the former deputy prime minister of

Bangladesh. Dewan Sultan Ahmed, vice president of Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of

Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), told that the business people should focus on business, not

politics. Mohiudding Babar, communication manager of Lafarge Surma Cement Ltd, said media

have a watchdog role to ensure accountability and transparency of the corporate sector.

Media also need to improve their capacity to play the watchdog role, he added. Nasir A

Choudhury, managing director of Green Delta Insurance Company Ltd., said government should

introduce incentives for companies that practice corporate social responsibilities. He sought

media role to promote corporate governance and social responsiveness. Shyamal Dutt, acting

editor of the daily Bhorer Kagoj, said business interest of media overshadows role towards social

responsiveness. He also stressed on governance in media to ensure accountability.

Media do affect Corporate Policy

The extent of Diffusion of the Press also affects the role it has. Press cannot be important

if it is not read. Press freedom and Independence also has some impact on the effect it has.

Countries with a large newspaper circulation have better environmental responsiveness on

average. Religion is major factor affecting literacy of the country and its propensity to read.

Shareholder Activists and the Press

Shareholder activists such as Robert Monks have found the press useful in their fight with

Management in US but some recent events in the Republic of Korea indicate that there is a

Strong Shareholders take advantage of their position at the expense of small investors. National

Corporate Laws give few rights to outside investors. The strength of protection for minority

shareholders and expectations in relation to law enforcement is low. The beginning of efforts to

force change in Korea dates back to 1996. The formation of PSPD (People’s Solidarity for

Participatory Democracy) driven by Jang Ha Sung of Korea University As in the US the Investor

Activists relied on both one. Legal pressure, 2. On the use of Press.

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The most imp successful challenge to date has been the battle to stop insider

dealings in SK Telecom

SK Telecom has been an extremely profitable company but its financial results did not

show it up because the company used transfer pricing to benefit two companies (almost 100%

owned by the Chairman of SK Telecom and his relatives). The PSPD draw attention to these

Policies. After the London based Newspaper Financial Times picked up the Story, a media

campaign ensued to attract proxy votes. This campaign involved publishing advertisements in

newspapers and using television and Radios. In March 1998 – SK Telecom‘s Directors

capitulated and agreed to the PSPD’s request.

Institutional Investors

While institutional investors have many legal mechanisms to encourage change in

corporate policies, the presence of an active Press increases their influence. It provides cheap

way to impose penalties on companies and to coordinate the response of other investors.

CalPERS (The California State Pension Fund for Public Employee)

Policy of CalPERS – Identifying underperforming firms and generating widespread media

attention as an important tool in its efforts to change corporate policies to increase their returns.

Under performance is judged through various parameters. CalPERS give a threat that they will

conduct a proxy contest and reveal the firm in Focus List. CalPERS found that when it removed

the Publicity threat than its strategy did not work. Thus, Single most important corrective

mechanism against Misgovernance is Press.

Through Press Media’s attention of Management Failures. Press reporting can put

institutional investors to shame and do good actions. Press reporting can also shame Politicians

and Managers who care about their international reputation to act to improve policies in firms.

As William Browder reported, “The Press is one of the reasons why we pursue lawsuits. We

have pursued 24 lawsuits so far and lost 23. But the advantage is Publicity”

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Private and Govt Regulations

Public opinion pressures generated by an active press are very important to improve

Corporate Governance. Two Countries are given as examples. 1. United Kingdom, 2. China

U.K – Approach of U.K to the range of financial scandals of 1980s including the collapse of

Bank of Credit and Commerce International and Maxwell group. U.K pursued self regulation

enforced through disclosure. The Cadbury commission was the first initiative to reform by means

of Disclosure and Public Pressure (The 19 key recommendations included enhanced role for

independent directors, a minimum no. of independent Directors, Separation of the role of CEO)

China - In Hongkong (China the Stock Exchange has historically not had the legal authority to

impose penalties on companies that misbehave).The Threat is usually enough. Shaming is both a

Personal penalty and a Financial Penalty.

Theoretical FrameworkWhile the reliable evidence is useful in documenting the existence of this phenomenon

and illustrating how this influence takes place, more systematic evidence is needed to prove its

importance. For this reason, we turn to a cross-country analysis of the effects of the media on

corporate policy. Before doing so, however, we need to be more specific about the channels

through which this influence occurs. A first channel of influence is that media attention can drive

corporate law reforms or the enforcement of corporate laws. The likely motivation for such

changes is politicians’ belief that inaction would hurt their future political careers or shame them

in the eyes of public opinion, both at home and abroad. This is an important dimension of the

media’s impact that Besley and Prat (2001) and others have explored.

We focus on the links between the media and managers’ and directors’ reputations.

Consider a model of reputation building like that presented in Diamond (1989). Agents can be of

two types, good or bad, which differ in their cost of taking a certain action. In our case, an

environmentally friendly manager will find polluting more painful than somebody who does not

care about the environment.

22


Let us assume, as it is likely, that the environmentally sensitive decision carries a higher

cost for the manager, it requires more effort. Thus, the good (environmentally friendly) manager

will not pollute while the bad manager will pollute. Let us now assume, consistent with our

previous discussion that being identified as an enemy of the environment carries a cost. If we

really want to incorporate this cost in the typical career concern models (see, for example, Harris

and Holmstrom 1982), we can say that this cost arises from the possibility that the manager

might move into politics, where a bad environmental record represents a genuine liability.

