good news and bad

United NationsEnvironmentProgramme

SustainAbility

Good News & BadThe Media, CorporateSocial Responsibility andSustainable Development

Ketchum

Contents

Executive SummaryForewords

1.0 Introduction

2.0 World RegionsEuropean UnionUnited StatesLatin AmericaAsia

3.0 Big IssuesGlobalizationOzone DepletionClimate ChangeEnvironmental HealthEndocrine DisruptorsGenetically Modified FoodsBusinessCorporate Social Responsibility Socially Responsible InvestmentThe Activists

4.0 The Media Moguls

5.0 Gordian SectionsAudiencesTechnologyServicesAccountability

6.0 Breakdown or Breakthrough?

SustainAbility PublicationsPublication DetailsAcknowledgementsEngaging Stakeholders Sponsors

Interviewees

Katherine Ainger, Editor, New Internationalist, UK

Frank Allen, Founder, Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, USA

Adlai Amor, Media Relations Director, World Resources Institute, USA

Nicki Amos, Head of Business Ethics, The Body Shop International, UK

Irwin Arieff, Journalist, Reuters, UK

Robert Bisset, Press Officer for Europe, UNEP, France

Frances Cairncross, Management Editor, The Economist, UK

Joe Champ PhD, Center for Environmental Journalism, Colorado University, USA

Rachel Coen, Information Co-ordinator, FAIR, USA

Meghan Connolly, Director, CSR Wire, USA

Leslie Cormier, Communications Director, DuPont, USA

Roger Cowe, Freelance Journalist, Financial Times, The Guardian, UK

Chris de Cardy, Executive Director, Environmental Media Services, USA

Jamie Donald, Assignment Editor, BBC News, UK

Peter Eisler, Journalist, USA Today, USA

Pete Engardio, Journalist, Business Week, US

Bill Eyres, Head of Communications, The Body Shop International, UK

David Fenton, Founder and Director, Fenton Communications, USA

Svenja Geissmar, Senior Vice-President and General Counsel, MTV Networks, UK

Ross Gelbspan, Freelance Journalist, The Boston Globe and others, USA

Paul Gilding, Chair, Ecos Corporation, Australia

Peter C. Goldmark, Jr., Chairman and CEO, The International Herald Tribune, France

Gabriel Griffa, Editor and Publisher, Apertura, Argentina

Nick Hart-Williams, Director, Whole Earth, and previously Channel 4, UK

Thaddeus Herrick, Journalist, The Wall Street Journal, USA

Tony Juniper, Director Designate, Friends of the Earth, UK

Peter Knight, Environmental Context and Freelance Journalist, UK

Stefan Larsson, Group Environmental Manager, Esab, Sweden

Kalle Lasn, Founder and Editor, Adbusters Media Foundation, USA

Andy Law, Founder and Head, St Luke’s, UK

Tomoo Machiba,Freelance Journalist, Japan

Michael Maiello, Journalist, Forbes, USA

Drew Marcus, Media Analyst, Deutsche Bank, USA

Alan Metrick, Communications Director, NRDC, USA

George Monbiot, Columnist, The Guardian, UK

John Nielsen,Environmental Correspondent, NPR, USA

Blair Palese, Head of Communications, Ecos Corporation, Australia

Wendy Redal, Director, Center for Environ-mental Journalism, Colorado Uni., USA

Simon Retallack, Special Features Editor, The Ecologist, UK

Nick Robins, Head of SRI Research, Henderson Global Investors, UK

Chris Rose, Campaigner, Families Against Bush, and previously Greenpeace, UK

Niki Rosinski, Researcher, Sustainable Asset Management, Switzerland

Nick Rowcliffe, Editor, ENDS Daily, UK

Linda Ruckel, Communications Department, Bristol-Myers Squibb, USA

Richard Sambrook, Director of News, BBC, UK

Danny Schechter, Executive Editor, MediaChannel, USA

Terry Slavin, Correspondent, The Observer, UK

Joe Smith, Co-Director, Cambridge Media and Environment Programme, UK

Shamilla Sohoni, Staff Writer, The Economist, USA

Mike Tidwell, Freelance Journalist, The Washington Post, USA

Lloyd Timberlake, Director of Earthscan, Avina Foundation, USA and Switzerland

Paul Tolme, Journalist, Associated Press, USA

Solitaire Townsend, Director, Futerra, UK

Andrew Tyndall, Editor, Tyndall Report, USA

Mark Wade, Sustainable Development Group, Shell International, UK

Tom Whitehouse,Risk Analyst and Former Journalist, UK

Robert Worcester, Chairman, MORI, UK

Martin Wright, Editor in Chief, Green Futures, UK

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Good News & BadExecutive Summary

Executive SummaryThe media sector — broadly defined — couldbecome the dominant industry of the 21stcentury. No other industry will so powerfullyinfluence how people and politicians thinkabout corporate social responsibility (CSR)and sustainable development (SD) priorities.

A In terms of niche media, a listing of CSR and SD newsletters, magazines and websites can be found at www.sustainability.com/resources

B For SustainAbility’s analysis of the link between sustainable development and the Internet, see our online report at www.VirtualSustainability.com

In Good News & Bad we investigate:

— The roles of the media in building the CSR and SD agendas for business;

— The ways in which media people perceive, prioritize and cover these issues; and

— Governance, accountability and transparency challenges for the media industry itself.

Given the subtitle of this report, it isimportant to note that though the CSR andSD agendas are linked in Good News & Bad,they are not identical. While CSR championsoften view SD as a subset of their agenda,and vice versa, progress with sustainabledevelopment requires the involvement of allsectors of society, not just business – andmuch longer timescales. So SD, not CSR, isthe ‘Big Story’ that the media too often aremissing (page 34).

Indeed, in some sectors the SD agenda is socomplex — and so recalcitrant — that it isreminiscent of the ‘Gordian Knot’. Alexanderthe Great, it is said, was once presented witha knot so intricate that no-one had beenable to untangle it. So he sliced through itwith his sword. Good News & Bad takes fourslices through the media world: Audiences(page 30), Technology (32), Services (34)and Accountability (36).

So are media companies aware of thechallenges they face in relation to thisagenda? And are they responding both with the appropriate levels of energy and — Alexander’s lesson — radicalism? The answers are yes, to a degree, and not yet.

Project and MethodologyThis is the fourth sector report prepared by SustainAbility as part of its EngagingStakeholders program for the United NationsEnvironment Programme (UNEP). Theprogram has been financially supported bothby the companies listed on the back coverand by the United Nations Foundation.

During the project, we interviewed over 50 people actively involved in this field, in different media and different countries. The main interviewees are listed on theinside front cover. They span mainstreamand niche media,A research, campaigningand business.

In addition, we researched books, reportsand websites covering the media sector andassociated issues. The Ketchum analysiscovered the media listed in each regionalprofile (pages 08–15). The aim has been to produce a briefing that can be read anddigested fairly quickly. But we plan tocontinue working in this area and to shareand test the findings. There is also now a dedicated domain on our website(www.sustainability.com/media).

The Third WaveGood News & Bad didn’t emerge from avacuum. Over many years, SustainAbility hastracked two (and now three) great waves —and two downwaves — of public concernand political action in relation to theemerging triple bottom line (TBL) agendas. They are mapped in Figure 03. Note: thesewaves are not primarily waves of mediacoverage, as is suggested by the fact thatthe second downwave began before thehuge spike of coverage triggered by the1992 Earth Summit. Interestingly, the seriouspolitical response to the waves tends to come in the downwaves.

Throughout the period 1961–2001, newsprograms have tended to focus on pollutionincidents and ecological disasters, ratherthan on the underlying trends and theircauses. As campaigner Chris Rose puts it,‘This is equivalent to covering economics by only reporting bank robberies.’

Some media have been pulling in processreporters alongside those solely concernedwith events, but it is still far from clear that the right balance is being struck. Our conclusions and recommendations are outlined below.

The media represent one of the mostpowerful — yet least trusted and leastaccountable institutions — in the world. The sector could become the most powerfulinstitution on earth, yet accountabilitymechanisms are generally weak. Few mediacompanies, for example, produce CSR or SD reports. But the media sector will comeunder growing scrutiny as its influencegrows. Expect the spotlight to pick up otherparts of the media ecosystem, too, includingadvertising agencies, PR firms and lobbyists.

That said, the media have a critical role to play in the transition towardssustainability. Media understanding — andsustained intelligent coverage — of the CSRand SD agendas is a necessary preconditionfor real progress.

Globalization remains key, both as aneditorial topic and as a profoundchallenge for the industry. The big mediastory of the late 1990s was globalization —or, more accurately, anti-globalization. The anti-globalization movement is on itsback foot after the September 11 attacks,but the issues are real and urgent. Theydemand action, both in terms of coverageand corporate accountability mechanisms.

The ‘globalization’ wave will continue to develop. The 2002 UN World Summit onSustainable Development (WSSD) will helpkeep the agenda on the boil. After theinevitable third downwave, expect fourthand fifth waves. Very likely — as the TBLagenda is mainstreamed — these waves maycome with a quickening tempo and lessdramatic fluctuations in public interest.

Meanwhile, the media are abysmal atcovering critical — but slow burn — issues. Many interviewees argue that the media aremissing the biggest story of our times, thatof the progressive undermining of globalecosystems — with profound social andeconomic consequences. The assumption isthat if the issues are real, we will have timeto adapt. But the sudden discovery of theAntarctic ozone hole shows how even globalproblems can take us by surprise.

The brightest spot at present is thebusiness media sector. This is picking up onCSR and SD issues with increasing regularityand professionalism. In the process, thelanguage is changing, with terms like ‘thetriple bottom line’ gaining greater currency(see Figure 01, page 03).

The new media have huge catalyticpotential. The impact of new technology iseasy to exaggerate, but the internet hashuge potential. As one interviewee argued,‘New media, new networks will mean newagency — new power to affect events.’ Thecommercial — and political — implicationsare profound, both for the media and forbusiness in general.B

But the future could take us in at leastthree directions. Things would be verydifferent in each of the three scenariosoutlined on pages 38–44: ‘Breakdown’,‘Mainstream’ or ‘Breakthrough’.


© Ketchum/SustainAbility 2002

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‘This is equivalent to covering economics by only reporting bank robberies.’


RecommendationsWhether in the media world or elsewhere,responsibility should be proportionate topower and influence. Given the challengesand weaknesses uncovered in this report, tenrecommendations are offered in relation tomedia governance, accountability,transparency and trust.

‘The media [is] one ofthe most powerful — yet least trusted andleast accountable — institutions in the world.’

GovernanceContrary to current evidence, the mediashould model the very highest standards ofcorporate governance. Specifically, mediacompanies should:

1 Establish — at board level — whether thebalance between public interest andcommercial imperatives is beingstrategically reviewed, properly managedand publicly disclosed; and

2 Review their goals, targets and performance against leading governancecodes (including the UN Global Compact,the Global Sullivan Principles and SA8000) and socially responsible investment(SRI) criteria.

AccountabilityGiven the enormous influence the mediahave on public opinion, public interest and,ultimately, public behavior, it is importantthat media owners and directors meet thehighest levels of accountability. In practice,this means that they should:

3 Consider compliance with laws, regulations and industry codes as theabsolute minimum for good governance —and commit to ‘beyond compliance’standards wherever possible;

4 Adopt and publicize ethical codes of conduct, and clear statements of theircorporate values and principles; and

5 Engage regularly with key stakeholders, ensuring that inclusive policies andprocesses are adopted right across thebusiness.

TransparencyFor an industry whose greatest public serviceis to uncover malpractice and corruption atall levels of society, and to hold governmentsand business to account, media companiesowe it to all their stakeholders and tosociety to be exceptionally transparent. Inparticular, they should:

6 Provide leadership in terms of triple bottom line accounting, auditing andreporting;

7 Disclose all proprietorial cross-ownerships and influence;

8 Declare editorial policy — both general and issue specific — and political allegiances;

9 Be open in relation to all sources of funds that could influence editorial andprogramming content — including theirbiggest advertisers, sponsors andproduction subsidies; and

10Regularly report direct and indirect lobbying activities, both undertaken and accepted.

TrustIt is a basic principle of the EngagingStakeholders program that sustainabledevelopment will be achieved fastest, mostefficiently and most effectively where thereare high levels of social capital, particularlytrust. The media industry’s current low trustratings sit uncomfortably alongside itsgrowing power and influence.

For non-media businesses wishing to engage the media, we suggest 10 Do’s and 5 Don’ts of media relations (page 44). In ourjudgement, restoring trust in the mediarequires alignment with the principles ofgovernance, accountability and transparencyoutlined above. More specifically, the mediawill need to emphasize:

— HonestySticking to the spirit, not just the letter, of laws and codes of conduct, and rooting out all forms of corruption;

— RespectFor example respecting rather thanexploiting human weakness and diversity;

— ConsistencyEnsuring that good corporate citizenshipprinciples are honored throughout thevalue chain.

One way forward would be to highlight theurgency of the CSR and SD agendas via anew media prize and scholarship initiativeappropriate to the 21st century. Just asJoseph Pulitzer’s principles helped shape thebest nineteenth and twentieth centuryjournalism, so we now need principles, prizesand scholarships designed to spur the mediatoward new horizons.

We must find and encourage those who will help us understand and address the key problems that will face us in the21st century, among them populationgrowth, poverty, disease, mega-urbanization,globalization, terrorism, global warming, the loss of biodiversity, and the increasinglyurgent competition for water as water-tables fall and rivers are diverted foragricultural, industrial and domestic uses.

The effort and the cost will be huge, but asex-President Bill Clinton put it in his 2001Dimbleby Lecture, ‘It’s a lot cheaper thangoing to war.’ This is an area where therereally will be no choice in a world headedtoward 9–10 billion human inhabitants, butyou wouldn’t guess it today from what youread in the newspapers, hear on the radioand see on TV.

SustainAbility Foreword

The media have played a central role indefining and communicating the emergingcorporate social responsibility (CSR) andsustainable development (SD) agendas. But, at the same time, the very nature of themedia beast often means that major issuesare ignored for extended periods of time. So,for example, media coverage of stratosphericozone depletion fell away sharply after 1992— even as the size of the Antarctic ozonehole continued to grow (page 18).

During the project, we have spoken to mediaowners, editors and journalists around theglobe, some of whom have played importantroles in relation to the triple bottom lineagenda — and some of whom are outspokencritics of the CSR and SD agendas. We havealso interviewed campaigners and businesspeople who routinely interact with themedia.

The recent death of David Astor reminded usof the central role of editors. Astor, for 27years the fiercely independent editor of TheObserver, was a forceful champion of qualityjournalism, freedom of information anddemocracy. He saw his role as that of a chef,mixing media dishes, but also of a talent-spotter and even college dean. All three rolesare relevant here, particularly the third, sincemost media people still have much to learnin relation to CSR and SD.

UNEP, as ever, has been a supportive partner,and Ketchum has carried out the mediascanning work. As the three scenariosoutlined on pages 38–43 began to evolve,we knew that this would be an area ofongoing interest and activity forSustainAbility.

John ElkingtonChairFrancesca MüllerMedia Project Manager, SustainAbility, London and New York

UNEP Foreword

A clear, two-pronged message emerges from Good News & Bad. First, if they are to remain credible as one of the dominantindustries in the 21st century, mediacompanies must increasingly look at theirown corporate social responsibilities. And, second, at a time when our world feels more vulnerable than ever, mediareporting of environmental and socio-economic issues is at a critical watershed.

In the run-up to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, there was a momentum — bothamong politicians and activists alike — totackle the world’s environmental and socialills. The media joined in. But, as UNEPExecutive Director Klaus Töpfer has asked, ‘As we approach the World Summit onSustainable Development in Johannesburg,will the media continue to cover some of themost pressing issues of our time with thesame enthusiasm?’

In UNEP, we believe that the stakes forsustainable development are higher todaythan ever before. In particular, there is anurgent need for greater political momentumand to raise public expectations and actionon the issues surrounding the JohannesburgSummit. The media have a fundamental roleto play. Their support in a new allianceagainst the dual challenge of global povertyand the protection of our globalenvironment will be crucial.

I hope this new report from SustainAbility,produced in conjunction with UNEP, willraise debate and, importantly, motivatemedia companies to question their owncorporate social responsibilities.

Jacqueline Aloisi de LarderelAssistant Executive Director,United Nations Environment Programme, Paris

Ketchum Foreword

Too often, companies discount the crucialrole of the media in helping to communicatetheir key messages to their key stakeholders.Indeed, many companies approach themedia with deep suspicion and hostility,regarding media relations as little more thana crisis management tool: a perilousapproach.