More broadly, we can think of this cost as the personal disutility of a dent on the

manager’s public image. The social norm is that managers should be environmentally friendly,

therefore being identified as a bad environmental manager produces social shaming. People

simply dislike being singled out as “bad” people. If the payoff of being recognized as

environmentally conscious is large enough (or the disutility of being identified as a polluter is

significant enough), even bad managers can be induced to take the “right” action by their desire

to mimic the good type, and in so doing being recognized as environmentally friendly (see

Diamond 1989). As only the bad manager will want to pollute, polluting immediately identifies a

manager as bad. Hence if the payoff of being identified as a polluter is sufficiently negative, the

bad manager will choose to disguise himself or herself as environmentally conscious by not

polluting.

This type of reputation model is based on the assumption that the information about the

manager’s action is revealed to the public with probability 1. In practice, this is not the case.

Information does not descend on individuals: they acquire it at a cost that is affected by the

media. Governments, firms, and interest groups generate and aggregate information that the

media then process and selectively communicate. The broader the media coverage, the more

likely that the public at large will acquire this information. Similarly, the more attention the

media command, the more widely this information will travel. In our empirical analysis, we will

use the second dimension, and as a measure of the attention the media command we use

newspaper readership normalized by population.

Clearly in this type of reputation model, if we introduce the idea that outsiders learn of

managers’ actions only with a certain probability, then the higher this probability is, the higher

23


the likelihood that managers will behave in an environmentally-conscious way. In particular, if a

higher diffusion of the press leads to a higher probability of detection, then the higher the

diffusion of the press, the more that likely managers will behave in an environmentally-

conscious way. This is the proposition we will test.

Similarly, we will test the proposition that the higher the diffusion of the press, the more

likely managers are to protect minority shareholders’ interests. The foregoing discussion can be

recast in these terms simply by substituting “shareholder friendly” for “environmentally

conscious.” The only difference is that in this latter case we do not have to appeal to managers

caring about their public image to obtain the results, but could simply have talked about

managers’ reputation in the labor market. Nevertheless, in most countries managers are

appointed by majority shareholders, thus whether their career opportunities are enhanced by

acting in the interests of minority shareholders is not clear.

We should try to understand the channels through which media effects the Corporate

Policy. The first channel of influence is that media attention can drive enforcement of corporate

laws. The second channel is the link between Media and Manager’s and Directors reputation. An

environmentally friendly mgr will find polluting more painful than somebody who does not care

about the environment. Even bad managers can be induced to take the “right” action by the

desire to mimic the good type. In addition, in so doing being recognized as environmentally

friendly. Reputation Model is based on the assumption that information about the manager’s

action is revealed to the public with probability. The broader the Media coverage the more likely

that the public at large will acquire this information.

Similarly the more attention the media command the more widely this information will

travel. In particular, if a higher diffusion of the Press leads to a higher probability of Detection

then the higher the diffusion of the Press the more likely mgrs will behave in an environmentally

conscious way.

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Where Do the Media Get Their Information?

The previous discussion highlighted the role of the media in aggregating, certifying, and

diffusing crucial information, but where do the media get their information? For the media to

collect their own information about managers’ actions is costly, thus they often rely on

information provided to them. An important source is the government, either directly, or

indirectly through mandated disclosure, for instance, required financial or environmental

disclosures.

Government-mandated information is the most reliable, because it is not affected by

selectivity and is not provided in exchange for something. With greater government-mandated

disclosure, such as the toxic release inventory, it is easier for interest groups to aggregate the

information and for journalists to use this aggregated information when they communicate to the

public.

Journalists also obtain information directly from the source, that is, managers, employees,

and so on. Not only is this information selective, it is often provided to the journalist on a quid

pro quo basis, such as favorable treatment in the news story. In the long run, the use of this

channel will undermine the credibility of the media. A similar problem arises with the third

potential source of information, namely, interest groups such as the shareholder activists,

institutional investors, and environmental activists described earlier.

Interest groups both generate information, for instance, the tape of dolphins being killed,

and aggregate and synthesize information from other outlets, such as the list of toxic polluters.

Other aggregators of information in corporate governance include equity and bond analysts.

While the media are important to all these groups, the media are particularly important to

activists who seek to mobilize and coordinate the actions of a dispersed set of citizens, such as

for a boycott or a proxy fight.

For the Media to collect their information about managers action is costly, thus they rely

on information provided to them. An important source is Government either directly or indirectly

thru Mandated disclosure, For instance required financial or environmental disclosures.

Government mandated information is the most reliable. It is easy for the Interest groups and

Journalists to collect information and use it when they communicate to the Public. Third

25


potential source of Information is Interest groups, Shareholders activists, institutional investors,

environmental activists

Selective Coverage and Media Credibility

So far, we have treated the media as a single entity that aggregates and then

communicates information. A critical issue we have ignored is the credibility of the information

the media communicate to the public, which is, of course, extremely important. The fact that the

Financial Times reported on the SK Telecom and Gazprom insider deals brought credibility to

the stories, because even in Korea and Russia the Financial Times is more credible than local

newspapers. Similarly the Business Week ranking of business schools had a much greater impact

than the U.S. News and World Report ranking because the former is not only more diffused, but

also more authoritative than the latter.