One of the defining characteristics of ‘CSRleaders’ is that they see media relations andcorporate communications as a strategicmanagement practice. They cultivaterelations with media — and not just withbig-name media, but also with local mediarelevant to their business operations. Theyalso tend to see the media community as notjust a conduit to audiences, but as anaudience in its own right.

In our view, strategic communications will be a critical asset for any organization — be it from the public arena, the privatesector, or civil society — in the years tocome. We believe communications can playan important role in dispelling confusion,resolving conflict and bringing partiestogether for the improvement of our world.

Ketchum recently launched a CSR specialtyarea, which formalizes a decades-longtradition as a public relations agency thatbelieves in responsible commercial success.In early 2001, Ketchum became one of thefirst professional-services firms to join theUN’s Global Compact initiative. We aredelighted to have taken part in thisimportant survey. We hope the findingsprove valuable for companies andorganizations that wish to be in thevanguard of CSR and SD.

Gavin PowerSenior Vice-President, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ketchum, New York

01Good News & Bad Forewords

JacquelineAloisi deLarderel

FrancescaMüller

GeoffLye

PatriciaReid

JohnElkington

Journalism, they say, is the first draft ofhistory.1 But the people who create thesefirst drafts are also part of a sector — themedia, broadly defined — that could wellbecome the dominant industry of the 21stcentury. ‘We see the media continuing tobecome more powerful,’ says Drew Marcus,Deutsche Bank’s media sector analyst.

As a result, no other industry will sopowerfully influence how people andpoliticians think about (and act on)corporate social responsibility (CSR) andsustainable development (SD) priorities.

This is the context in which politics generally— and the pursuit of SD in particular — willevolve. And there are real reasons forconcern that such agendas will be adverselyaffected by the spread of the ‘soundbiteculture.’ 2 In Good News & Bad, our fourthsector report for the United NationsEnvironment Programme, we investigate:

— The roles of the media in building the triple bottom line agenda for business;

— The ways in which media people perceive, prioritize and cover these agendas; and

— Governance, accountability and transparency options for the media industry itself.

But before we begin, let’s acknowledge thata world without reasonably independentmedia would be less democratic, lessefficient and, in all probability, lesssustainable right across the triple bottomline of economic, social and environmentalequity, justice and value added (page 05).

The triple bottom line approach has movedsharply up the list of terms used by the CSRand SD communities in recent years, asillustrated in Figure 01 This shows the resultsof a recent Environics survey of SD expertsaround the world, with eco-efficiency, thetriple bottom line and corporate socialresponsibility heading the list.3

What the Environics data do not show,however, is that public, government andcorporate interest in such issues andconcepts moves in waves. As Figure 03indicates, recent decades have seen greatwaves and downwaves in public concern and political action, each creating newpolitical, regulatory and market conditionsfor business. The media help create theconditions in which these waves anddownwaves emerge, and then dramatize the ups and downs of the resulting roller-coaster rides.

Much media coverage of key business trendsin relation to triple bottom line performanceis shallow. ‘It’s like a beauty contest to seewho’s the best provider of information,’ saysStefan Larsson, group environment managerat Swedish engineering company Esab. ‘Themedia focus on the aesthetics of companyreporting, rather than on the underlyingperformance. Mainstream media are dismalat telling these stories. Only the businessand financial pages are beginning tounderstand how to do this properly.’

02 Good News & Bad Introduction

IntroductionWhy we are focusing on the media; how the research was done; and the waves anddownwaves that will provide the context for whatever happens next.

Nembe Creek, Nigeria © Betty Press / Panos Pictures

Cumbria, UK © Martin Wyness / Still Pictures

‘We see the media continuing to become more powerful.’

So why do the media so often miss bigpicture stories until it is too late? Theanswer seems to have at least two parts:

— First, it’s human nature.Evolution has equipped us to respond tobig, noisy, immediate threats, and toignore problems that may present evengreater risks — but which build moreslowly, often decade-on-decade.

— Second, commercial self-interest.Media companies must keep audiencesand advertisers happy, which is wherehuman nature comes in again. Manyjournalists we interviewed want bettercoverage of triple bottom line issues andtrends, but their marketing people arguethat readers, listeners or viewers areswitched off by it.

Mirror, mirror

Media companies, in short, are both carriersand barriers when it comes to the CSR andSD agendas. So what happens if you hold up a mirror to the media? For some people,the picture is ugly, with a range of new‘coercive’ technologies and professions used to manipulate the public.4 In theinternational survey reported here, theSustainAbility and Ketchum teams took aclose look at media CSR and SD coverageover the period 1991–2001. Some keyfindings are discussed in our ‘Big Issues’section (pages 16–25).

The issues covered included biodiversity,child labor, climate change, corporate social responsibility, endocrine disruptors,genetically modified foods, globalization,green politics, the growth of megacities,ozone depletion, recycling, renewableresources, socially responsible investing,sustainable forestry, and urban air quality.We also tracked media mentions of a rangeof NGOs, including Amnesty International,Corporate Watch, Global Exchange,Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam,Sierra Club, Transparency International and WWF.

During the next decade, the media’shandling of the triple bottom line agendawill help determine whether these newpriorities move into the political, economicand cultural mainstream. If they do, thelikely result will be that future waves anddownwaves will come faster, but theoscillations may well moderate somewhat.

If they do not, with the triple bottom lineagenda given a relatively low priority, the wave gradients are likely to be moreextreme and less predictable, making anyprogress towards the goals of sustainabledevelopment increasingly difficult,protracted and costly.

03Good News & Bad Introduction

‘Media companies are both carriers andbarriers when it comesto the CSR and SDagendas.’

1 Anthony Collings, Words of Fire: Independent Journalists Who Challenge Dictators, Druglords, and Other Enemies of a Free Press, New York University Press, 2001.

2 David Slayden and Rita Kirk Whillock (eds), Soundbite Culture: The Death of Discourse in a Wired World, Sage Publications, 1999.

3 Note: The terms corporate social responsibility and triple bottom line were first included in the 2001 survey.

4 See, for example, Douglas Rushkoff, Coercion: The Persuasion Professionals and Why We Listen to What ‘They’ Say,Little, Brown & Company, 1999, or James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, Vintage Books, 1997.

01 CSR and SD FrameworksFrequency of Mentions 1997–2001

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Clearly, there is both good news and badwhen it comes to the media. The experienceof countries in the ex-communist world hasunderscored the vital role that accurate,timely and honest media coverage plays inlimiting economic, social and environmentalabuses. At the same time, even those whowork in the media sector accept that its verynature often means that fast, dramaticissues drown out slow, difficult-to-portrayissues. So, in the interests of balance, webegan by asking three questions.

1 Which lens to use?First, we considered which lens — or lenses— would be most helpful in surveying theworld of media? Anyone who tries to get agrip on media quickly finds huge difficulty inbringing this world into focus. Once again,we found ourselves dealing with a ‘GordianKnot’ challenge,5 as with our previous sectorreport — on automobility.6 To cut throughthe complexity, we have taken four slicesthrough the world of media:

— AudiencesWhat impact are audience trends havingon media coverage of CSR and SD issues?

— TechnologyHow are technology trends in the sectoraffecting the quantity, quality and reachof such coverage?

— ServicesWhat patterns do we see — and do mediapeople predict — in the adaptation ofexisting products and services, and in thelaunch of new offerings?

— AccountabilityGiven the undeniable role of the media inholding other parts of society to account,how can we hold media companies toaccount for their triple bottom lineperformance, both today and tomorrow?

The results of our research on these issuescan be found below, as follows: audiences(pages 30–31), technology (32–33), services(34–35) and accountability (36–37).

2 Snapshot or time-lapse?Second, we asked whether we should take asnapshot of the media at the beginning ofthe 21st century — or opt for a longer time-scale? Because of our interest in the wavesshown in Figure 03, we adopted a time-lapseapproach, with a series of snapshots takenover the period 1991–2001.

3 Wide-angle or zoom?And, third, we asked whether we should optfor a wide-angle approach (relying on mediascans over the whole decade) or for anapproach in which we would zoom in onparticular issues and developments (forexample by interviewing key media people).In the event, we decided to do both.

The task was further complicated by therapid evolution of the media. Not so longago, the media were considered to be athree-legged beast: print, radio and TV.7 Nowthere is also the internet — and things havegot rather more complicated. Print, radioand TV companies now compete withinternet portal operators like Yahoo! in termsof organizing and selling information andknowledge.8 So while magazines developwebsites and even portals, portals may alsodevelop magazines, as in the case of Yahoo!— Internet Life.

We have covered all four dimensions (print,radio, TV, internet) in our research. Duringthe interviews and other research, we alsotried to achieve a reasonable spread acrossthe various roles in media: owners (see, forexample, pages 26–29); publishers andproducers; editors; news journalists; featurewriters; and advertisers.

Our interviewees are listed on the insidefront cover. In total we talked to over 50individuals, among them people from theworld of editing, reporting, advertising,business, research and campaigning. Most people spoke on the record, but a significant number of the mainstreammedia interviewees asked for theircomments to be off the record to ensurethat they could be sufficiently candid.

It is inevitable that our interviews wereskewed towards those interested in CSR andSD. But we also tried to include a number of skeptics, to ensure a measure of realism. Last but not least, we interviewed people inthe corporate world who aim to engage themedia on these issues.

In terms of geographical coverage, wescanned CSR and SD coverage through thedecade in Asia, Europe, South America andthe United States. But the clustering ofinternational media in world cities like New York and London, where many of ourinterviews took place, inevitably skewed theresults towards Anglo Saxon trends andperspectives. This is a failing we recognizeand plan to address in future work.

Both in the interviews and content analysis,we identified a series of boom and bustcycles in media coverage of many of the keyissues. We zero in on some of these cycles inour ‘Big Issues’ section (pages 16–25).

As the work proceeded, we were more thanever persuaded that the media sector’sstance on the triple bottom line agenda willbe critical. The way in which coverage‘spiked’ in 1992, before, during and after theUN Earth Summit, suggests that we will seesomething similar happening around theWorld Summit on Sustainable Development(WSSD) in September 2002. But it is whathappens afterwards that will really count.

‘Mainstream media are dismal at telling these stories.’

Pakistan © Piers Benetar / Panos Pictures

02 Centers of Excellence


5 See Gordian Knot note on page 07.6 Driving Sustainability, SustainAbility

for UNEP, 2001.7 Annie Gurton, Press Here: Managing

the Media for Free Publicity, Prentice Hall, 1999/2001.

8 Timothy Koogle, CEO, Yahoo! Inc, ‘Organizing Knowledge Throughout the World’, in Wisdom of the CEO, edited by G. William Dauphinais, Grady Means and Colin Price, John Wiley & Sons, 2000.

Cambridge Programme for Media and the Environment UKwww-cies.geog.cam.ac.ukFounded in 1996, this is co-run by the BBC and Cambridge University. Offers aseries of in-depth seminars designed tobroaden and deepen media thinking aboutglobal environmental and SD issues — andto improve academic understanding of thesetting for (and constraints upon) mediareporting.

Fair Accuracy in Reporting USAwww.fair.orgFounded in 1986, this media watchdogoffers well-documented criticism of mediabias and censorship. FAIR works toinvigorate the US First Amendment byadvocating greater diversity in the press —and by scrutinizing media practices thatmarginalize public interest, and minorityand dissenting views.

International Federation ofEnvironmental Journalists Francewww.ifej.orgFounded in 1993, IFEJ is an umbrellaorganization representing nationalenvironmental journalists’ associations andindividual environmental journalists livingin more than 100 countries. It works toimprove the accuracy, quality and generalstandards of reporting. It also supportsjournalists threatened by censorship orrepression.

MediaChannelUSAwww.mediachannel.orgFounded in 1995, MediaChannel is a nonprofit, public interest websitededicated to global media issues. It isconcerned with the political, social andcultural impacts of the media, large andsmall. It encourages diverse perspectivesand aims to inspire debate, collaborationand citizen engagement and action.

PanosUKwww.oneworld.org/panosFounded in 1986, Panos works with mediaand other information actors to enabledeveloping countries to shape andcommunicate their own developmentagendas through informed public debate. It particularly focuses on amplifying thevoices of the poor and marginalized. Contentis largely generated by people in developingcountries.

Pew Center for the People and the Press USAwww.people-press.orgFounded in 1990, this is an independentopinion research group that studiesattitudes toward the press, politics andpublic policy issues. The Center’s mainpurpose is to serve as a forum for ideas on the media and public policy.

Society of Environmental JournalistsUSAwww.sej.orgFounded in 1990, this is a membership of working journalists dedicated toimprovements in environmental reporting.SEJ programs are designed to build astronger, better-educated, and better-connected network of professionaljournalists and editors who cover relevant issues.

Transparency International Germany and UK www.transparency.orgFounded in 1993, an NGO dedicated toincreasing government accountability and curbing both international and nationalcorruption. With chapters in over 75countries around the world, its aim is tomobilise a global coalition — embracingthe state, civil society and the privatesector — to build and strengthen systemsthat combat corruption.

Definitions

MediaThe main means of mass communication(esp. newspapers and broadcasting).i Canalso end up embracing advertising, mediarelations and some aspects of marketing.

Corporate social responsibility ‘CSR [implies] continuing commitment by business to behave ethically andcontribute to economic development whileimproving the quality of life of theworkforce and their families, as well as ofthe local community and society at large.’ ii

Sustainable developmentDevelopment is sustainable when it ‘meets the needs of the present withoutcompromising the ability of futuregenerations to meet their own needs.’ iii

Triple bottom line The basis of integrated measurement andmanagement systems focusing oneconomic, social and environmental valueadded — or destroyed. Sometimes distilledto ‘People, Planet, Profit.’ iv For some triplebottom line criteria for the media sector,see panel on page 40.

i The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 1995/96, adapted.

ii World Business Council on Sustainable Development, Stakeholder Dialogue on CSR, Netherlands, 1998.

iii World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future,Oxford University Press, 1987.

iv The terms ‘triple bottom line’ and‘People,Planet, Profit’ were both coined by SustainAbility. In the Netherlands,the subsequent ‘Triple P’ is now seen to be central to CSR — see CorporateSocial Responsibility: A Dutch Approach,Social and Economic Council, 2001.

Third Wave

In 1995, SustainAbility carried out amapping exercise to make sense of theevolution of the environmental, CSR and SDagendas. We plotted two mounting pressurewaves, followed by two great downwaves,which tracked the profile of these agendasover time, across the OECD region.9 At thetime, we also made two predictions:

— First, that the second downwave would run longer than many then expected (we forecast that it would last 7–8 years,compared with the year or two that mostNGOs expected, but still shorter than the13–14 years of the first downwave).

— And, second, that when the third wave began, at the back end of the 1990s, itwould differ substantially from theprevious two waves. This time, the wavewould focus on sustainability issues,would be increasingly part of mainstreampolitics and, as a result, would initially beless visible than the previous two waves.

For this report, we thought it time to revisitthis mapping exercise. Let’s run through thewaves and downwaves that have shapedpublic opinion and media interest to date.10

First Wave The ‘Limits’ wave built steadily from theearly 1960s, with milestones includingRachel Carson’s book Silent Spring and theformation of Amnesty and the WorldWildlife Fund (WWF). From the mid-1960s,the work of Marshall McLuhan helped putthe world of media itself under thespotlight.11

The wave really took off at the end of the decade, peaking from 1969 to 1973. The period saw high impact reports likeLimits to Growth and the first UNenvironment conference, held in Stockholmin 1972 (with UNEP founded shortlythereafter). The media story was largely oneof looming crises. Then in 1973–74 the firstArab oil shock both underscored the naturalresource arguments advanced by ‘limits togrowth’ environmentalists and triggered amajor recession, bringing the first wave’speak period to an end.

First Downwave The first great downwave ran from 1974through to 1987. Through the mid-1970s, awave of environmental legislation sweptacross the OECD region. Industry went intocompliance mode. But there were strongpockets of resistance — and many failures.

Acid rain had a major impact on EU politicsin the early 1980s. The media story spot-lighted accidents and disasters, with theBhopal disaster in India in 1984, theChernobyl and Rhine disasters in 1986, and the ozone hole surfacing as a majorissue from the mid-1980s.

This was a period of conservative politics,with energetic attempts to roll back theenvironmental legislation that had recentlybeen adopted. 1987 marked a major turningpoint, with the publication of Our CommonFuture by the Brundtland Commissionintroducing the term ‘sustainable develop-ment’ into the political mainstream.