The issue of credibility is particularly delicate because it opens up the question of

newspapers’ incentives to conduct further investigations to establish the validity of the

information reported to them and their incentives to report the information they receive

accurately. It is precisely when newspapers do have an impact that they have an incentive to

enter into side deals with the parties involved and be paid not to reveal damaging information.

Threats to increase (or withhold) future advertising revenues in exchange for stories that reflect

well (badly) on company management and directors are one example of side deals. Of course,

such side deals might hurt the reputation of a newspaper in the long run and hence its credibility.

If it as is likely it is more difficult for an individual newspaper to build a reputation of integrity

in a market where all the other newspapers are colluding, the possibility for multiple equilibrium

arises( occurs)

One equilibrium is where newspapers have credibility and thus avoid side deals for fear

of losing it. Another is where newspapers do not have credibility and happily accept bribes not to

publish damaging information or to publish false damaging information. Important factors that

determine which equilibrium prevails are the competitive environment in which newspapers

operate the ownership structure of the media, and libel laws. In a competitive market a

newspaper agreeing not to publish bad news is likely to be scooped by another newspaper and to

lose credibility. Thus the more competitive the environment is, the less likely is the collusive

26


equilibrium. Similarly, an independent newspaper whose survival rests solely on its own success

is less likely to collude with established business interests.

By contrast, a newspaper owned by a business group is naturally less likely to publish

bad news about the group itself. This in turn affects its credibility in correctly reporting other

news, thereby reducing its incentives to build a reputation (and increasing its incentives to

collude). More stringent libel laws reduce the likelihood of newspaper publishing information

that suggests that managers are “bad,” again reducing the information content of the media.

Empirically, we lack most of this information. No internationally comparable indicators of the

stringency and enforcement of libel laws are available. Djankov and others (2001) reported the

fraction of media owned by the government, and Freedom House (1999, 2000) reported the

degree to which each country permits the free flow of information. In our case, however, these

indicators are not the most important pieces of information.

We would like to know which media are owned by business groups with other important

business interests and which ones have fewer ties to nonmedia firms and are independently

owned, like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Political freedom of the press is not

the same as freedom from economic influences. The extent of newspaper readership that we will

be using, however, indirectly gets at the credibility question. In a market where newspapers are

more likely to collude, and are thus less credible, they also become a less valuable source of

information, and therefore, other things being equal, they are less likely to be read. Hence, our

measure of newspaper readership captures both the diffusion of the newspapers and their overall

credibility.

Financial Times is very credible and Business Week is very reliable and widespread. The

Issue of credibility is particularly delicate because it opens up the question of Newspapers‘s

incentives to conduct further investigations to establish the Validity of the information reported

to them. If wrong information’s they have to pay fine for revealing damaging information. There

are newspapers who take bribes. More Stringent Libel laws reduce the

Likelihood of newspaper publishing information, which is false.

Consumer Demand and Selective Coverage

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The media’s impact also depends on the entertainment value of news. “It was all too

complicated and boring to interest many mainstream journalists,” said Ellen Hume of the New

York Times to explain the delay in media attention to the U.S. savings and loan crisis (cited in

Baron 1996).

Similarly, when asked why television had paid relatively little attention to the crisis even

after it had made headlines in 1988, the president of NBC news, Michael Gartner, observed that

the story did not lend itself to images, and without such images “television can’t do facts” (cited

in Baron 1996, p. 62). Environmental issues naturally generate images (the dying dolphins) that

can capture the public’s attention, while corporate scandals do not. For this reason, we expect the

print media to be more central to corporate governance issues than broadcast media.

Demand considerations also lead to a selective focus on stories with wide interest, like

executive compensation levels, rather than on other elements of good corporate governance, like

the composition of boards and the role of auditors, even after scandals such as Enron and

WorldCom. Readers may not be able to appreciate the nuances of corporate situations, leading to

news stories that simplify firm performance relative to environmental or corporate governance

standards in too stark a way.

In the United Kingdom, for example, while the recommendations developed in the

Cadbury, Greenbury, and Hampel reports are often qualified, they are rarely reported that way.

The “public” version is a gross oversimplification around bright line rules, producing “box

checking” and intense pressure to conform to standards different than those intended.

Finally, demand for corporate governance news might depend on the structure of

corporate ownership. Thus the extent of coverage and the consequent sanctioning role of the

press are likely to be more important when a broad group of citizens have a personal interest in

the outcomes, because of their direct or indirect (through pension funds) shareholdings. The

important corporate governance role played by the media in Korea and Malaysia described

earlier is probably attributable to the widespread dispersion of ownership in publicly traded firms

in these two countries.

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Reputational Penalties and Social Norms

As noted previously, media activity can hurt managers’ reputations in the eyes of

shareholders and future employers as well as of family, friends, professional associates, and the

public at large. Reputational penalties can be long lasting. As Jean Lamierre, the president of the

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said: “People may not necessarily change,”

in defense of a policy of keeping a secret blacklist of companies and individuals with which the

bank will not do business (Wagstyl 2002). The strength and nature of shared social norms

influence the impact of the media.

Where maximizing shareholders’ value is the norm, any media account of

underperformance has a significant impact. In the United States, for instance, a well developed

set of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times,

Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review, emphasizes both business

heroes and villains. Executives seek to be identified in these publications for the status it brings

them. Where such status is valued, the media are particularly powerful because they can both

build and destroy reputations.

This power of U.S. and British media to pressure managers transcends domestic borders.

After becoming rich, executives in emerging markets seek broader acceptance in the

international community by joining the World Economic Forum at Davos, seeking positions on

the boards of trustees of prominent international institutions, and so on. While the Russian

oligarch Vladimir Potanin was successful in his efforts to join the trustees of the Guggenheim

Museum in April 2002, oligarchs such as Oleg Deripaska were “disinvited” from participating in

the Davos meeting, and Deripaska was stripped of his designation as “one of the global leaders

of tomorrow” following negative press coverage of civil lawsuits alleging bribery, money

laundering, and worse (Financial Times 2001; Wagstyl 2002). Interestingly, these leaders are not

as sensitive to their public image in their own country, perhaps because of the lack of credibility

of the local media, the lack of shared norms, or both. In any case, these episodes suggest that the

U.S. and

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British media play a nontrivial role in exporting the Anglo-American model to other

countries. We should reiterate, however, that the norms communicated by the media are not

necessarily in shareholders’ interests. In countries like Japan, where lifetime employment is a

shared value, the media are likely to describe workers’ dismissals in a negative light. This

sanction might deter firings even when they enhance value from a shareholders’ perspective.

Media activity can hurt manager’s reputation. Any Media account of underperformance

has a significant impact. The newspapers can make Corporate Business Heroes or Also Villains.

Data on Corporate Policy and the Importance of the Press

In Dyck and Zingales (2001) we analyzed, among other things, the impact of the

diffusion of the media on corporate governance. As a measure of corporate governance we used

an estimate of the value of control obtained from control block transactions. On average, parties

are willing to pay more for control only if they expect to enjoy some private benefits. Private

benefits of control represent the wedge between the physical return to investments and the

amount external financiers can appropriate. They are therefore a good indicator of how much

dispersed shareholders’ rights are respected.

We found that private benefits of control are lower, and thus governance is better, in

countries where the press is more diffused. This is true even after controlling for the degree of

legal protection offered to minority shareholders, for the quality of accounting standards, and for

the level of economic development as measured as GDP per capita. The effect is also

economically significant. One standard deviation increase in the diffusion of the press reduces

the average value of private benefits by 5 percentage points, 18 percent of their standard

deviations. In this paper, we perform a similar analysis with respect to environmental practices.

Dependent Variable: Private Sector Responsiveness to Environmental Issues As an indicator of

the importance private sector firms place on environmental issues we use an index of private

sector responsiveness to environmental concerns developed through the collaboration of the

World Economic Forum and researchers from Columbia and Yale universities. This index is

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based on five variables: the number of ISO 14001 certified companies per million dollars of

GDP, the number of World Business Council for Sustainable Development Members per million

dollars of GDP, Innovest’s EcoValue rating of firms’ environmental performance, the

Sustainable Asset Management rating of the environmental sustainability of firms in the Dow

Jones global index, and the levels of environmental competitiveness based on firm surveys.

Each variable is based on firm-level data and assigned equal weight in the index. It

describes and defines all the variables used in this paper and shows their sources. Private sector

responsiveness is clearly related to per capita income. The five highest ranked countries are

Switzerland, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, while the five lowest

ranked countries are Venezuela, Indonesia, Greece, Colombia, and the Philippines. However,

responsiveness is not driven solely by per capita income. Italy and the United Kingdom, for

example, have similar per capita incomes, but very different measures of private sector

responsiveness: Italy’s index is –0.35, ranking it 35th in our sample, while the United Kingdom’s

index is 1.02, ranking it 4th.

Measures of the Importance of the Press

We focus on two principal measures of the press that recent studies have highlighted. The

first measure, and the focus of the analysis, is a measure of the diffusion of the press based on

the circulation of daily newspapers in the country normalized by the country population. This

measure captures, to some extent, the possibility for the press to affect public opinion, because it

provides one measure of the reach of the press. It also captures, to some extent, the presence of

an active and competing press, because wider circulation is presumably accompanied by more

intense competition among competing firms. Cross-country variation in the diffusion of the press

is significant.

The five economies in our sample with the highest readership are Hong Kong (China),

Norway, Japan, Finland, and Sweden. The five lowest countries in our sample are Kenya,

Zimbabwe, Pakistan, South Africa, and Egypt. Again, income explains much of the variation, but

even for countries with similar incomes great disparities are apparent, for instance, in the United

Kingdom the average circulation is 331 per 1,000 inhabitants, while in Italy it is 104. The press

measures used more often in the literature are derived from Freedom House (see examples cited

31


in Besley, Burgess, and Pratt (2002)). We focus on three measures: the freedom of the press, the

frequency of violations against broadcast media, and the frequency of violations against print

media. The freedom of the press is an index that measures the "degree to which each country

permits the free flow of information" (Freedom House 1999).

The frequency of violations against the media be they broadcast media or print media, is

an index based on "actual violations against the media, including murder, physical attack,

harassment and censorship" (Freedom House 1999). A clear relationship between diffusion and

the rating of press freedom is apparent, with a correlation of 0.55. However, the variables do

capture different components of the press, and for countries with similar levels of freedom quite

significant differences in readership can be noted, for instance, Spain and the United Kingdom

have similar levels of press freedom, but Spain has less than one-third the

readership.