Second Wave The ‘Green’ wave really began to roll in1988, with issues like ozone depletion andrainforest destruction fuelling a newmovement: green consumerism.12 The peakof the second wave ran from 1988 to 1991.The media story this time was more diverse,embracing accidents (like the Exxon Valdezoil spill in 1989), pollution legacies(particularly in the former USSR), and thepartial ‘greening’ of both politics andconsumer markets.

Second Downwave The second great downwave began in 1991,sparked by the Gulf War (which gave CNNsuch a boost) and recession, and lastedthrough much of the decade. The UN EarthSummit in Rio de Janeiro delayed theimpending downwave, triggering coveragespikes on issues like climate change andbiodiversity, but against a falling trend inmedia interest.

That said, the overall level of coverageremained significantly higher than in theprevious downwave period. 1995, inparticular, saw a major spike in coverage,with Shell in the media spotlight because ofthe Brent Spar and Nigerian controversies.Europe was also rocked by such issues as‘mad cow’ disease and genetically modified(GM) foods. A major new factor: theinternet.

Third Wave The start of the ‘Globalization’ wave can betracked back to the ‘Battle of Seattle’ in1999, when a broad range of environmental,labor and social activists challenged theWorld Trade Organization (WTO). The triplebottom line agenda evolved rapidly, but thebig media story was the anti-globalization(or at least anti-corporate-globalization)movement. Millennial celebrations in theWest and increasingly high profile protestsagainst the International Monetary Fund(IMF), World Bank, G8, World EconomicForum (WEF) and other institutions pushedthe global governance agenda up thepolitical priority list.

The events of September 11, 2001, marked a major discontinuity, accelerating theoncoming recession, already heralded by thecollapse of the dot-com bubble. This periodalso saw the internet coming into its own asa critical tool for information andcommunication.13 At the time, though, it wasunclear whether the result would be an endto the ‘third wave’ — or a new boost to itsmomentum. Some media, like Newsweek,saw major problems ahead for the anti-globalization movement.14 Others felt thatSeptember 11 only added new imperative toits goods.

Forecast

SustainAbility’s forecast as 2002 dawnedwas that the ‘Globalization’ wave wouldcontinue to develop for 12–18 months, withthe 2002 UN World Summit on SustainableDevelopment (WSSD) helping to keep theagenda on the boil. Now, however, much of the action will have to happen insidethose agencies promoting and regulating the process of globalization — and in thecompanies likely to benefit.

Further afield, we expect fourth and fifthwaves, very likely — as the triple bottom lineagenda is absorbed into the mainstream —on even shorter time-frequencies andpossibly with less dramatic fluctuations ininterest. One central focus of these waveswill be demographic pressures, both withinthe OECD region and between the ‘have’ and‘have not’ parts of the world. Issues of intra-and inter-generational equity will surfacewith real political power, in such areas as public health care, pensions provision,immigration and development. Thecomplexity of these issues could make thema stretch for the media, but late in 2001 The Economist showed how they might becovered with a stunning 22-page survey bymanagement guru Peter Drucker.15



12 A movement SustainAbility helped catalyze with the international bestseller, The Green Consumer Guide, 1988.

13 Special Report: The Net as a Global Lifeline,Yahoo!, November 2001. See also SustainAbility’s Virtual Sustainability: Using the internet to implement the triple bottom line, 2001. Online report at www.virtualsustainability.com

14 Malcolm Beith, New power for the President, Newsweek, December 17, 2001.

15 Peter Drucker, ‘The next society: A survey of the near future’, The Economist,November 3, 2001.

9 The three waves analysis was later reported in Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business,John Elkington, Capstone, Oxford, 1997 and New Society, 1998.

10 The waves reflect public concern, media coverage and political action, but are far from scientific. They have, however, been tested with — and confirmed by — experts for over eight years.

11 See, for example, Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, first published 1964, MIT Press, 1994/2001.

03 Waves and Downwaves1961–2001

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08 Good News & Bad European Union

EU interest in the triple bottom line agenda— both in the public mind and in the media— has been sustained at higher levels than inthe US, Latin America and Asia.17 That said,while countries like Denmark, Germany, theNetherlands and Sweden show fairly highlevels of concern, others (among themGreece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) are stillwell down the curve.

Sustainable development was already on the agenda in 1990, partly because theWorld Commission on Environment andDevelopment, which introduced the conceptinto mainstream politics, was chaired by aEuropean Prime Minister, Norway’s GroHarlem Brundtland. But it got a further bigboost with the 1992 Earth Summit.

Peaks and troughsTerms like corporate social responsibility and triple bottom line began to appear inEuropean media from the mid-1990s,particularly following the 1995 Brent Sparand Nigerian controversies centered onShell. Among the issues that drove thedebate was child labor, with coverageranging from practices in Brazil to those inUK cities. The issue was linked both toindustries (from chocolate to carpets) andbrands (e.g. Nike).

IssuesLevels of media coverage suggests that suchissues as ozone depletion, climate changeand GM foods received more attention andconcern in Europe than in other worldregions (see Figure 04, page 09). Meanwhile,some issues that ignited in the US, at leastfor a while, failed to fully ignite in the EU,including concerns about endocrinemodulators (page 20).

The meaning of the term globalizationmutated through the 1990s, with coverageapproaching a plateau in 1998 and 1999,when the WTO Ministerial Conference washeld — and disrupted — in Seattle. From this point, coverage of the issue spikesdramatically and the term anti-globalizationappears more frequently.

Of established issues, recycling started thedecade well in terms of coverage, but thenfell away. Biodiversity coverage peaked in1992, then fell away through the middle ofthe decade before picking up again — oftenlinked to the issue of genetic research.Sustainable forestry coverage was generallylow, except in Germany towards the end ofthe decade. By contrast, renewable resourcesand energy enjoyed a fairly high profile,peaking in 2001.

NGOsOne group of NGOs (Amnesty, Greenpeace,Oxfam, WWF) managed to stay on theagenda throughout the decade, with somemajor jumps — as in the case of Greenpeacein 1995. A second group (Human RightsWatch, Sierra Club, TransparencyInternational) tended to surface only when‘their’ particular issues became newsworthy.

Corporate reportingMedia coverage of corporate environmentalsustainability took off from 1990, with thepublication of Norsk Hydro’s first report in1990, covered in mainstream papers like TheFinancial Times. Later the focus expanded tothe results of benchmarking surveys carriedout by organizations like SustainAbility and KPMG, with specialist magazines likeTomorrow covering the latest reports. A peakin coverage came with the 1998 publicationof the first Shell Report, Profits & Principles.

Notable EU corporate reporters haveincluded ABB (Sweden/Switzerland), AnglianWater (UK), BAA (UK), BASF (Germany),BMW Group (Germany), BP Amoco (UK), BT (UK), Cable & Wireless (UK), Camelot(UK), The Co-operative Bank (UK), ESAB(Sweden), Fortum (Finland), Henkel Group(Germany), ING Group (Netherlands), NovoNordisk (Denmark), Royal Dutch / Shell(Netherlands/UK), Statoil (Norway),STMicroelectronics (France/Switzerland),Stora Enso (Finland/Sweden), Unilever(Netherlands/UK) and Volkswagen(Germany).

To date, the EU has more media sectorcorporate CSR and SD reporters than otherworld regions. Media sector reportersinclude Axel Springer Verlag (Germany),Bertelsmann (also Germany; particularlyMohn Media unit), EMI Group (UK) andVivendi Universal (France).

European UnionFrom biodiversity to GM foods, the EU hasbeen an issues incubator since Rio. But themedia in northern EU countries are wayahead of their southern counterparts.

17 The media scanned were Der Spiegel,The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph,Financial Times, The Guardian, Le Monde,and The Times. Further details at www.sustainability.com/media

‘The meaning of the term globalization mutated through the 1990s.’

09Good News & Bad European Union



Bavaria, Germany © Dermot Tatlow / Panos Pictures

Figures: The StoryA series of figures appear through GoodNews & Bad, as on the left. These havebeen developed by Ketchum. They showthe frequency with which given searchterms appeared in the media scanned ineach world region. Given the pressure onspace, some of the figures show thepatterns of development, with the detailson what each line represents shown on our website (www.sustainability.com).

95 96 97 98 99 00 0191 92 93 94

04 European Top 5 Frequency of Mentions 1991–2001

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Greenpeace

Globalisation

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Climate Change

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95 96 97 98 99 00 0191 92 93 94

05 European Waves in Media Coverage Frequency of Mentions 1991–2001

10 Good News & Bad United States

One striking aspect of US media coveragehas been its ‘CSR blind-spot.’18 Despite clearevidence that growing numbers of UScorporations have been embracing CSR, USmedia have largely ignored the trend. Therewas a spike in US coverage in 1996,however, at the time of the White HouseConference on Corporate Citizenship. Andthere has been another change: in the mid-1990s, CSR was seen as little more than hotair, whereas today’s coverage increasinglyhighlights emerging best practice.

Peaks and troughsFigure 06 shows three distinct peaks: in1992, 1997 and 2000. SD took off slightlylater in the US than in the EU, receiving aconsiderable boost from Rio: in 1991, themedia scanned carried six stories on SD,whereas in 1992 the figure jumped ten-foldto 62. There have been fairly high levels ofSD coverage across the decade, although ona generally declining trend since 1995.

Some publications have clearly ‘got’ thetriple bottom line message, including TheInternational Herald Tribune (which, perhapssignificantly, is targeted internationally).19

But there have also been many articlescritical of the SD agenda, and not just inpublications perceived to be right-leaning,like Forbes (which equated SD with ‘culturalimperialism’) or The Wall Street Journal(which described SD as ‘a dubiousenvironmental concept’). Recently, though,anti-globalization protests have revivedinterest in issues like child labor, climatechange and biodiversity.

IssuesThe US now has a pretty powerful mediacorps covering the CSR and SD beats. After the coverage spike created by the Earth Summit, however, most of these issuesfell out of the spotlight of mainstreamjournalism. Vice-President Al Gore may have been interested, but President Clintonwasn’t, at least while in office — andPresident Bush has been even less engaged(and, in his case, prepared to say so).

Coverage of globalization has seen thebiggest shift over the Rio+10 period (page17). In the early 1990s, this was an emergingbusiness trend, with the focus on newmarkets, cross-border deals and mega-mergers. By the mid-1990s, concerns weregrowing about American imperialism, withcritics questioning whether globalizationbrought real net benefits for poorercountries. Since 1999, there has been asurge in coverage of the anti-globalizationmovement, with September 11 forcing evensome of globalization’s loudest champions towonder whether it can succeed without amajor overhaul.

Recycling sustained high levels of coveragethrough the decade, whereas issues likeendocrine disruption, sustainable forestryand GM foods often struggled to winattention. By contrast, socially responsibleinvesting (SRI) is now an increasinglyaccepted part of the business landscape,with media coverage spiking when newfunds are launched.

Perhaps the most interesting shift has been in the treatment of climate change.Early skepticism gradually softened as newevidence appeared. Stories have beenswitching to potential solutions: USA Todayran a cover story on ‘Six Ways to CombatGlobal Warming,’ Time Magazine spotlightedclimate-friendly technology and businesspublications like Fortune are runningfeatures with titles like ‘The ComingHydrogen Economy’.

NGOsMost NGOs are seen as forceful agents ofchange and as early whistle-blowers. Afterthe ‘Rio Spike,’ however, many were accusedof being unduly alarmist. Recent coveragehas been more balanced, with media interestin the role of NGOs in relation to the privatesector and international economy.

Corporate reportingCoverage of voluntary reporting has beenlow, although the Global Reporting Initiative(GRI) has won increasing attention in recentyears. Notable corporate reporters in the US include Baxter, Bristol-Myers Squibb, The Dow Chemical Company, Ford MotorCompany, General Motors, IBM, Interface,Procter & Gamble and Sunoco. But mediacoverage has often been more critical thanin the EU — as illustrated in the early mediaresponse to Ford’s first sustainability report.After a week or so, however, the coverageflipped to a much more positive tone.

The US is behind the curve in terms ofcorporate triple bottom line reporting in the media sector. On the media front, forexample Viacom is a conspicuous laggard(page 29).

United StatesThe US is home to the world’s biggest and most influential media groups. It — and many of them — have been SD skeptics since Rio.

18 In the US, we surveyed CNN and the followingprint media: Business Week, Forbes, ForeignAffairs, Fortune, Harper’s, Harvard BusinessReview, The International Herald Tribune,Nature, The New York Times, Science, TimeMagazine, USA Today and The Wall StreetJournal. Further details are available atwww.sustainability.com/media.

19 One indicator of the IHT’s interest, the WorldBusiness Council for Sustainable Developmentsponsored International Herald Tribunesupplements published in 2001.

11Good News & Bad United States

‘CSR was seen as little more than hot air.’



www.CNN.com

95 96 97 98 99 00 0191 92 93 94

Climate Change

Urban Air Quality

Recycling

Globalization

Green Politics

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12 Good News & Bad Latin America

The region is not without its ecological andsocial problems, but there have been someextraordinary gaps in terms of the issuescovered.20 For example, there was nocoverage at all of sustainable forestry issuesin the media scanned. The nature and scaleof reporting of CSR and SD issues variesconsiderably across the region, but newspecialty areas like environmental reportingand sustainable development are evolving insome countries. Globalization, however, hasbeen the 800-pound gorilla as far as mediaissues are concerned.

Peaks and troughsThe data here started later, in 1996. Theyshow a huge leap through the period 1997-2000. Latin America, it is clear, has seencycles of coverage very much as the otherregions have done. Although outside thesurvey period, 1992 was a watershed for theregion, with the Earth Summit held in Rio deJaneiro that year. But, although the natureand scale of coverage varies widely acrossLatin America, it has generally been at muchlower levels than in the European Union orUS.

IssuesIn the wake of the Earth Summit, there hasbeen a mixture of positive and negativecoverage. On the positive side, corporationssuch as American Express, Coca-Cola,PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Texaco, Visa andWarner Lambert have been praised for theirCSR programs. On the negative side,pollution, toxic waste discharges and similarissues have been covered in suchpublications as Cambio, El Norte, El Pais, LaJornada, Mercurio, Proceso, QuehacerPolítico, Universal y Reforma and Uno másUno, and the radio station Infored.

The Movimiento Zapatista and the SouthMexican Guerilla Movement spurredcoverage of a range of CSR-related issues,with corporations such as Novartis, Rocheand Upjohn the subject of a good deal ofcriticism in the media.

Since the ‘Battle of Seattle’ in 1999, therehas also been a rise in ‘globalphobia.’ Indeed,ex-President Zedillo of Mexico coined twowords at a recent World Economic ForumDavos session: ‘globalphiliacs’ and‘globalphobics,’ to describe those for andagainst globalization. At least in Mexico, themedia have used such terms frequently.

But the arrival of President Fox in officecoincided with a falling off in CSR coveragein Mexico, despite the fact that he has beencriticized for his corporate agenda (hepreviously worked for Coca-Cola).

NGOsCoverage of NGOs built rapidly through theperiod 1995-1999. The groups most oftencovered in the media scanned were Amnesty,Greenpeace and Human Rights Watch, allthree showing a peak of coverage in the late1990s.

Corporate reportingCorporate environmental and sustainabilityreporters are still a rare breed in the region,with the rare exceptions including AracruzCellulose (Brazil), Bahia Sul Cellulose Brazil),Codelco (Chine), Companhia Vale do RioDoce Brazil), Ecopetrol (Colombia),Electrobras (Brazil), GrupoNuevo (CostaRica), PDVSA Venezuela), Pecom Energia(Argentina) and Petrobras Distribuidora(Brazil). To date, Latin America is not evenon the map when it comes to media sectorcorporate triple bottom line reporting.

Latin AmericaCSR and SD are poorly covered. But politicalissues around the rising influence of US corporations south of the border areclosely monitored.

Amazon River © Mark Edwards / Still Pictures

20 In Latin America, we scanned media which covered the region as a whole: GazetaMercantil Latino Americana (1996-2001) andServicio Universal de Noticias (from February1997). We also looked at separate media inArgentina and Mexico: Ambito Financiero(Argentina, 1997-1999), El Cronista(Argentina, from May 1998), Expansión(Mexico, 1996-1998) and La Voz del Interior(Argentina, June 1998-June 1999). Furtherdetails at www.sustainability.com/media.

2000 March

Carbon monoxide from biomass burning

2000 September

13Good News & Bad Latin America

Family looking for missing father, Sacatapequez, Guatemela © Nigel Dickinson / Still Pictures



95 96 97 98 99 00 0191 92 93 94

08 Latin America Top 4 Frequency of Mentions 1996–2001

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09 Latin American Waves in Media Coverage Frequency of Mentions 1991–2001

‘There has been a rise of globalphobia.’