We do not look at other possible press measures, such as the measure of ownership of the

media used by Djankov and others (2001). They focused on what fraction of the media is owned

by the government, but our sample has too few countries where ownership of the press is in other

than private hands.

Other Institutional FactorsAs we already pointed out, countries where the press is very diffused are also countries

with a higher GDP per capita and better law enforcement. To reduce the likelihood that we are

attributing to the influence of the press the role of some other institutional factors, correlated

with press diffusion, our regressions control for the most important ones. LEGAL

ENVIRONMENT. Our claim is that the media have an impact on corporate behavior beyond any

legal requirement.

Therefore when studying the private sector’s responsiveness to environmental issues we

should control for the extent of environmental laws and regulations. As an indicator of the

stringency of legal and regulatory restrictions on firms we use the 2001 environmental

sustainability index (Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy 2001), which is based on

four variables: the stringency and consistency of environmental regulations, the degree to which

environmental regulations promote innovation, the percentage of land area under protected

32


status, and the number of sectoral guidelines on environmental impact assessments. Each

variable has equal weight and has been normalized.

INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT. More disclosure can have an effect independent of

the role of the press. For this reason, we want to control separately for the degree of disclosure.

When we examine the private sector’s responsiveness to environmental issues we control for

environmental disclosure. As we lack firm based measures of environmental disclosure, we

instead use the extent of environmental disclosure as captured by the index of environmental

information compiled for the 2001 environmental sustainability index.

Empirical ResultsWe start by analyzing the link between the diffusion of the press and the indicator of

private sector responsiveness to environmental issues. We first use univariate analysis and then

turn to multivariate analysis to try to control for the other important institutional factors. Panel A

of table 3 shows a strong positive correlation between the diffusion of the press and private

sector responsiveness to environmental issues. The diffusion of the press alone explains 42

percent of the cross-country variation, slightly more than the explanatory power of per capita

income (38 percent).

Not surprisingly, the private sector’s responsiveness to environmental issues is also

positively correlated with the level of environmental regulation environmental information and

per capita income. We combine readership with the legal and disclosure variables and

readership continues to have a statistically significant impact: including readership increases the

explanatory power from 45 to 58 percent. Of course, there is the possibility that readership is just

picking up the impact of some third omitted variable.

To attempt to capture a possibility we also include the level of per capita income, but

readership continues to have a significant effect. Finally we include other institutional variables,

such as the rule of law and ownership concentration, but the diffusion of the press continues to

be significant.

An interesting finding is that ownership concentration has a negative and statistically

significant effect on the private sector’s responsiveness to environmental issues. Where large

33


shareholders run firms they feel freer to ignore the public opinion pressure in favor of the

environment, another piece of evidence that this is not a course of action that maximizes value.

In panel B we substitute the diffusion of the press with the freedom of the press, the frequency of

violations against broadcast media, and the frequency of violations against print media. In a

univariate setting all three of these variables help explain a significant amount of the cross-

country variation.

In a multivariate analysis, however, the statistical significance is reduced, and in the case

of violations against broadcast media it drops below conventional standards. The traditional

indicators of press freedom thus have an effect similar to the diffusion of the press, but

statistically weaker. This is not surprising, because these other indicators are meant to capture

freedom from political influences rather than the credibility of reporting about corporations.

What Determines the Diffusion of the Press?

Our cross-country regressions suffer from two problems that are common to this genre of

regressions. First, there are so many institutions that differ across countries and so few degrees of

freedom that one always wonders whether the results are due to an omitted variable that drives

both press diffusion and environmental responsiveness. We have tried to address this problem by

controlling for the most obvious determinants of environmental responsiveness, but we can never

be sure that we have controlled for all the important factors. The second problem, which is less

of an issue here, is one of reverse causality. Is the press more diffused because companies are

more sensitive to environmental policies?

To address both these problems we resort to instrumental variables. A good instrument is

one that is correlated with our variable of interest (the diffusion of the press), but is not

correlated with the error in our regressions of the diffusion of the press on corporate behavior.

One precondition for the diffusion of the press is the diffusion of education, and we could use the

average level of school attainment as a determinant. However, the same factors that determine

schooling policy could also be correlated with environmental responsiveness. For this reason we

prefer to use historically predetermined factors that have caused these differences in the level of

education. We introduce two, the degree of linguistic fractionalization and the dominant religion

in a country.

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The more languages are spoken in a country, the more fragmented the newspaper market.

In a more fragmented market fewer newspapers can survive, and it is more difficult for them to

acquire reputation and credibility. Ethno linguistic fractionalization should therefore have a

negative impact on the diffusion of the press.

Religions differ in their approach to education and to the extent; they encourage the

development of critical judgment by their followers. Catholicism, for instance, traditionally did

not encourage education among its followers except for the clergy. Catholics were not

encouraged to read the Bible, nor were they supposed to develop an individual capacity to

interpret it. The Catholic Church saw itself not only as the intermediary between God and

individual believers, but also as the only official interpreter of the word of God. By contrast, the

Reformation, with its emphasis on individual reading and interpretation of the Bible, favored

individual education. Martin Luther translated the Bible into German and promoted the literacy

of his followers. Hence, we would expect Protestant countries to have a better level of schooling

and exhibit a higher diffusion of the press. Our third and fourth categories are Islam and other

Religions, which includes Judaism and Buddhism.

We test these conjectures as a dependent variable we have the diffusion of the press. As

independent variables, we have three indicator variables for the dominant religions (Catholic, 29

Protestant, and Muslim) and an indicator of ethno linguistic fractionalizaiton used in the

literature (see Easterly and Levine 1997). The latter is based on the probability that two

randomly selected people from a given country will not belong to the same ethno linguistic

group. All our explanatory variables have the expected impact on the diffusion of the press. In all

the cases except for the Catholic dummy, these coefficients are statistically significant.

Most important, from the point of view of their quality as instruments, they together

explain 41 percent of the variation in press diffusion. Hence, they appear to be good instruments.

We use these instruments to re-estimate by instrumental variables our basic specifications for the

determinants of environmental policy. The environmental policy regressions, produce similar

results to the ordinary least squares estimates.

35


The instrumental variable point estimate of the impact of the diffusion of the press is

actually larger than the ordinary least squares counterpart, rejecting the hypothesis that the result

is due to omitted variables. Thus far, we have limited our search of the determinants of press

diffusion to factors that (a) are likely to be uncorrelated with the determinants of environmental

pressure and protection of minority shareholders; and (b) are predetermined, and as such are

legitimately exogenous. However, the question of what drives the diffusion of the press is of

independent interest. If the diffusion of the press plays a role in corporate governance, then from

a policy point of view we are interested in finding out what factors under the control of the

government play a role in spreading newspapers’ readership.

For this reasons, we consider the empirical significance of other potential determinants of

the diffusion of the press. First we consider the average degree of schooling measured as the log

of school attainment for those over the age of 25 taken over five year periods (1960-1965, 1970-

1975, 1980-1985) (Barro and Lee 1993). As expected, countries with a higher level of schooling

have a more diffused press. All the other variables except the Muslim dummy maintain their

predicted effect, although the statistical significance of the religion dummies decreases, as is to

be expected if they affected the diffusion of the press mainly through their effect on education.

We also insert the market share controlled by state-owned newspapers.

The more newspapers the government controls, the less credible they are, the less they

will be read, and perhaps the harder it will be for competitors to enter the market. We take the

market share of state-owned newspapers as a percentage of the total market share of the top five

newspaper outlets from Djankov and others (2001). As expected, the impact of government

ownership of the media is negative and statistically significant. All the other variables maintain

their predicted effect. Finally, we want to make sure that the effects we have described are not

just due our failure to control for any indicator of the level of economic development of a

country. While the cause-effect relationship is more ambiguous here, seeing that the estimated

effects are similar once we insert the log of per capita income, is reassuring (column 4).

36


A case in Russia:

If enforcement is effective and/or legal punishments are severe, the manager has expected

cost of violating minority shareholders’ rights is such that they will never do so. For this reason,

it would be very difficult to try to identify any effect of the media in a country with highly

effective corporate governance rules.

The same is true, however, if the media have a long record of accomplishment of

imposing reputational penalties on managers who violate investors’ rights. The fear of such

penalties will dissuade any manager from committing a violation. Ideally, therefore, we would

need a country that has very little or no legal enforcement and where, at the time a decision is

made, the reputational costs of a decision are perceived to be very low.

Russia during the late 1990s/early 2000s period scores “well” on both of these

dimensions. During this period the standard instruments to redress corporate violations were

either nonexistent (derivative suits) or completely ineffective (for example, courts were easily

corruptible; see Slink, Yakolev, and Zhuravskaya (2004)). As a result, corporate governance

violations were very extreme, very common, and very visible. Hence, we can relatively easily

assemble a sample of objectively bad governance decisions and follow them over time.

Note that Russian managers were just starting to learn how to deal with the press, and in

particular with the foreign press, during the sample period. Having been raised in an environment

(Soviet Russia) where the media had reported only what the party establishment wanted, Russian

managers were unlikely to factor into their decisions the reputational cost the media could inflict.

No one illustrates this learning process better than Khodorkovsky, the former CEO of

Yukos. At the beginning of his career, Khodorkovsky hated the press and kept it at a distance.

After one of his rare meetings with journalists, he declared: "It would be more pleasurable to

meet a bunch of our unpaid workers in Siberia."7 In August 1999, however, when the Bank of

New York was accused of laundering money for several Russian companies, Yukos changed

strategy because it was concerned that "despite the absence of specific data, U.S. officials have

taken the publications quite seriously – a U.S. Congress hearing is scheduled for mid-September.

A possible result of this hearing could be a decision to refuse Russia the financial aid of

international financial institutions.”8 Such attention spurred Yukos to hire a Western public

relations agency and to start to fight back against the allegations in the media. Explaining Yukos

decision to keep his company public and to pay more attention to investors and public relations,

37


Khodorkovsky said, "First, there are not many very big private companies - and we want to be

very big. Second, we need access to cheap capital and that means openness. Third, a big oil

company has lots of workers, lots of ecological responsibilities. If it is opaque it is not going to

be popular. Finally, there is the issue of nationalisation, which we can never ignore. A private

company is a lot easier to nationalise than a public one."9 Following this public relations

campaign, Yukos started to be praised by the Western media as a model of financial transparency

and Khodorkovsky became the darling of the Western press. While this strategy was not

sufficient in preventing Putin from seizing Yukos, it certainly made it more costly for him to do

so.