14 Good News & Bad Asia

‘There is increasing discussion and,unfortunately, often much lip service paid tothe issue of sustainability and, in particular,to sustainable development,’ argued onerecent opinion piece in The South ChinaMorning Post.21 The pattern of SD coveragein the Asian media has followed other worldregions, albeit at a lower level.22 In someyears the media we scanned published not a single article on the selected issues. Thatsaid, coverage of such issues as climatechange, child labor and social investing has risen recently.

Peaks and troughsAsian media showed the standard ‘Rio spike’in 1992, with a surge in coverage. For themost part, the articles were neutral in tone.Coverage then gradually built as globalsustainability issues heated up elsewhere —and globalization became an increasinglysignificant business and political issue. 1999and 2000 saw another spike, as the anti-globalization movement got into its stride.Through these ups and downs, there hasbeen a fairly steady increase in coverage of a number of the issues selected.

IssuesGlobalization has gradually won increasedcoverage, with especially high rates in thepast three years. There was a sense thatmany of the issues were being raisedelsewhere, with Asian business and politicalleaders then having to respond. So, forexample, the concepts of corporatecitizenship and CSR showed extremely low coverage in the Asian media, reinforcingthe notion that CSR is not yet widelyembraced as a management concept.

However, there has been growing coveragein Hong Kong and some other south-eastAsian countries of the way in which bothlocal and multinational corporations arecontributing to social inequality, for exampleby cutting staff even when makingsubstantial profits.

Recycling received heavy coverage throughthe decade, although much of the coveragefocused on the US (e.g. recycling initiativesor, later, the dumping of US waste in China).More recently, the focus has switched toAsian recycling. Strikingly, there has beenvery little coverage of sustainable forestry,with only three articles identified across theentire study period. Child labor attractedmuch more coverage, particularly from 1996,largely because media coverage elsewherefocused on alleged exploitation of Asianworkers by US multinationals and theircontractors.

Climate change was covered around 1992,but coverage quickly turned negative, or at least critical. This view has mellowed in recent years, however. There has beenmuch coverage of US failures to support the Kyoto Protocol and other Rio commit-ments. The GM foods issue erupted in 1999,with coverage carrying through into 2001.The focus of articles included: a protestoutside a Nestlé dairy foods factory; a Philippines experiment to create GM‘golden rice’; and a Hong Kong proposal torequire labelling for GM goods.

NGOsLarge, international NGOs (e.g. Amnesty,Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam)have tended to win the lion’s share ofcoverage in the media reviewed, reflectingthe growing interest in human rights, childlabor and some aspects of the environment.Groups such as Corporate Watch, GlobalExchange and Transparency Internationalseem to be less well known. This may changewhen they target Asian companies.Generally, NGOs are seen as credible, withmost stories rated ‘positive.’ Moving into2000, there are signs of emergingenvironmental movements in India andChina. In the latter, for example, Beijing-based Global Village has been increasinglyactive in recent years — and the pressureswill almost certainly intensify as Chinaprepares for the 2008 Olympics.

Corporate reportingAsian companies have been grudgingreporters, at best. Strikingly, there was nocoverage at all of this theme over the 11years. But as the reporting trend built inexport markets in the EU and North America,a handful of Asian companies began topublish environmental reports. A significantproportion focused on performance againstthe ISO14001 environmental managementstandard, rather than embracing wider SD goals.

Notable corporate reporters have includedBSES (India), Excel Industries (India), GoldenHope Plantations (Malaysia), MatsushitaElectronics Group (Japan), Petronas(Malaysia), The Siam Cement PublicCompany (Thailand), Sony (Japan), TaiwanCement Corporation (Taiwan), TEPCO(Japan), Toyota (Japan) and TSMC (Taiwan).

Asia is also lagging when it comes to mediasector corporate triple bottom line reporting.Sony, which is still more of a manufacturingcompany than it is a media company, is one strong reporter. Widen the search toAustralia, however, and News Corp comesinto the frame as a conspicuous laggard(page 29).

AsiaOur Asian scan was limited. But the ‘RioEffect’ was also marked here, with coverageof CSR and SD issues generally reflectingconcern about global market implications,rather than home-grown concerns.

Central Jakarta © Chris Stowers / Panos

21 In Asia, we scanned The Asia Wall Street Journal and, from 1992, The South China Morning Post. Further details available at www.sustainability.com/media.

22 Note, however, that the analysis is based on just two publications.



95 96 97 98 99 00 0191 92 93 94

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11 Asian Waves in Media Coverage Frequency of Mentions 1991–2001

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15Good News & Bad Asia

‘There is much lip service paid to sustainability.’

Gujurat, India © Harmut Schwartzbach / Still Pictures

16 Good News & Bad Big Issues

Big IssuesThe big media story of recent years was globalization: more precisely anti-globalization. Seattle, Washington, London,Prague, Genoa, Gothenburg: the list of high-profile protests — and often pitched battles — grew steadily, with media interestgrowing as the casualties and fatalities mounted.

Haiti © Mark French / Panos Pictures

EU coverage of globalization built stronglythrough the decade 1991-2001 (Figure 12),as did Asian coverage, albeit from a lowerbase. Latin American coverage peaked in1998–1999, while US coverage also fellback after 2000. But then, late in 2001 theimpacts and implications of globalizationwere back with a vengeance, following theSeptember 11 attacks. The impact on theglobalization debate was already evident atthe WTO session in Dohar late in 2001,where the less-developed countries foundthey had a significantly bigger voice.

For better or worse, as Fortune put it, ‘AfterSept. 11, one thing has become painfullyclear. We all live in one world.’23 The keyquestion, as Nobel Prize winner ProfessorJoseph E. Stiglitz put it, is whetherglobalization can mean more than the fightagainst evil; whether, in fact, it can alsomean a fight for good.24

Once chief economist at the World Bankand Chair of the Council of EconomicAdvisors under President Clinton, Stiglitz isclear on the challenge. ‘Just as there is analliance against terrorism,’ he says, ‘Thereneeds to be an alliance against globalpoverty and an alliance for a globalenvironment.’

But it is a sad commentary on thedynamics of our CNN World that it needs a‘Twin Towers’ disaster to get these issuesonto the agenda. Indeed, as we will see,media coverage of some of these issues hasbeen erratic at best. Globalization makessuch problems worse. Indeed, Naomi Kleinnotes that some editors and journalistshave had to treat entire countries as ‘tiptoezones’ as media barons tried to globalizetheir holdings.25

The commercial risks to media groups wereunderscored by what happened whenDisney insisted on releasing MartinScorcese’s film Kundun, about Tibet’s DalaiLama. Beijing banned all Disney films, fortwo years. Expect more such controversies.

In this section, we look at twoenvironmental issues that have helpedshape the globalization agenda (ozonedepletion on page 18 and climate changeon page 19), two issues that have helpedlink the environmental and health agendas(endocrine disruptors on page 20 and GMfoods on page 21), and two indicators ofthe growing business interest in the socialagendas (corporate social responsibility onpage 22 and socially responsibleinvestment on page 23).

Because Europe has emerged as somethingof an incubator for CSR and SD issues inthe last decade, we focus each time on EUmedia coverage in the main diagram, thencompare coverage in other regions. Then,on page 24, we focus on three of the NGOsthat have helped drive these powerfulagendas: Global Exchange, Greenpeace andTransparency International.

17Good News & Bad Big Issues

Genoa, Italy © Julio Etchart / Still Pictures

23 David Kirkpatrick, ‘One World’, Fortune,November 26, 2001.

24 Joseph E. Stiglitz, ‘You have to walk the talk’, Fortune, November 26, 2001.

25 Naomi Klein, No Logo, Flamingo, 2000.


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‘After September 11, one thing has become painfully clear. We all live in one world.’


Ozone Depletion

Few TV images have had as great an impacton public opinion as the Antarctic ozonehole. Its discovery in 1985 triggered a seriesof campaigns to control ozone-depletingsubstances, particularly chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs). These chemicals had been widelyused in refrigerators, air-conditioningequipment, fire-fighting systems, and in awide range of other applications, includingthe manufacture of some drugs and thefoaming of plastics such as polyurethane.

The ozone hole — and particularly the linkwith skin cancer — woke many people up tothe existence of a number of globalenvironmental risks. It also had the greatadvantage — at least as far as the mediawere concerned — that it was huge andgrowing. By 2000, the hole covered 11million square miles, three times the size ofthe United States.26 By then, however, thenews was reasonably hopeful: the hole inthe ozone layer, we were told, would start toshrink in ten years, and heal completelywithin 50.27

There were several peaks in media coverageof ozone depletion. The first was whenscientists Rowland and Molina warned thatthere was a risk in the early 1970s, a secondwhen the Antarctic ozone hole wasdiscovered in 1985 and the anti-CFCcampaigns built up a head of steam throughthe late 1980s, another when the 1987Montreal Protocol was developed to shiftthe world economy away from CFCs andother ozone-depleting substances, and thenagain — five years on from the Montrealagreement — when progress was reviewed atthe Earth Summit agenda in 1992.

Since 1992, however, the level of mediainterest and coverage has fallen away. Nor did we hear that much about thegargantuan task of shifting the worldeconomy away from ozone depletingsubstances. The extraordinary rate ofprogress is shown by the fact that the EUcut its use of CFCs from 300,000 tonnes in1986 to just 4,300 in 1998, while Japan cutits usage from 118,000 tonnes to zero. Eventhe roaring black economy in illegal CFCs,which meets the needs of those still usingobsolete equipment, failed to get muchcoverage.

The EU results show a strong spike ofcoverage in 1992, as do the US results, albeitat a slightly lower level. The Latin Americanand Asian results (not shown) reveal muchlower levels of coverage throughout theperiod. So even though the problem has notgone away, anyone relying on themainstream media would assume that theozone hole story was now a matter for thehistory books.

Globalization IssuesTwo big atmospheric agendas forcedunparalleled global co-operation during thelast decade: stratospheric ozone depletionand global climate change.

© Ketchum/SustainAbility 2002© NASA

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‘Anyone relying on the mainstream media would assume that the ozone hole story was now a matter for thehistory books.’


Climate Change

As media interest in ozone depletion fellthrough the 1990s, interest in climatechange grew, particularly between 1999 and2001. But the media had a problem: if thescience of ozone depletion was complex,that related to climate change was evenmore so. Worse, there were even greaterdisagreements between scientists onwhether or not this was a real issue — and, if so, what the implications might be.

One result was that editors and journalistswho wanted one had a perfect alibi forignoring the whole subject. As the decadeprogressed, however, the issues becameharder to ignore. Skeptical media, includingForbes and The Economist, gradually beganto devote more (positive) attention to theissues. When hurricanes and otherenvironmental disasters and stresses wereincreasingly linked to climate change, thepressure on the media to report grewsteadily.

The impetus was further boosted by a seriesof major conferences, including events in Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto, The Hague, Berlin andMarrakech. Business editors became moreinterested when companies like BP, Shell andFord resigned from the Global ClimateCoalition (GCC), an aggressive lobbyinggroup dedicated to undermining attempts totackle climate change.

The agenda got another — unintended —boost when George W Bush took over as USPresident. His refusal to allow the US to signthe Kyoto Protocol meant that it was theonly major nation left outside theagreement. And the heat was turned up witha major campaign designed to embarrassExxonMobil into ending its attempts toundermine the climate change agenda.

As the squabbles continued, the worryingfacts continued to accumulate. When theIndustrial Revolution began over 200 yearsago, the concentration of carbon dioxide(CO2) in the atmosphere was some 280 partsper million (ppm). By 1959, detailedmeasurements using modern equipmentshowed that the level had reached 316ppm,a 13% rise over two centuries. By 1998, ithad reached 367ppm — a jump of 17% injust 39 years.

In parallel, global average temperatures haverisen, from 13.99°C in 1969-1971 to 14.43°Cin 1996-1998, a gain of 0.44 degrees. If CO2

levels double during the 21st century,forecasters had warned that temperaturescould rise by at least 1°C, and by perhaps asmuch as 4°C. Then, early in 2001, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) said that the warming could be nearly6°C by 2100.28 The Panel also confirmed thathuman activity is a key contributory factor.

But the sustained urgency of the climatechange agenda has not been reflected in themedia. The trends in EU, US and Asiancoverage show peaks in 1992, 1997 andaround the millennium, whereas the LatinAmerican coverage builds from 1997 to1998, then falls away. On this basis, we canprobably expect another peak through 2002in the build-up to the World Summit onSustainable Development.

26 Tim Radford, ‘Hole in Antarctic ozone now three times size of US’, The Guardian,September 9, 2000.

27 Vanessa Houlder, ‘Hole in ozone layer may close up within 50 years’, Financial Times,December 4, 2000.

28 Vanessa Houlder, ‘Urgent warning on climate change’, Financial Times,January 22, 2001.


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‘The heat was turned up with a major campaign designed to embarrass ExxonMobil.’

© NASA


Endocrine Disruptors

Every so often, a book sparks a revolution.Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did it in theearly 1960s — then, to a lesser degree, Theo Colborn and her colleagues did it againin 1996 with their book Our Stolen Future.This put endocrine modulators or disruptors(what the media soon dubbed ‘genderbenders’) on the agenda, at least for a few years.

So what was the fuss about? The endocrinesystem, we learned, is a complex network ofglands and hormones regulating many of thebody’s functions, including growth,development and maturation, as well as theway our organs operate. The endocrineglands — including the pituitary, thyroid,adrenal, thymus, pancreas, ovaries, andtestes — release hormones into thebloodstream that help to control manycritical life functions.

An endocrine disruptor is a syntheticchemical that when absorbed into the bodyeither mimics or blocks hormones anddisrupts the body’s normal functions.Chemicals known to act as human endocrinedisruptors include diethylstilbesterol (thedrug DES), dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls(PCBs), dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane(DDT), and some other pesticides. Manychemicals, particularly pesticides andplasticizers, are suspected endocrinedisruptors.

There is growing evidence that suchsubstances are causing ecological andhuman health problems. Many plant andanimal species are showing signs of illhealth due to exposure to such chemicals.For example, fish in the Great Lakes, whichare contaminated with PCBs and otherindustrial chemicals, show numerousreproductive problems, as well as abnormalswelling of the thyroid glands. Fish-eatingbirds in the Great Lakes area, such as eagles,terns, and gulls, have shown similarproblems.

Because of the potentially seriousconsequences of human exposures, the US Congress spotlighted endocrinedisruption in the Food Quality Protection Act and amended the Safe Drinking WaterAct in 1996. The former mandated that theEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA)should develop an endocrine disruptorscreening program, whereas the latterauthorized EPA to screen endocrinedisruptors found in drinking water sources.

The coverage data suggest that this was very much a rich world issue. Media interestspiked in the period 1996–1998, but tendedto drop off the radar screen fairly rapidly. US coverage was relatively low, but showedpeaks in 1994 and again in 1997–1998,whereas EU coverage began in 1996 andthen ran on at relatively low levels. Asiashowed a single spike of coverage in 1997,while our Latin American search registered a complete blank.29

Environmental Health IssuesTwo issues which have bridged theecological, biodiversity and human healthagendas have focused on endocrinedisruptors and — later — geneticallymodified foods.

‘This was very much a rich world issue.


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© Geoff Olson


29 A note of caution: there are so many descriptors for these substances that some of the results might have been different had we used different search terms.

30 Michael Mann, Biotech groups despair at EU attitudes, Financial Times,November 10, 2001.

GM Foods

Biotechnology has been on something of a roller-coaster for decades, spawningbooms and crashes both in stock marketvaluations and media coverage. The mediareaction to biotechnology — particularly togenetic engineering — has been verydifferent in different world regions. The EUmedia, for example, have been much moreskeptical than those in the US. And thebiggest surge of concern in the EU cameduring 1999, as indicated in Figure 26.

Early introductions of GM foods werehandled fairly intelligently by UK retailchains and supermarkets. Safeway andSainsbury’s both introduced GM tomatopurée products, with clear labeling, extensive consumer information, a choice of GM and non-GM products, and cheaperprices for the GM products (which, becausethey contained less water, were cheaper totransport). But this careful work was blownout of the water by NGO campaigns directedat another company, the US chemicals-to-life-sciences giant Monsanto.

Monsanto had positioned GM foods as a major contribution to sustainableagriculture, with genetically engineered crop plants enabling farmers to use muchlower volumes of toxic agrochemicals like insecticides. But concerns about thepotential impact of novel genes onecosystems and, more damagingly still,about the potential human health impactsled to a media storm, particularly in the UK.This is where the role of the tabloid press in raising public concern about what weresoon dubbed ‘Frankenfoods’ was at its moststriking.