As the Khodorkovsky quotes suggest, Russians care about their reputation vis-àvis the

international community for three reasons. First, they might want to access international markets

(for financing, joint ventures, and even sales contracts). Second, a good reputation may act as an

insurance policy, both to protect the legitimacy of their holdings and to facilitate an asylum

request in case they become persecuted in Russia. Third, a good reputation my lead to personal

satisfaction. After becoming rich, executives in many developing countries seek broader

acceptance in the international community by joining the World Economic Forum at Davos,

seeking positions on the boards of trustees of prominent international institutions, and so on.

Negative news reported in international media can have the effect of ostracizing the executives

from these desired social circles. While the Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin was successful in

his efforts to join the trustees of the Guggenheim Museum in April 2002, Oleg Deripaska was

“disinvited” from participating in the Davos meeting, and was stripped of his designation as “one

of the global leaders of tomorrow” following negative press coverage of civil lawsuits alleging

bribery, money laundering, and worse (Financial Times 2001; Wagstyl (2002)).

B. Can We Identify an Exogenous Shift in News Coverage?

In addition to the two factors mentioned above, Russia provides an excellent environment

to identify the impact of the press on governance because there exists a fund that consciously

plays a media strategy: the Hermitage Fund.

Founded in 1996 as a generic hedge fund with a Russian focus, the Hermitage Fund

changed its strategy and focus after the 1998 Russian crisis. In the words of its chairman, “Our

basic approach is to thoroughly research and understand where the corporate malfeasance is

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taking place and then go to great pains to simplify the story so the average person can understand

what is going on. One of the reasons that certain companies have gotten away with various

violations in the past is that no one really understood what was happening because the stories

were so complicated. We then share the stories with the press. By doing so, we want to inflict

real consequences – business, reputational and financial” (Dyck (2002)).

In explaining why his strategy is successful in increasing coverage, he says: You have to

understand that the press doesn’t know about the stories, have the ability to understand some of

these complicated activities, or can’t afford to do research. We have a lot of money invested. We

are affected. We can devote the resources to do what it takes to truly understand what is going

on. Our goal is to frame the issue so that it is clear to everyone what has happened. We do talk to

the Russian press, but our focus is on the international press. (Dyck (2002), emphasis added)

Since the Hermitage Fund focuses on generating coverage in those companies where it

owns shares, the presence of the Hermitage Fund among the shareholders of a company should

represent an exogenous shift in news coverage, which can be used to identify the causal

mechanism between news coverage and governance outcomes.

C. Does Hermitage Generate News?

For Hermitage to produce an exogenous shift in coverage, it must not only want to

generate coverage, but also be successful in doing so. In talking with its chairman, we identify

two mechanisms the fund has used: being a helpful source and becoming news.

C.1. Being a Helpful Source

One way Hermitage generates news is by conducting research and then presenting and

documenting this information to a selected group of reporters. Becoming a source for

information enables Hermitage to provide the specific news it wants to present and to determine

the timing of the news release.

To illustrate the impact of Hermitage on news coverage, consider the coverage Gazprom,

Russia’s largest company, received regarding some related-party transactions. While there had

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been widespread concerns about Gazprom’s deals with related parties, this became a focus of

attention (and was finally addressed seriously) only when Hermitage provided crucial

information to the press. In the words of Bill Browder, head of the Hermitage Fund,

My head of research was able to buy the entire Moscow registration database from a

hawker on a street corner. With the securities commission database, we knew the names of the

companies that stole assets from Gazprom, and with the registration chamber data, we knew

which individuals owned the companies. From that we were able to piece together exactly how

much was stolen and by which members of management. … [We] decided to share our findings

with the world by selectively releasing different examples of the graft to the major Western

newspapers in Moscow. (Dyck (2002))

By October of 2000, Hermitage had put this information together in a 41-page

PowerPoint presentation that laid out the story they wanted told, and presented the underlying

information, including the sources. As Table A1 in the Appendix shows, there is a clear overlap

between their information and the resulting stories.

Not only did Browder present new information in his continuing campaigns, he also

worked hard to time the presentation of information and to ensure continued coverage of stories

they cared about:

Originally, we would give one reporter the whole story. They would want to check every

bit of it out, get the other side’s point of view, or ignore it, seeing this as too complicated and

time consuming to pursue. Now we give a small piece of the story to a journalist and let them

know that we’ll give it to someone else in three days if they don’t write anything. It seems that

journalists are more concerned about losing the story to a competitor than almost anything else.

(Dyck (2002))

Suggestive of the success of this strategy, we also see continued coverage of these

allegations in the international news, as well as successful outcomes. Concrete steps were taken

to limit the dilutions of Gazprom, including new requirements for board approval, new audits of

related-party transactions, and the removal of the chief executive at the center of these

allegations. Panel C of Table A1 provides a timeline of these outcomes. It also shows that this

story, unlike so many other allegations of shareholder violation in Russia, did not die, but rather

was repeated again and again over the next six months.