Although the US media — and US consumers— have been less concerned about GM foods,it is far from certain that GM foods will winbroad consumer acceptance across Europeand some of the more sensitive parts of Asia, like Japan. In the EU, by late 2001 nonew GM crops had been approved for threeyears.30

In work for the EU biotechnology industry,SustainAbility has suggested three possiblescenarios. The first (nuclear) scenario hintsat a world where GM technology starts well, but then hits insuperable barriers. The second (antibiotic) scenario points to a world where the early promise of GMproducts is delivered, but worrying sideeffects begin to undermine their utility. And the third (microchip) scenario suggestsa world where GM products become sosuccessful that they become indispensable,ubiquitous and, to all intents and purposes,invisible.

The media will play a crucial role indetermining how consumers respond tothese new technologies, although it is clearthat interest has fallen away since the peakperiod. The US concerns ran at much lowerlevels, and trailed the EU controversies —peaking in 2000. Meanwhile, Latin Americaand Asia saw echo effects. In Latin America,the echo partly reflected local concernsabout the implications of US and EU fearsfor Latin American food suppliers, while in Asia one focus of interest was on the EU-style concerns about GM foods thatsurfaced in Japan.

These issues have not gone away, however.They link too strongly to human health, to ethical concerns (e.g. human cloning,genetic privacy, even germ warfare weaponslike anthrax) and to wider worries aboutglobalizing capitalism to fall off the radarscreen for long.


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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The shareholder value revolution that sweptthe capitalist world in the 1990s inevitablytriggered a reaction. The corporate socialresponsibility (CSR) movement has notedthat many companies stressing shareholderreturns have tended to downplay CSRpriorities in relation to communities,employees, human rights and environmentalissues, among others.

CSR advocates see themselves as redressingthe balance. To buttress their case, theypoint out that: of the world’s 100 largesteconomies, 50 are now corporations; theworld’s largest corporations employ only0.05% of the world’s population, but control25% of the world’s economic output; andrecent EU research has shown that 58% ofthe general public believe that industry andcommerce do not pay enough attention totheir social responsibilities.31

A host of new organizations has evolved to develop and promote the new agenda. In addition to NGOs like Amnesty,Greenpeace and Transparency, there havealso been growing numbers of business-ledorganizations, among them Business forSocial Responsibility (BSR), Business in theCommunity (BitC), CSR Europe and theWorld Business Council for SustainableDevelopment (WBCSD).

The media focus has either been on thethinking and initiatives of a handful ofsocially responsible entrepreneurs, amongthem Anita Roddick of The Body ShopInternational and Ben Cohen and JerryGreenfield of Ben & Jerry’s, or on themishaps that have befallen a succession of major companies in this area.

Examples that spring to mind include NorskHydro (environmental contamination), Shell(marine ecology, human rights), Astra USAand Mitsubishi Motors (sexual harassment),Texaco (racial discrimination), Monsanto(GM foods), Nike (child labor) andExxonMobil (climate change).

As the range of issues grew through the1990s, we saw a new trend — with some of the companies listed above leading thecharge into the brave new world ofcorporate environmental and sustainabilityreporting.32 The early media response waspositive, but over time there was a decline in interest — unless a reporting companyexposed something really controversial or an independent agency ranked and rated thelatest reports. An example of the first trendwas the media reaction to Shell’s reportingof corruption issues and action, whileexamples of the second have included mediacoverage of international report bench-marking studies by the likes of the Institutfür Ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung, KPMG and SustainAbility.

EU coverage was pretty intensive throughoutthe 1990s, with a steady underlying upwardtrend. In the US, by contrast, our searchshowed much lower levels of coverage ofCSR or of its synonyms. The exception was a spike in 1996, linked to growing concernthere about child labor issues and to theWhite House Conference on CorporateCitizenship (Figure 31). Latin Americashowed little interest while Asia, running at low levels of interest overall, showed anupward spike towards the end of the decade.

As far as the media companies themselvesare concerned, there was a degree ofskepticism. ‘The conglomerates hold power —and will continue to do so as they benefitfrom consolidation,’ predicts one mediaanalyst. ‘They all donate to charity — youknow, give the minimum required amount.But they are not charities themselves. So CSR is not their primary concern.’

The Business End of SDEditors and journalists still struggle to grasp the business implications of the triple bottom line agenda. But the SRImovement is helping to break the story on the financial pages.


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Socially Responsible Investment (SRI)

Socially responsible investment is nothingnew — some parts of the religious and NGOcommunities have been practicing it fordecades.33 What is new, however, is who isdoing it and the scale on which it is beingdone. Fair or not, the entry of the Dow JonesIndexes group into the field with its jointventure with Sustainable Asset Management— the Dow Jones Sustainability Group — was seen as evidence that the SRI sectorwas maturing rapidly.

The sector, according to some estimates, isnow worth over $2 trillion in the US andover £25 billion in the UK. And the impactsof this activity are being felt well beyond the direct influence of these money flows.Screening methodologies that have beendeveloped by SRI analysts are increasinglyused by some mainstream analysts and evenby leading corporations when undertakingdue diligence audits ahead of mergers andacquisitions.

By the beginning of the 21st century, the US was the biggest SRI market. But othercountries were also energetically movinginto the area. According to ethicalinvestment experts EIRiS, for example, therewere more than 40 SRI funds in the UK,around 20 funds in Sweden, and at least 30 in the rest of Europe — including at leastseven in Spain. Other countries have alsobeen developing SRI sectors, among themAustralia, Canada, Japan and South Africa.

Mainstream players are now diving in, as illustrated by the FTSE4Good Index. In the process, the number of issues being researched has also been growingexplosively. Originally covering just five orsix issues — particularly relating to alcohol,gambling and armaments — the SRI agendahas expanded to embrace over 300 criteria.

Among the screening criteria being applied,the most common rules out tobacco, while a second tier focuses on traditional concernsand the environment, and a third tier coverssuch issues as human rights, labor relations,birth control and abortion, and animalwelfare. In parallel, the more proactive fundsare looking for top performers across thetriple bottom line. And some are turningtheir attention to the media sector itself. For a selection of emerging criteria, see thepanel on page 40.

In terms of regional media coverage of SRItrends, the decade showed a strong upwardtrend in EU coverage, although certaincountries — particularly the UK — tended tolead the charge. US levels of coveragetended to be lower, perhaps because thetrend there started earlier. Latin Americancoverage showed growing interest. Asia hasreally woken up to the trend in the lastcouple of years, although the growth innumber of Asian funds — and the activitiesof ASrIA, a leading SRI organization focusingon Asia (www.asria.org) — leads regionalexperts to predict a spike in interest over thenext couple of years.

31 The Business Network for Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR Europe, Brussels, 2000.

32 For more information see The Global Reporters, SustainAbility for UNEP, 2000.

33 SustainAbility for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, A Responsible Investment? AnOverview of the SRI Community, 2000.

© Axel Springer Verlag


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‘Of the world’s one hundred largest economies, fifty are now corporations.’


In a survey of over 1,300 American,Australian and European thought leaders PR firm Edelman found that low confidencein government gave NGOs a ‘halo effect.’ 34

Some 75% of those interviewed thoughtNGO influence had grown significantly inthe past decade.

NGOs depend on the oxygen of publicity.They often skip the elite media, goingstraight for the popular press, TV and,increasingly, the web. Between 1996 and2000, media coverage of the major NGOsnearly quadrupled. It’s worth noting,however, that the ultimate targets areusually governments, which alone have theultimate power to regulate and enforce.

Let’s zoom in on the world of campaigning,but which NGOs to select? A group likeWWF registered a steady backgroundnumber of mentions, but often operatesbehind the scenes. So consider threeprominent NGOs: Global Exchange,Greenpeace and Transparency International.

Global ExchangeFounded in 1988, early in the peak period ofthe second wave of environmental pressure,Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org)is based in San Francisco. The group aims to boost US public understanding of humanrights issues. In our survey, the group’sstrongest media showing was in the US,where coverage in the media we studiedpeaked in 2000.

One way Global Exchange tries to counterthe worldviews of the main media groups isby offering ‘Reality Tours’. Participants getthe chance to ‘meet with communityleaders, visit environmentally sustainableagriculture projects, and learn about theinternational stories that never make it into the headlines.’

Greenpeace InternationalThe only NGO with its own navy, Greenpeace(www.greenpeace.org) was founded in 1971, at the peak of the first wave of publicconcern (page 05). Based in Amsterdam,Greenpeace International co-ordinatesnational groups around the world.

The really interesting thing about the EUmedia coverage of Greenpeace is the spike in 1995 (Figure 38). The spike coincided with the group’s success in spotlighting theproposed dumping of the Brent Spar oilinstallation in the Atlantic. Although Exxonwas also involved, Greenpeace went for Shell— forcing a mid-course correction, with theBrent Spar towed back to shore for recycling.

Greenpeace has consistently demonstrated a highly sophisticated approach to themedia. ‘We saw it as a media war,’ explainedRobert Hunter, who chronicled the group’searly evolution. ‘We had studied MarshallMcLuhan.’ 35 He described the film packagesthat resulted as ‘mind bombs, sailing acrossthe electronic seas into the minds of themasses.’

Chris Rose, who led the charge against Shellas campaigns director of Greenpeace UK, hasargued that the group has helped create a‘new politics’ based not on the productionand distribution of wealth ‘but on theproduction and distribution of publicattention.’

Transparency InternationalSustainable development is impossiblewhere corruption prevails. Headquartered in the UK and Germany, TransparencyInternational (www.transparency.org) wasfounded in 1993. It has national chapters in nearly 80 countries. The group broke new ground with its Global CorruptionReport 2001. 36

TI founder and chairman Dr Peter Eigenstresses the key role of the media in fightingcorruption. ‘This has only been possible asthe media have shattered the taboo thattends to surround corruption,’ he has said.‘Before a problem can be tackled it isessential that there is public recognitionthat it does indeed pose a problem and thatsociety can no longer afford to ignore it.’

In fact, he argues, ‘In many countries — mostnotably in Latin America — journalists havebeen at the forefront of our campaigns andhave been the most fervent supporters ofour cause. They have had to endure the fatalresults of corruption, they have been theones to often risk their lives in their effortsto uncover and expose the corrupt dealingsof those in power. It is Latin America which— according to the international media-rights NGO Reporters sans Frontières — isthe region in the world with the highest rateof killings of investigative journalists. And atthe same time it is Latin America where thecradle of many of our National Chapters hasstood in the offices of courageous editors orpublishers.’ 37

The ActivistsBoth in the EU and US, media coveragetends to portray NGOs as forceful agents of change.

34 Richard Edelman, The Relationship Among NGOs, Government, Media and Corporate Sector, Harvard Club of New York, January 12, 2001.

35 Robert Hunter, The Greenpeace Chronicle,Picador, 1980. For McLuhan background, see reference 11.

36 Transparency International, Global Corruption Report, 2001.

37 Dr Peter Eigen, ‘The media and the fight against corruption’, speech to CELAP Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, July 8, 1999.


Water cannon dramatizes Greenpeace’s second attempt to board the Brent Spar © Greenpeace / Sims

‘NGOs depend on the oxygen of publicity.’

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26 Good News & Bad Media Moguls

Media corporations are often difficult to‘read.’ Some have high profile owners orCEOs, which (whether or not we like them)helps the outside world get a grip, but manydo not. That said, it’s somewhat easier thesedays to find out who the owners of themajor groups are, at least in the US. Go towww.promo.org, for example, and you findfascinating ‘ownership maps’ covering suchUS media giants as AOL Time Warner,General Electric, News Corporation, Viacomand The Walt Disney Company. 38

But look around the world and you will findhuge gaps in such maps. These need filling.Viewed in the right light, meanwhile,Promo’s ownership maps serve as charts ofpotential media influence and power.

To date, not surprisingly, the spotlight hastended to focus on a few mega-moguls. In 2001, for example, the Vanity Fairrankings of the world’s Top 50 media giantsagain named AOL chairman Steve Case asthe most powerful man of the so-called‘New Establishment.’ 39 Microsoft’s Bill Gatescame second, Viacom’s Sumner Redstonethird and Rupert Murdoch of News Corpfourth.

In terms of new blood, the highest profilenew entrant was Jean-Pierre Messier,chairman of newly created Vivendi Universal,at number 7. The highest placed womanappeared at number 30: Marjorie Scardino,CEO of Pearson, which among other thingsowns The Financial Times.

‘About six players now own virtuallyeverything, all aspects of the mediaexperience,’ says Deutsche Bank media sectoranalyst Drew Marcus. ‘AOL Time Warner,Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Vivendi,Bertelsmann — and Sony, which also bringsin the equipment angle.’ Few of them haveyet switched on to the wider accountabilityand reporting agendas (Figure 41).

Media MogulsWho owns the major media? Does it reallymatter in terms of the CSR and SD agendas?And who holds media groups themselves to account?

‘About six players now own virtually everything.’

Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO, Viacom

27Good News & Bad Media Moguls

Does ownership matter?Yes — particularly if it is concentrated. As Robert Pitofsky, chair of the US FederalTrade Commission put it, ‘If someonemonopolizes the cosmetics field, they’regoing to take money out of consumers’pockets, but the implications for democraticvalues are zero. On the other hand, if theymonopolize books, you’re talking aboutimplications that go way beyond what thewholesale price of books may be.’ 40

Some of the most powerful works of westerndrama underscore the point. Recall OrsonWelles’ 1941 film Citizen Kane. One reasonthe film struck a chord was that it drewstartling, daring parallels between Kane andreal-world media magnate William RandolphHearst, with Kane’s Inquirer echoing Hearst’sExaminer. So great was Hearst’s notorietythat he was even alleged to have started theSpanish-American War of 1898 to boostsales of his newspapers.

Whatever the truth, and while we may befascinated by such people, most people havelittle reason to trust media moguls. In fact,the twentieth century gave us many reasonsto mistrust media. At the time of CitizenKane’s launch, for example, Nazi Germany’spropagandameister Joseph Goebbels wasshowing the world what can happen whenmass communication media come underinhumane, ‘Big Brother’ control.

As early as 1933, Goebbels — noting thatNapoleon once described the press ‘as theseventh great power’ — dubbed radio the‘eighth great power.’ 41 And just as Goebbelsscrambled to monopolize this new power, sopost-war media barons (albeit for differentreasons) would later scrambled to harnessthe potential power, commercial andpolitical, of new media like TV and theinternet.

The impact of such power clearly depends on who uses it — and how. If a Goebbelsscapegoats the Jews, or a Hearst theSpanish, the social and human rightsimplications can be appalling. More recentexamples of the abuse of media have comefrom Rwanda and Bosnia. At a much lowerlevel of criminality, the corrupt activities ofmedia barons like Robert Maxwell have alsohelped to undermine public confidence inthe media in particular countries.

If, on the other hand, a Joseph Pulitzer(eventually) takes a more principled line or a Ted Turner switches some of the resourcesof a CNN to covering environmental orsustainability themes, the implications canbe very different. CNN was unusual infeaturing a significant amount ofenvironmental programing through the1990s. In 2000, after Turner gave $1 billionto the United Nations, UN Secretary-GeneralKofi Annan called him a ‘world citizenextraordinaire,’ which was nicer than somethings Turner had been called in histurbulent career.

All the President’s MediaGiven the political and emotional power of the media, issues of scale are critical.Some media groups may opt to stay small,but for most the drive to scale is irresistible.Listen to Sumner Redstone of Viacom: ‘Thecrossover benefits among Viacom divisionsare almost endless,’ he says, and continues:

‘We can take the number-one children’sbrand in the television world, Nickelodeon,and bring our viewers to the Paramountmovie studio, supported and promoted byevery other division in our company. We canshow those movies on thousands of screensaround the world, including our own. Wecan turn our books into movies, our moviesinto television shows, and we can sell, airand syndicate those television shows on ourstations as well as others.

What if Rupert Murdoch owned the BBC?The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)was often mentioned in our media andother interviews as one of theinternational media organizationscommitted to the environmental and SDagendas. So we asked Richard Sambrook,BBC Director of News, where thiscommitment comes from.

‘The BBC takes issues of sustainabledevelopment seriously in terms of newsand current affairs coverage for severalreasons,’ he replied. ‘It is a cross-partypolitical issue with long term resonanceand importance. It is of significant interestto large parts of our audience. It is inkeeping with the serious news agendawhich the BBC as a public servicebroadcaster tries to preserve. And it is away of thinking about the world and manyother areas of specialist interest (business,economics, health, education,international affairs) which providesilluminating angles for our programmeteams to develop.’

To ensure BBC people understood the SDagenda, Sambrook notes, the Corporation‘started a series of seminars for seniorprogram makers where a number ofexperts in areas of sustainability wouldmeet off site for two days to explore hownews could and should better reflect thisagenda. I believe over time this has madea difference.’

So we asked the obvious next question.Would the BBC be so interested if it wereto find itself under the ownership of, say,Rupert Murdoch? ‘I have no idea,’Sambrook mused, ‘but I suspect acommercial news organisation would notmake that kind of investment into theeditorial awareness of its staff without aclear measurable benefit in return.’

38 Founded in 1996, the Project on Media Ownership (PROMO) is a non-profit project dedicated to uncovering who owns what in the culture industries, and to trying to get a handle on the impacts — economic, civic, social, aesthetic and political — of increasingly concentrated ownership.

39 http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,546881,00.html

40 The International Herald Tribune,November 30, 2000.

41 Joseph Goebbels, ‘The Radio as the Eighth Great Power’, August 18, 1933, see www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb56.htm.

42 Sumner Redstone with Peter Knobler, A Passion to Win, Simon & Schuster, 2001.

43 James Blitz, ‘A shaky start for Berlusconi’, Financial Times, October 2, 2001.

44 Bestriding the World: Global Media Giants, http://mediachannel.org/ownership/granville/shtml

45 Neil Chenoweth, Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Highway,Secker & Warburg, 2001.

46 Sumner Redstone with Peter Knobler, op. cit.

47 One of the most dramatic examples of this trend was the few-holds-barred battle between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

48 oekom research AG, Media: A Corporate Responsibility Survey of 25 Companies from the Industry, September 2001. Ratings run from highest, A to lowest, D.

49 SustainAbility for UNEP, The Global Reporters, 2001.

28 Good News & Bad Media Moguls

We can publish the music on the soundtracks and advertise and merchandise it allover the globe. We can cross-sell across theMTV Network, CBS, Infinity; we can cross-promote, as MTV did for Survivor on CBS; we can be the best place for advertiserssince we have the best platforms in outdooradvertising, radio, cable and television.’ 42

Well, take that for the sales pitch that itundoubtedly was, but recognize, too, that as scale builds, so too does economic andpolitical influence. And that introducespotential conflicts of interest.

Following the violent response of thecountry’s paramilitary carabinieri to theanti-G8 protests in Genoa, Prime MinisterSilvio Berlusconi promised that there wouldbe ‘no cover-up of the truth.’ Few believedhim. Again, whatever the facts, the scale ofBerlusconi’s potential conflicts of interestwas extraordinary: he owned Italy’s threemain private television stations and itslargest publishing house. 43

On the other hand, ownership in the righthands can work wonders. If any one ownertowered above other media owners in termsof corporate citizenship and wider values it was the late Katharine Graham of TheWashington Post.

During the Pentagon Papers and Watergatescandals, she stood up to the NixonPresidency and broke one of the majorpolitical stories of the century. But, despitesuch occasional upsides, the politicalimplications of media ownership are criticaland deserve serious attention. Some mayfeel that the lampooning of UK PrimeMinister Tony Blair as a ‘stooge’ of NewsCorporation Chairman and CEO RupertMurdoch (see below, right) was undulyharsh, but others counter-argue that thepolitical clout of media moguls is as great as it ever was — and should be dramatized.

Who holds moguls to account?In a CNN discussion on the future of media,days before the AOL Time Warner merger,the merged company’s CEO predicted thatthe media would become so powerful thatcompanies could be more powerful thangovernments.44 His solution? He argued that‘We’re going to need to have corporationsredefined as instruments of public service.’ Well, fine, but who will make this happen?The media world is not short of high-energy,hard-charging entrepreneurs and executives,many more than willing to throw theirpolitical weight around. Their style infectstheir companies. ‘News Corporation has oneof the most aggressive corporate cultures inthe world,’ Neil Chenoweth explains.45

Transparency may be one side effect of some of the things Murdoch does, but he is not the most noted modern champion of corporate transparency (see Figure 41).Think of his publishing company dropping asensitive book on China to ease News Corp’spath into the world’s most populous market.

Interestingly, an occasional media baronowns up to at least some imperfections. ‘Allof us at Viacom are not saints — far from it,’says Sumner Redstone, ‘But I am surroundedby people who believe that they have anobligation beyond the bottom line, whoknow where the bottom line ends and socialresponsibility begins.’ 46 He notes that hisvarious media have covered such issues asdrug abuse, racism and slavery.

Many journalists we interviewed noted thatmarket pressures too often spur a ‘race tothe bottom,’ driving owners, editors andjournalists to probe the lower limits ofacceptable practice. 47 Often, the processfeeds the ‘infotainment’ frenzy that sedatesaudiences when they should be alert andconcerned. ‘Media industry concentrationleads to the dumbing down of news, playingto the lowest common denominator,’ asmedia researcher Leyla Alyanak puts it.

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO, News Corporation

© www.CartoonStock.com

41 Media groups CSR and SD status

29Good News & Bad Media Moguls

AOL Time WarnerUSAwww.aoltimewarner.com

Middle of the roadNo TBL report. On website, AOL TimeWarner Foundation and CorporateCitizenship page contains a brief socialresponsibility statement. Time Warnergiven C- rating for overall corporateresponsibility in 2001 oekom research AG survey. 48

Axel Springer VerlagDEwww.asv.de

LeaderComprehensive sustainability informationavailable on website, linked fromhomepage. Also produces environmentalreport. Ranked equal 31st among Top 50reporters in 2000 Global Reportersbenchmark survey. 49 Scored B- by oekomresearch AG.

BBCUKwww.bbc.co.uk

Middle of the road Worth watching. Corporation’sEnvironment Matters Report 2001available on website, although not easy to find. This is first environment report.BBC accepts that site contains moreanecdotes than data, but promises thatfuture reports will contain more data and targets.

BertelsmannGermanywww.bertelsmann.com

LeaderAn emerging leader, although many SD-related programs cover only a proportionof the sprawling group’s employees.Produces a social report. No CSR or SDissues discussed on website. Scored B- by oekom research AG. Bertelsmann’sprinting arm, Mohn Media, producesenvironmental reports — and came equal20th in Global Reporters survey.

EMI GroupUKwww.emigroup.com

LeaderCurrent leader, albeit with much work to do. See Environment and CommunityReport 2001. Website covers environ-mental information, with a pledge toextend coverage to the wider SD issues.Scored top overall by oekom research AG with B rating.

News CorporationAustraliawww.newscorp.com

LaggardNo TBL report. Rated D by oekom research AG.

PearsonUKwww.pearson.com

Middle of the roadEnvironmental information can be found in 2001 annual report. Pearson’s environmental policy, environmentalreview and ethics statement easilyaccessible on its own website. Rated C- by oekom research AG.

SonyJapanwww.world.sony.com

LeaderPublishes annual environmental report.Data on Sony’s environmental vision,activities, and stakeholder relations canalso be found on website.

ViacomUSAwww.viacom.com

LaggardNo TBL report. Despite claims in ownerSumner Redstone’s autobiography, no CSR or SD issues discussed on website.Refused to take part in oekom research AG survey.

Vivendi UniversalFrancewww.vivendi.com

Middle of the roadBut definitely engaged. Created in 2000 by merger of Vivendi, Seagram and Canal+. Publishes regular environmentalreport. Website offers link to environ-mental report on home page. Overall, rated C+ by oekom research AG.

30 Good News & Bad Audiences

The ‘demand side’ question posed at the foot of the page is hard to answer. Themedia provide access to information andexperience — everything from stock marketreports to escape into alternative realities.Even significant growth in demand for triplebottom line information could be drownedout by even greater growth in demand forinfotainment. Looking back over the pastdecade, several trends stand out: 50

— Audiences continue to show an appetite for media once seen as threatened,including newspapers and radio — whichsometimes offer better coverage of CSRand SD issues.

— In parallel, however, electronic media continue to colonize our lives, with agrowing range of media appearing inyoung people’s rooms. The impact is atleast as likely to be one of cocooningyoung people from reality as it is to opentheir eyes to CSR and SD issues.

— There is a dilution of the sense of community created when everyonewatches the same programs at the sametime. Whereas TV once acted as a form of‘social cement’, the use of VCRs, videocameras, digital TV and DVD systems hasallowed viewers to ‘time-shift’, organizingtheir own entertainment.

One effect of these trends is that TV viewers,in particular, are often turned into spectatorsof — rather than participants in — the greatevents and issues of the day. 51 Against thatbackdrop, our question is: To what extentare audiences demanding better triplebottom line coverage?

The answer is that while there may bepositive trends, they are not nearly aspositive as campaigners might hope. Whileaudience factors are key drivers of mediaoutput, their influence on the coverage ofthe CSR and SD agendas is uneven, complexand surprisingly ill-researched. And theevidence suggests that audiences oftenknow that trends like climate change arebuilding, yet are unwilling to act (page 41).

Guessing gameEditors say that an important part of the job — perhaps the most important part — is understanding audience wants. FrancesCairncross, management editor of TheEconomist, says, ‘As an editor, you’re veryoften guessing what the reader wants. I try to think of myself as a reader.’ But feweditors would deny that the media play a key role in shaping public opinion — and inframing the terms of public debate.

Fine, but what is the balance betweeneditors and audiences — can we ultimatelydetermine who is chicken, who egg? As MTV Networks senior vice presidentSvenja Geissmar puts it, ‘Are we leading the consumer or is the consumer leading us? The answer is, it’s a mix. The realquestion is what’s the percentage?’

Most media theorists — McLuhan andChomsky among them — have argued thatthe media shape us rather than the otherway around. Because the media filter ourexperience of the world, we are told, it ismeaningless to speak of audience tastes and desires other than as products of themedia industry itself.

More practically, if we recognize thataudience and media both influence eachother, we can begin to think about managingboth dimensions. From the media side,according to Frank Allen, co-founder of theUS Institute for Journalism and NaturalResources and former environment editor of The Wall Street Journal, ‘We need tochange the media diet.

It’s a weak excuse to place the blame onaudience tastes. If we give people a differentchoice, their tastes will change. The choiceof diet is with the editors.’

‘Spinach journalism’Even if the media acknowledge their role in shaping audience opinion and tastes,however, they still face a dilemma. They maybe able to ‘choose the diet,’ as Frank Allenputs it, but they won’t get far if theaudience doesn’t like what’s on the plate. So it’s back to the audience. You can’t force-feed readers, listeners or viewers with ‘goodfor you’ messages, with spoonfuls of ‘ought’and ‘should.’ ‘Spinach journalism,’ as somecall it, doesn’t work. Readers stop reading,listeners and viewers tune out.

This poses a particular challenge when itcomes to the CSR and SD agendas. Not onlydo these terms confound many, but themessages they contain can often be difficult— or painful — to digest. Nick Rowcliffe ofthe ENDS Daily concludes, ‘The mainstreampress feels it can’t present a story that wouldbe unpalatable to its audience — in effectsaying, “You’re responsible too”. ’ (It’s worthnoting, though, that at least one of ourmainstream media correspondents stronglydisagreed with this point.)

Joe Champ of Colorado University, whosefocus is media audiences and stories on theenvironment, agrees: ‘The great difficulty liesin that people seem most upset at being toldtheir very existence ruins the world. Ourrelationship with the earth is destructive.People don’t want to hear it.’

So audience considerations can keepuncomfortable messages out of the news —an influence that probably operates morepowerfully against SD than CSR issues. This makes intuitive sense, although someargue that the media under-estimate ourreadiness to consume news on SD-relateditems, if well presented.

AudiencesAudience numbers and tastes are a crucialconcern for any media company. So does thepublic really want more TBL coverage?

50 Mark Balnaves, James Donald and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, The Global Media Atlas,British Film Institute, 2001.

51 See Axel Aubrun and Joseph Grady, A Window on the Storm: How TV Global News Promotes a Cognitive ‘Refuge Stance’; and Daniel Amundson, Linda Lichter and Robert Lichter, The Myopic Neighbor: Local and National Network Television Coverage of the World, www.frameworksinstitute.org/products/global.shtml.

52 Environment, the Public and the Media,MORI Research Paper, April 1999.

53 Gallup poll, April 2000.54 www.futerracom.org

31Good News & Bad Audiences

Certainly, there is evidence that theseagendas are of interest to ordinary people. In the UK, MORI research suggests that morethan 90% of Britons consider air pollution,water pollution and waste disposal to beserious problems.52 Six in ten say they haveselected an environmentally friendly productover another because of its environmentalfriendliness. And seven in ten say theybelieve that, ‘Industry does not pay enoughattention to its social responsibilities.’

In the US, meanwhile, Gallup polls show83% of Americans agreeing with the goalsof the environmental movement and 66%rating the environment as an importantissue in relation to their voting intentions inthe 2000 presidential election.53 But, mediapeople wonder, when will these percentagestranslate into profitable audiences?

The great divideOne explanation for the obvious gapbetween latent audience interest and media perception of that interest might be a basic difference of opinion on what anenvironmental, CSR or SD story is. WendyRedal of Colorado University’s Center forEnvironmental Journalism explains:

‘Research suggests there may be adisconnect between what editors deem to be ‘environment news’ and what the generalpublic deems it to be. In a recentcompilation of local audience research, theenvironment ranked sixth in a list of topissues. It hasn’t moved from that spot for thelast six years. One reason for thisdiscrepancy may be that the public has verydifferent views about what constitutes an‘environment story.’ In newsrooms, we stillview coverage of the environment intraditional ways: the birds and bunniespieces, the recycling stories, the ‘jobs versusthe environment’ stand-offs. The stories thatthe public cares about today are health,consumer and investigative stories.

‘Today’s environment stories are about our quality of life: air and water quality,children’s health and congestion — the points at which the environment touchesdaily lives.’

Certainly many journalists who cover CSRand SD sense a healthy and enthusiasticaudience appetite for what they cover.Anecdotally we hear not that audiences areuncomfortable with these stories, but thatthey appreciate them. Peter Eisler of USAToday observes, ‘We take globalization andits impacts very seriously. Our readers wantto understand it.’ He continues, ‘I think USAToday readers are interested in environ-mental issues. I don’t have any hard data butI do sense it. There is a human interest there— especially if it impacts people’s health.’

A good storyThe key challenge is to find a way to tellthese stories in a manner that engages,makes the connections to the ‘big picture’and touches people’s lives. Mike Tidwell, afreelance journalist who writes on climatechange for The Washington Post, explains,‘The key is to address specific interests withpieces that hit home and explain to themwhat climate change means for them.’Terry Slavin of The Observer adopts a ‘stealth approach’: first and foremost shewrites a solid and engaging story — whichjust happens to have a CSR or an SD angle.

One newswire reporter we interviewedagreed. He jumps from issue to issue, tryingto slip in an environmental angle. ‘If youinstil an interest in the outdoors,’ he says,‘you can instil a love of nature, and thatenables you to argue, for example, for betterfishing practices.’ This holds true for non-news media as well. Nick Hart-Williams,former commissioning editor for the UK’sChannel 4, argues, ‘The challenge for themedia is to make these things interesting tothe audience. Erin Brokovich is a greatexample of how these issues do make goodstories. This was a Hollywood hit, audiencesloved it.’

This in turn has implications that loop backto news: CSR and SD do not by their naturealienate or bore audiences. It’s possible toinform and engage without preaching orbashing the audience over the head. Thematerial for good stories, for importantstories — the stuff of great journalism andgreat entertainment even, is there. Far frombeing turned off or disinterested, theaudience welcomes CSR and SD stories. Butaudiences don’t relax demands for qualitysimply because the subject matter is worthy.

Repeat after me . . .sus-tain-a-ble-de-vel-op-ment.That’s the title of a consultation paperfrom Futerra, a new SD communicationgroup. SD, say Solitaire Townsend, Ed Gillespie and Rebekah Gilbertson, ‘has grown its own technical language,slang, heroes, anecdotes and history.’ 54

Often that gets in the way of commun-ication, whether with politicians, businessleaders, the media or public. To ensure SDcommunication works, Futerra offers a setof guidelines, summarized below:

1 Make the links to the Big Picture2 Build trust through factual and

technical accuracy.3 Be cool, be sexy.4 Invite readers, listeners or viewers to

join a successful global movement.5 Tell powerful stories.6 Project optimism, avoid guilt.7 Press the ‘glory button’ to help people

feel good taking small initial steps.8 Use inclusive language, breaking

stereotypes.9 Spotlight heroes to emulate.10 Link big ideas with everyday realities

and interests.

‘Erin Brokovich is a great example of how these issues do make good stories.’