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C.2. Becoming News

Another channel through which Hermitage generates news is by becoming news,

specifically by filing a lawsuit. As Bill Browder argues, We also go to courts. We’ve been

involved in 32 lawsuits. And we win in terms of public attention regardless of the outcome,

where we’ve lost 31 times. I think the proportion of number of words written in the press when a

lawsuit is initiated to when it is dismissed is 50 to 1. The court of public opinion is much more

effective than the Russian legal system and much fairer. (Dyck (2002))

The case of Sberbank illustrates this channel. At the end of 2000, the Sberbank board

announced plans to go forward with a new share issue, which had the potential of diluting the

ownership stakes of existing shareholders. It was hard for shareholders to fight against this

decision using traditional methods, since there were no representatives of minority shareholders

on the board. Hermitage, however, chose to launch 12 different lawsuits against Sberbank and

the Central Bank. Although the lawsuits were all dismissed, they generated a large amount of

publicity, which came at a time when the Russian Duma was debating a new law on investor

protection.11

Not only is a lawsuit news itself, inducing newspapers to write about an issue, but it also

allows journalists to write about it without any fear of being sued for libel. If a journalist writes

an article about a dubious related-party transaction, he might get sued by the company. But if he

reports the same facts as the allegation made in a legal case, he incurs no risk. And this is a

concern, since the first reaction of many Russian oligarchs to the bad Western press was to sue

the journalists that wrote the articles in the court of London, a court more favorable to the

plaintiff in libelous cases.

D. Selection vs. Causality

For marketing purposes, hedge funds have an obvious interest in self-promotion. To

justify hefty management and performance fees to their own investors, hedge fund managers

have to claim they have a strategy that adds value. For this reason, we have to be suspicious of

Hermitage’s claim that they are so successful in exposing corporate governance violations in the

international press. To this purpose in Section V.b we test whether it is indeed true that the

presence of Hermitage as a shareholder leads to more coverage, after controlling for a series of

company characteristics.

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Yet finding such a correlation is not necessarily evidence of a causal link. An equally

plausible explanation is that Hermitage buys into companies that are more visible or when it

knows they will receive more attention from the press.

To minimize this concern, we follow two strategies. First, we include a measure of

newsworthiness and in the regression. Second, we choose to use the earliest Hermitage portfolio

composition we have available, namely, December 1998. This pre-dates the major wave of

corporate governance violations following the Russian crisis, and hence could hardly be thought

as the result of an active strategy to pick more media-sensitive companies. It also pre-dates the

period when Hermitage actively used the press as part of its strategy to increase returns in its

portfolio.

Findings1)Many of large compinies coming up with their own media, which is benefiting their own

companies.

2)Media are not ethical in collecting information.

3)Compinies are having more no. of channels and news channels.

4) Compinies are not that much ethical because they are not providing proper information.

Recommendations/suggestions 1) Government should take necessary steps when giving permission to media.

2) Companies does not have more no. of channels or news papers, which supports to their

own companies

3) Government should take necessary steps to make the companies follow ethically practices

ConclusionOther papers have focused on the important role of the media in affecting the functioning

of government institutions, but the media play an equally important role in shaping corporate

policy. Our contribution is a first attempt to outline the theoretical channels through which this

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influence takes place and to show their practical relevance. We argued that the media selectively

reduce the cost of acquiring and verifying information.

This information is crucial in shaping the reputation of the key players who determine

corporate policy. The reputation that decision makers seem to care about is not just the reputation

in the eyes of current and future employers, but more broadly, their reputation in the eyes of the

public at large, that is, their public image. Only concerns about their public image would explain

the responsiveness of corporate directors to environmental issues, which have a zero or negative

impact on the wealth of their ultimate employers, that is, the shareholders.

These effects of the media are not only anecdotal. The more diffuse the press in a country

is, the more companies are responsive both to environmental issues and to minority shareholders’

concerns, even after controlling for the presence of specific laws and regulations and the level of

law enforcement.

These results suggest that the corporate governance role of the media is more complex

than the one we identified in Dyck and Zingales (2001). The media can help shareholders or can

hurt them. We conjecture that while the strength of the impact of the media depends on their

credibility, the direction of their net effect depends on societal norms and values, but much more

research is needed before coming to any definite conclusion on this matter. The only definite

conclusion we can draw at this point is that the media are important in shaping corporate policy

and should not be ignored in any analysis of a country’s corporate governance system. From a

policy point of view our contribution provides both good and bad news.

The good news is that even countries with inadequate laws and malfunctioning judicial

systems can experience some of the benefits of better governance if the pressure of the press is

sufficiently strong and the norms support good governance. The bad news is that the direction in

which the press exercises its influence depends on societal values, which cannot be easily

changed by the legislators or by international policymakers. Moreover, the extent of press

influence may be largely outside policymakers’ control. Our analysis of the ultimate

determinants of the diffusion of the press indicates that these lie in a country’s cultural and ethnic

tradition.

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References1) Corporate Governance of Media Companies by ROBERT G. PICARD (Ed.).

2) The Corporate Governance Role of the Media by Alexander Dyck and Luigi Zingales.

3) The Corporate Governance Role of the Media: Evidence from Russia.

4) ETHICS AND ADVERTISING by Geoffrey Klempner.

5) Social Reporting in Corporate Governance and the role of Media in Corporate Governance by

Dr. Alka Singh Bhatt.

6) Types and Role of Print Media Presented by Masautso Phiri to the Media Literacy Workshop

held in Solwezi.

7) www.bdnews.com

8) www.media.com

9) www.emerald.com

10) www.google.com

11) www.corporate governance.com

12) www.newspapers.com

13) Corporate governance by A.C.FERNANDO.

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http://www.newspapers.com/

http://www.corporate/

http://www.google.com/

http://www.emerald.com/

http://www.media.com/

http://www.bdnews.com/

Role of Media in Ensuring Corporate Governance

Documents