Tsatan Uul, Northern Outer Mongolia © Adrian Arbib / Still Pictures

32 Good News & Bad Technology

Of the four lenses — or Gordian ‘sections’ —adopted for this report, technology is theone that has received most attention. Muchdiscussed developments have drasticallychanged the face of media in recent years.Key trends have included the:

— Rise of the internet— Spread of cable and satellite services — Transition to a multichannel world — Boom in personal technology devices

(e.g. mobile telephones, personal camcorders, PDAs)

Surveying these seismic shifts, we asked:How are technology trends affecting triplebottom line coverage?

UbiquityThe consensus is that the overall impact of new technology trends has been toexpand the power of media. As DannySchechter, founder and executive editor of MediaChannel.org, told us, ‘Media has a role in society it never had before, in part because of the power of technology.’ In the rich world, the media are now almostubiquitous, permeating every aspect of ourexistence. Thanks largely to cable, satelliteand the internet, the power and reach of themedia have increased enormously.

News, like other forms of media, is availableround-the-clock, on demand. It can originatefrom — and be received — almost anywherein the world. Even three whales trapped inArctic ice can hold audiences enthralled fornearly a week.55 But while the power of themedia sector as a whole has increased withnew technology, the effects on audiencetastes vary dramatically, depending on whereyou look. The battle between old media andnew is only the most common way ofinterpreting this variance.

The news media in particular find themselvescaught in the crosshairs of change.Technology has changed both how — and bywhom — news is captured (e.g. faxes,camcorders) as well as how it is distributed(e.g. internet ‘push’ v. ‘pull’ services, videocassettes in Iran, image ‘squishers’). Newtypes of service (e.g. free metro newspapers;CNN, CNNfn and CNNSi; Slate.com), andnew types of journalist or, as some wouldsay, faux-journalist (e.g. Matt Drudge,Ananova) are appearing.

In short, new competition is emerging fromall directions. Many of these developmentshave implications for credibility: forexample, the risks of text and imagemanipulation have increased.

Meanwhile, the simultaneity, multiplicationof channels and ‘on-demand’ possibilitiesdriven by cable, satellite and the internethave turned news into something of acommodity, while placing it in competitionwith other forms of media — in particular,entertainment.

What is news?New technologies have done more thanchange how news is delivered and produced— they have thrown the very nature andvalues of news into question. But what doesall this mean for CSR and SD? To the extentthat the news is being called into question,coverage of these issues can also be probedand perhaps rethought. For the time being,however, a major realignment of mainstreamnews priorities has still to occur.

At a basic level, the quantity and reach ofcoverage has increased. And so too, onbalance, has quality. Technology — theinternet in particular — has given a powerfulnew platform to these agendas. Nichenewsletters and sites convey a wealth ofinformation that might otherwise fail tomake it into the mainstream.56 And listserves and search engines help people tofind them.

Chris Rose, former Greenpeace campaignsdirector, notes that, ‘The ‘gatekeeper’function of media has been greatly reducedby the internet.’ Increasingly, people havedirect access to sources, rather than havingto rely on mainstream media reporting. Themainstream media may neglect to cover anissue, but there are numerous alternativesources the public may now consult, andmany organizations working to bring themmessages they might not otherwise hear. The implications of this change are far-reaching. Rose continues, ‘New media, newnetworks will mean new agency — newpower to affect events.’

TechnologySome people love media content, othersmedia technology. The second group has hadmuch to be excited about, but where arenew technologies taking us?

55 Tom Rose, Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World’s Greatest Non-Event, Carol Publishing Group, 1989.

56 See www.sustainability.com/resources.57 See Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel,

The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, Crown Publishers, 2001.

© Clive Shirley / Panos Pictures

33Good News & Bad Technology

Some NGOs have been particularly adept at using new technologies to get theirmessages in to the media — and out to the public. Rose notes that ‘Greenpeacelearned how to use its website to ensure the accuracy of the messages it wanted to get across.’

Now business, too, is learning how to takeadvantage of some of this technology totransmit its messages, often taking its cuesfrom NGOs and campaigning companies. The Body Shop, for example, told us abouttheir new approach to reporting —underscoring the fact that they now publisha series of exclusive internet-based reports,tailored and targeted to reach each of theirstakeholder groups directly.

News or noise?The caveat with most new media, however,is that they accelerate the trend towardsinformation overload. One result, accordingto former Xerox Park director John SeelyBrown, is that, ‘In a world when anyone canbecome a journalist or a commentator onthe web, you move to two-way journalism.The journalist becomes a forum leader ormediator rather than simply a teacher or alecturer.’ 57

Simultaneously, new media often boost the focus on the here-and-now, encouragingus to live in what has been called ‘wide time’rather than ‘long time.’ Neither of thesetrends is an obvious boon to the triplebottom line agenda. More information is of little help if it simply gets drowned out in a cacophony of more information abouteverything else. And CSR and SD by theirnature demand more global, longer-termperspectives and treatments.

That said, technology can help capture newperspectives that help boost the CSR and SDagendas. Micro-cameras can capture imagesof human rights abuses that would oncehave gone unobserved, or at leastunreported. Moreover, technology cansometimes collapse time and space to thebenefit of CSR and SD. Time-lapse andsatellite photography, for instance, can bothoffer long-term, big picture perspectives.And to the extent that technology can makedistant cultures, environments orrepercussions present to audiences, as theydid with the ‘Band Aid’ and ‘Live Aid’concerts of the 1980s, this can also aid thetriple bottom line agenda.

Today, the internet allows the likes of Planet Ark and the Globalvision NewsNetwork to bring developing world news tolarge numbers it would not otherwise reach.By amplifying voices seldom heard, theseservices perform an important function interms of claiming attention for key elementsof the triple bottom line agenda.

But the impact of the new mediatechnologies is still very unevenly spread.The ‘CNN World’ effect is much morepowerful in OECD countries, for example,than in poorer regions. The fact is that the majority of the world’s peoples remainlargely untouched. Indeed, the sheer pace of new technology development andproliferation is helping to create a ‘digitaldivide,’ exaggerating the gaps between the‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’ In consideringthe implications for the triple bottom line agenda, this trend can only becomemore pressing.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia © Jim Holmes / Panos Pictures

34 Good News & Bad Services

Anyone who compares coverage of CSR andSD issues today with the level of coverage adecade or two ago can only conclude thatthere has been enormous progress. But itoften seems that for every two steps forwardwe take at least one back. On the ‘supplyside’ of the equation, the media world is in a period of major change — and considerableuncertainty. Key trends in this shiftinglandscape include:

— A general proliferation of services of all sorts, competing for attention;

— New technologies and mutating business models; and

— Market fragmentation, accelerated by the growth of niche services.

Against this backdrop, we focus on thefollowing question: How do CSR and SD fit with the media’s emerging servicemodels?

The evidence suggests that the triple bottom line agenda is still a struggle formost media people. Indeed, at a recentAspen Institute conference on journalism,Peter C. Goldmark, Jr., Chairman and CEO of The International Herald Tribune,characterized the environment as one of the most important stories of our time — but one which the media is failing to address with the attention and in the depthit deserves.58 He challenged his colleagues: ‘The question will be asked: did [the media]see and get on the biggest stories of theirday?’ His answer, on the basis of theirperformance to date: ‘No.’

So why is the media largely missing this sort of story? To answer that question, let’slook at three main segments of news:mainstream, novel and niche.

MainstreamThe mainstream news exhibits a fairlystandard set of characteristics, including:

— A tendency to focus on events rather than trends;

— A propensity to report negativity, conflict and drama;

— Discomfort with ambiguity and complexity; and

— Procrustean constraints on column inches and broadcast minutes.

In addition, mainstream news providers havebeen criticized for favoring infotainmentover in-depth analysis and investigation.Frank Allen, founder of the Institute forJournalism and Natural Resources calls this,‘The rise of voyeurism as a substitute forjournalism.’ He argues, ‘In my view, thehierarchy of news values is too often beingturned upside down. Sensationalism andCelebrity are at the top, though they belongat the bottom. Immediacy and Proximity toooften take priority over Significance,Relevance, Cause and Consequence.’ Othersdescribe the same trend as ‘dumbing down.’

Ownership trends have a key impact here,affecting the structure and culture of thenewsroom. Newsrooms are usually reactive,organized to respond to events. Frank Allenexplains, ‘Most editors grew up in thetradition of event coverage. They’re used tostories with a definite beginning and end,which for the most part are straight-forwardand predictable, like trials and legislation.Then there’s also a pattern for breakingnews, like fires and crashes. We have a settemplate for how to deal with these stories.’

But as owners push for higher profits, theproblems associated with this blinkeringeffect increase. Paul Gilding, formerly headof Greenpeace International and now chairof Ecos, notes that the shearing of mediabudgets exacerbates this tendency, leavingfewer resources and staff for non-event,investigative reporting.

Meanwhile, editors and reporters alike favor certain types of stories or story angles.One newswire reporter told us, ‘Maybe I’m just an old fashioned kind of journalist.Agreement is not news. Debate is news . . .we need drama.’

Finally, most newsrooms and editors areunder increasing pressure to sell ad spaceand compete with entertainment in themedia marketplace. Little wonder then that CSR and SD often get short shrift. They simply don’t fit mainstream newspreferences and patterns of coverage.They’re generally about process rather than event — as Frank Allen tells us, ‘thesestories don’t break, they ooze!’

Such stories often require more space than other topics — John Nielsen, NPR’senvironment correspondent reminds us that ‘with environmental issues, you reallyneed to educate your audience; with crimereporting, you don’t need to teach yourlisteners what a robbery is.’ And instead of clarity and certainty, CSR and SD offercomplexity and ambiguity. Add to that a deficit of sex and celebrity and you’ve got a news blind-spot in the making.

No surprise, then, that triple bottom linecoverage tends to be irregular. It followswaves of fickle interest with a correspondingsacrifice of coherence and consistency. These agendas also have not yet found a real ‘home’ — they tend to hop from page to page. The financial, science, lifestyle ormanagement sections of a paper may all at different times host triple bottom linestories, with many newspapers having showna gradual progression from the science andlifestyle pages to the management and,increasingly, financial pages. Mainstreammedia tend to take on specialists and holdthem in ghettos or silos; they then eitherdrop or mainstream them.

ServicesMarkets normally ensure that where there isdemand there will be supply. So how are themedia responding to demand for CSR and SDinformation?

58 Peter C. Goldmark, Jr., Old Values, New World: Harnessing the Legacy of Independent Journalism for the Future,The Aspen Institute, 2001.

59 Bronislaw Szerszynski, John Urry and Greg Myers, Chapter 8 in The Daily Globe: Environmental Change, thePublic and the Media, edited by Joe Smith, 2000.

60 See www.sustainability.com/resources.

35Good News & Bad Services

This poses a further challenge to those whowould like CSR and SD to become media‘beats’ in their own right. As Roger Cowe, aformer Guardian correspondent and nowfreelance journalist, puts it, ‘There isn’tanything called CSR journalism. I often jokethat I am the pre-eminent journalist in myfield — because I’m the only one!’

NovelSo will novel media bridge the gap? By novel media we mean those that arisefrom new business models. CNN, BBC Onlineand USA Today would all be examples ofnovel media. Fringe at first, successful newentrants often cross over to the mainstream.Such operations can have more latitude to reinvent themselves and their coverage.Several, including those mentioned above,are noted for giving more treatment to triple bottom line issues than some moreestablished mainstream media.

The two most significant developments, as far as novel media go, have been the riseof global news and, more recently, the rise ofbusiness news. Traditionally, the news mediahave not been organized to deal with globalissues and trends. The rise of CNN, BBCWorld and the like has given a forum to themore global CSR and SD agendas. Some evencontend that the very imagery such servicesuse — such as pictures of the Earth — helpsbuild the global consciousness crucial to theadoption of the SD agenda. 59

But the really big industry story over the lastfew years has been the emergence ofbusiness news as the sector’s single largestgrowth area. Within this context, CSR andSD stand a greater chance of receivingattention. And while interviewees includingBusiness Week’s Pete Engardio point out thatmuch of the business media still doesn’t ‘get’the triple bottom line agenda, partly becauseit falls between two beats — namely,business and society — coverage has at leastincreased.

And, with story space to fill and growinginterest in related areas like ethical or socialinvesting, business news may eventually giveboth CSR and SD a mainstream media home.

NicheThen, finally, we have niche media services.These correspond to the second sector trend— fragmentation — cited above. The numberof media channels and service offerings ismultiplying. This is in part thanks to newtechnology and the internet (see Technology,pages 32–33). Triple bottom line-relatedofferings in particular stand out, for boththeir quantity and quality. 60

The very existence and proliferation of suchservices signals the failure of mainstreamproviders. As columnist George Monbiot toldus, such niche offerings ‘do the job that themainstream press fails to do.’ They track newtrends and issues, consistently beating thedrum on CSR and SD when mainstreammedia are distracted. The danger, of course,is that such services merely preach to theconverted — and reach neither the opinionformers nor the masses.

But organizations like Environmental DataServices (ENDS) have been highly successfulat developing new services, like the ENDSDaily, which help carry the agenda to newaudiences. The hope here must be that suchinitiatives spark something of a pioneer-and-follower dynamic, with the fringeexerting increasing influence on the center.A fair number of mainstream journalists said they routinely use niche services asbackground and as sources of ideas forpotential stories of their own. Indeed, theENDS Daily counts significant numbers ofmainstream press people in its subscriberbase.

The extent to which the triple bottom lineagenda is mainstreamed in the coming yearswill powerfully influence the extent to whichour needs are serviced by mainstream, novelor niche media. Using the scenarios sketchedout on pages 40–43, we might imagineniche services struggling to survive in the‘Breakdown’ scenario, mainstream mediaadapting in the ‘Mainstream’ scenario, andan array of novel media helping to drive the‘Breakthrough’ scenario.

CSRwire.com

‘These stories don’t break. They ooze!’

36 Good News & Bad Accountability

61 Jack Ewing, Carol Matlack, Andrea Zamert and Christina White, ‘Is the corruption crusade over?’ Business Week, November 26, 2001.

A century ago, the historian Thomas Carlyleremarked on the growing power of the pressand characterized the sector as an additionalbranch of government — a ‘Fourth Estate.’The moniker stuck. The power of the press isnow widely acknowledged, with much ofthat power and influence flowing from itsunique watchdog status.

The media are expected to hold others to account. Think of Watergate in the US or, less successfully to date, the anti-corruption ‘crusade’ in Europe which hasthreatened to engulf politicians like JacquesChirac and Dominique Strauss-Kahn inFrance, Helmut Kohl and Wolfgang Schaublein Germany, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. 61

But there is an unsettling side to mediapower too. Yesterday’s press barons andtoday’s media moguls are simply the mostvisible wielders of formidable power thatcritics argue goes too often unchecked.Given that the media can have such a huge impact on politics and society, ourquestion is: To what extent are mediacompanies accountable for their triplebottom line performance and impacts? Who, in short, watches the watchdogs?

There is a growing literature on mediapower. So, for example, media businesses are often attacked for reproducing dominantpower structures and representing theinterests of their owners. Noam Chomsky’s‘propaganda model’ is perhaps the bestknown of these critiques, but he has manyheirs, some more successful than others. So how can the media be held accountable?Theoretically at least, in a number of ways.Here are some options:

— Wolf-packAt the Darwinian level, there is the law of the wolf-pack, with unduly powerfulactors savaged by competitors. Someonelike Silvio Berlusconi may end upcontrolling national media, but there will always be more critical internationalmedia to take into account.

— Peer pressureA major factor in some industries, this can be weakened in the media sector bythe reluctance of key players to turn thespotlight on others, for fear of having the light shone back at themselves. When the industry strays too far, however,journalists’ own ‘ethical gyroscope’ cancome into play to restore standards andbalance.

— LegislationGovernments set up media, press andadvertising standards agencies andcouncils, which set and police mediastandards. Too often, however, these prove toothless in practice.

— LitigationWhen media overstep the normal boundsof decency, those whose interests areaffected can resort to the courts, as inlibel and slander actions. The trouble withlawsuits, however, is that their effect is expost facto.

— Media watchdogs

Public interest groups and NGOs play a key role in monitoring the press (see‘Centers of Excellence’ panel, page 05).Their impact has been substantiallyboosted by the internet.

— ShareholdersA growing number of ethical, social andenvironmental investment funds screenmedia companies for their triple bottomline commitments and performance (see page 40).

— ConsumersReaders, listeners and viewers can havesignificant influence on editorial style and coverage, either by criticizing currentcoverage or by switching to other mediafor news, analysis and entertainment.

Despite these mechanisms, however, theissue of media accountability remains. In fact, one could argue that since Carlyle’stime it has grown more pressing. Whereas in the past, barons would control a string of newspapers, today’s moguls preside overempires of diversified holdings. They mayown properties in radio, TV, the internet andpress, controlling content as well as systemsof distribution. In part this is because worldtrade rules have been opening up and lawsagainst cross-media ownership are beingrescinded.

Compounding the issues around increasingcross-media and cross-border ownership, itis increasingly typical for media holdings tobe tangled up with holdings in very differentlines of business. With such diversity ofholdings come conflicts of interest, agrowing taste for secrecy and otherproblems.

AccountabilityThe media perform a critical function inholding other parts of society to account.But who holds the media to account?

As far as CSR and SD go, the challenge iseven greater: they are rarely addressed bythe above mechanisms, if at all. And mediagroups offer little information on their own triple bottom line commitments andperformance, whether in the form of annualreports or other types of accounting. In truth, the media sector has not yetexperienced the full force of the triplebottom line challenge.

Socially responsible investment (SRI) fundanalysts told us that media’s performance inthis area is below average. One key reasonhas been that the media sector is seen tohave less environmental impact than sectorscovered in earlier SustainAbility reports,including the oil, life sciences andautomobility sectors.

To date, there has been relatively little media sector CSR or SD reporting. Of thelarge conglomerates, only Vivendi andBertelsmann so far report on social andenvironmental issues in a reasonablycomprehensive fashion. Elsewhere, there are scattered sparks of activity. EMI, forexample, has received attention as acompany that has reported for a while (page 29).

But as one analyst told us, ‘even EMI hasn’tfigured out if — and how — all this mattersto their core business. Even EMI still needsto make a fundamental transition.’

The bottom line is that most mediacompanies are still naïve — and, as a result, vulnerable — when it comes to thetriple bottom line. They still need to figureout how this agenda is relevant to theirbusinesses and what to do about them. Until recently, most media groups mainlyhad to think about the accuracy of theirreporting and direct or indirect involvementin such areas as pornography or gambling.Now, however, they are beginning to findthemselves accountable in a broader sense.

The media sector has not been known for its own transparency. News organizationsin particular, as Frank Allen (Founder,Insitute for Journalism and NaturalResources) reminded us, ‘don’t like othersto meddle in their business or tell themhow to do their job. They keep the newshuddle a mystery.’ Unfortunately, this mayalready be undermining the reputations ofboth the media and related professions.

Polls of the public and of journalists in theUS and Europe show a serious decline intrust in journalism. In Pew Center research,journalists cited credibility as the singlemost important issue facing journalismtoday.

As Danny Schechter of MediaChannelemphasized, ‘People don’t trust the media.They don’t understand how it works. This is a serious problem that the media itself hasto address. They’ve got a global reputationthat’s deeply damaged.’ Indeed, severalinterviewees speculated that some mediacompanies could themselves soon fall victimto the globalization-fuelled spotlight.

37Good News & Bad Accountability

Sony Environmental Report 2001

‘People don’t trust the media.’

38 Good News & Bad Breakdown or Breakthrough?

Returning once more to our consideration ofthe waves of public and media interest inCSR and SD (page 07), let’s consider wherethings may be headed next. However longthe current third wave may ultimately run,the third downwave cannot be long delayed.That said, each successive downwave tendsto bottom out at higher levels of publicsupport than its predecessor — and this iswhen the bulk of the serious political andregulatory work is often done. There is aratchet effect, too, in terms of the media’sunderstanding of the triple bottom lineagenda.

Instead of predicting the future, as we did in the early 1990s, we now sketch out threebroad trajectories into the future. Onescenario (‘Breakthrough’) would put us firmly on the track towards sustainabledevelopment. The second (‘Mainstream’)would see CSR priorities (and some SDpriorities) being met, to a degree. The third(‘Breakdown’) would see neither SD nor evenCSR priorities being achieved for long. Thescenarios are listed below, in order ofperceived likelihood:

— MainstreamLike many great social movements beforethem, the CSR and SD communities ‘comein from the cold’ early in the 21st century.The third (‘Globalization’) wave is followedby fourth and fifth waves, of reducedmagnitude. In the process, these agendasare further politicized as they take onmainstream energies and colorations.

— BreakdownRecessions, a mood of denial and otherfactors spur public resistance to change.Egged on by an increasingly effectivecontrarian movement, progress stalls. 62

This is a world of victims, blame andscapegoating.

Breakdown or Breakthrough?The media sector could dominate the 21stcentury economy. The political implicationswill bring greater levels of scrutiny ofowners, editors and journalists.

62 See, for example, Björn Lomberg, The Skeptical Environmentalist,Cambridge University Press, 2001.

63 James Flynn, Paul Slovic and Howard Kunreuther, Risk, Media and Stigma: Understanding Public Challenges to Modern Science and Technology,Earthscan Publications, 2001.

Belo Horizonte, Brazil © John Maier / Still Pictures

The process of stigmatization that hasdeeply damaged such sectors as nuclearpower and genetically modified foodsspreads to other sectors. 63 The fourth and fifth waves occur, but despite furtherpeaks of public concern and politicalpressure the underlying trajectory isdownwards.

— BreakthroughThis scenario — which foresees the mediaplaying a strong supportive role in thesustainability transition — is the mostdesirable, but probably the least likely. The key to this outcome is strong,visionary and effective political leadership,boosted by consistent business support.Given the inevitable uncertainties andcosts, future waves and downwaves inthis scenario might be of greatermagnitude during the transition period.

Roads to DamascusFirst, however, some context. On the positive side, at least when compared withthe early 1990s, there is now a reasonablystrong international corps of CSR and SDjournalists. In the US alone, the WorldResources Institute (WRI) told us they know of some 700 active environmentaljournalists, while the Natural ResourcesDefense Council (NRDC) has a database of some 3,000 journalists interested to adegree. Together with NGOs, such editorsand journalists have been responsible forcatalyzing and sustaining the waves ofcoverage discussed in our ‘Big Issues’section.

When a new agenda is seen as un-fashionable or actively subversive, as theCSR and SD agendas have been in recentdecades, it is inevitable that many earlyrecruits ‘join up’ after ‘conversion’experiences. John Nielsen, for example, toldus that researching his first environmentalstory, on the plight of the Californian condorfor Sports Illustrated, ‘changed my life.’ He then did a science fellowship at MIT, later joining NPR (National Public Radio) as an environmental correspondent.

Most media are less sympathetic than NPR,however. So many CSR and SD championsend up feeling, as Frank Allen of theInstitute for Journalism and NaturalResources explains it, ‘like a subversive in(their) own newsroom.’ Sometimes, happily,subversion works.

We heard of one reporter who ‘opened theeyes’ of an editor by subjecting her to the‘old two notebooks technique.’ He would goout on his beat and cover the assigned story,but would keep a second notebook in whichhe gathered material for a story with astronger environmental spin. ‘Gradually, [the editor] realized that these were goodstories; it didn’t matter what label they fell under.’

And there is no shortage of potential stories. Nick Rowcliffe of the ENDS Dailyreports no difficulty in finding 6–7 majorstories each day across the European Union.Peter Eisler, an investigative reporter for USA Today, says that he alone gets aroundsix leads (of all sorts) a day from whistle-blowers. (Most he can’t use, however, sinceUSA Today’s editorial line is that stories must be of national interest.)

Editors are the media’s gatekeepers — andtake some convincing. Recently, for example,one freelancer told us that he did a majorfeature for a high-profile US daily on theimplications of climate change for travel and tourism. ‘I had to wrestle the editors tothe ground,’ he recalls, ‘and spoon-feed themthe science.’

Nor is any success final. No sooner has anew issue entered the mainstream than it is in danger of falling out of fashion. ‘At various points, these agendas have beendecreed to be last year’s thing,’ says GreenFutures editor Martin Wright. As a result,most journalists find this a tough sell. Often,too, a form of Catch-22 operates. ‘Manyeditors,’ observes campaigner Chris Rose,‘believe that if an issue hasn’t been coveredalready by their media, it isn’t an issue.’

But change is in the air, with publicationslike Time, The Financial Times and TheInternational Herald Tribune now runningtriple bottom line stories and surveys. That said, remember that internationalpublications often run different stories indifferent regions. Each regional edition may have its own editor, so the fact that the US edition carried a story on sociallyresponsible investment does not mean thatthe Asian or Latin American editions carriedthe same story.

39Good News & Bad Breakdown or Breakthrough?

‘I had to wrestle the editors to the ground and spoon-feed them the science.’


01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

42 BreakdownTrend 2001–2011

Medium

High

Low


01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

43 MainstreamTrend 2001–2011

Medium

High

Low


01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

44 BreakthroughTrend 2001–2011

Medium

High

Low


Business waking upOne key problem is that the SD agenda, in particular, is seen as political. We asked a journalist from one of the world’s topbusiness magazines (speaking off the record) why, and he replied, ‘To me politics is about how land, materials and goods areapportioned. You can’t think aboutsustainability without thinking about that.’

He also explained why few mainstreamjournalists want to view news through a CSRor SD ‘lens’. ‘Why would a journalist want todo that?,’ he asked. ‘If I were to put a CSR orSD champion on hold and pick up the phoneto a Marxist or Roman Catholic, they wouldalso be pushing their agenda and saying thatin order to be a good Marxist or Catholic youwould have to look at everything throughtheir respective lenses.’

Given such sensitivities, it is surprising how far the triple bottom line agenda has penetrated some parts of the businessmedia. One reason: a series of majorcontroversies has spotlighted a growingrange of issues. For example, Shell’s mishapsin 1995 helped drive the environmental andhuman rights agendas , in addition to whichthere have been problems with major damsin countries like China, Malaysia and Turkey(impacting such companies as ABB, BalfourBeatty and Skanska), with GM foods(triggered by Monsanto, but embroilingmany other businesses), and with sweat-shops and child labor (where Nike has been the most obvious corporate casualty).

As the pressures on business have grown —in parallel with the impact of the anti-globalization movement on institutions likethe IMF, World Bank and WTO — businessmedia coverage of these issues has builtsteadily. Early coverage of triple bottom lineissues in such media tended to be highlyskeptical, and in the case of Forbes and theWall Street Journal still is. But over time,particularly with the growth in the SRIsector (page 23), there has been a change inmood in the business media.

The Financial Times was cited by many as aleader, while a paper like USA Today wasseen as maturing to the point where it hasbegun to compete head on with The WallStreet Journal. Don’t expect a completecave-in, however. Witness the continuingstream of contrarian articles in such mediaas the The Economist and even The FinancialTimes itself.

What’s next?On the basis of past trends, with peaks ofmedia coverage driven by major conferenceslike the 1992 Earth Summit, 2002 (withplanned events like the World EconomicForum’s New York event and the WorldSummit on Sustainable Development inJohannesburg) should see another spike in coverage of triple bottom line issues.Beyond 2002–3, however, the media couldmove in one of at least three directions, as explained below.

Mainstream

This is the most likely of the two hopefulscenarios. ‘Never forget,’ as Chris de Cardy of Environmental Media Services puts it, ‘the mainstream press reports on themainstream.’

So here is the mainstream scenario. Eventhough the third wave is soon followed by a downwave, triple bottom line issues areincreasingly recognized as a vital, legitimate,marketable part of the news agenda. Somemedia create specialized ‘beats’, while othersencourage mainstream news and featurereporters to develop ongoing series ofstories.

In the context of growing evidence ofclimate change, major political events drivemedia coverage — and, in the process, helpbring CSR and SD in from the cold. To use a different metaphor, triple bottom line‘viruses’ infect the media world and thenspread more widely.64

‘In many cases, the issue of the day is sustainability.’

SRI Criteria for the Media SectorSRI funds are developing a range of triple bottom line criteria, together withperformance indicators and metrics. Thesemay be applied both to the operations ofcompanies and to their supply chains.Many will also be applied to mediacompanies.

Accountability On the genericaccountability front, issues have included:the transparency of ownership structures;governance systems/procedures; directorresponsibilities; standards at home andabroad; stakeholder processes; risk andopportunity assessments; involvement incontroversial businesses and withauthoritarian regimes; political activities;public policy and lobbying positions;content of media owned; penalties forfalse or misleading reporting; corruptionand fraud; court cases and fines; and keycompany contacts.

Ethical, Social and Cultural Among theissues that have been covered to date are:ethical principles, targets, managementsystems, supplier challenges, audits andreporting; standards at home and abroad;discrimination policies (e.g. age, gender,disability, racial); working hours; payment(including health insurance, paymentduring sick leave, and pension provision);employee participation; health and safety;training; redundancy policies; under-agelabor; community involvement; and thecontent of media owned (including suchissues as political bias, violence andpornography).

Environmental On the environmentalfront, issues covered to date include:environmental goals, policies, targets,management systems, supplier challenges,audits and reporting; standards at homeand abroad; inputs (e.g. materials andenergy); outputs (e.g. wastes andemissions); transport, packaging andrecycling; liabilities, costs and invest-ments; and the content of media owned.

The trend often starts in the print mediaand radio, but TV soon joins in, partlydriven by competition from niche and novelservices delivered via the internet.

New niche services evolve, like CSR Wire,which among other things monitorsreferences to companies and CSR. ‘Wefound that 90% of the mentions werenegative,’ says director Meghan Connolly.Over time, this form of Chinese watertorture persuades growing number of highprofile companies to ‘come clean’ — and toclean up their supply chains.

SRI funds apply increasingly tough CSR and SD criteria to the media sector, helpingdrive these priorities up the agenda (seepanel on page 40). With limited ecologicalfootprints to worry about, media groupsare initially less interested in SD. But thenbusiness leaders carry the debate into thepages of publications like the HarvardBusiness Review,65 Forbes and The WallStreet Journal, triggering stories in othermedia.

Media groups are increasingly persuaded toproduce state-of-the-art triple bottom linereports. Coverage of these issues in Africa,Asia and Latin America begins a steadyrise, although here too there are strikingcycles in media interest.

Some experts even see poorer countries as potential issue incubators for the richworld media. ‘There is a difference in thecoverage in developing countries,’ explainsWRI media relations director Adlai Amor.‘Sustainable development is a day-to-dayreality for people there, so there is greatercoverage. In many cases, the issue of theday is sustainability.’ Picking up andtracking media triple bottom line coveragein developing countries can be difficult,however, given the different ways in whichthe issues are framed and described.

And the dynamic works in the otherdirection, too. As demand grows, groupslike Panos, TVE and Environmental MediaServices help catalyze regional sources ofcredible triple bottom line information, onwhich local media then feed. Organizationslike India’s Centre for Science andEnvironment (CSE) have shown how thismight be done.

Breakdown

The second most likely scenario foreseescontinuing waves of public concern andpressure, but on a declining trend. As PeterGoldmark of The International HeraldTribune warns, ‘There is a newdemographic, a generation not brought upwith newspapers — which have been thekeepers of the flame of independentjournalism.’ The media moguls continue topursue ‘eyeballs and money’ above all otherconsiderations.

In this scenario, the media continue to playthe old games. ‘The typical cycle is thatthey build you up — then they knock youdown,’ say Nicky Amos (head of businessethics) and Bill Eyres (head ofcommunications) at The Body ShopInternational. Here is the breakdownscenario. Just as media coverage on theozone hole has fallen away even as thehole expands, so the public learns to ignorethe vital signs of continuing degradation.Joe Champ, who studied at the Center forEnvironmental Journalism, puts it this way:

‘There is a notion that people don’t knowthe environmental threats they face andthat the answer is to improve the conduit— i.e. the methods we use to communicateto people — and thus the way we talk toaudiences through the media. But it’s morecomplex than that. People do actuallyknow about this stuff. They know the polarice cap is melting. But they are notprepared to adjust their behavior. Theyseem willing to live with the contradiction.’


Expect the UnexpectedCampaigners — like the media — rarelystand still. Witness what is happening inthe oil sector, with ongoing campaigns onclimate change, human rights andcorruption. ‘There are parallels with whereExxonMobil and TotalFinaElf are now andwhere we were in 1995,’ says Mark Wadeof Shell’s SD team. ‘Such companies arebeginning to use terms which are new forthem, like stakeholder engagement, CSRand sustainable development.’

The events of 1995, with the Brent Spar oil installation controversy rapidlyfollowed by the uproar around humanrights in Nigeria, caught Shell completelyunawares. ‘The media drove the process,’Wade recalls, ‘and they were completelycaptivated by Greenpeace. Shell wascaught completely off-guard. Like a dazedfencer, disorientated and overwhelmed, weparried one thrust, only to find the nextfrom another unexpected direction.’

At the time, Shell’s media resources wereprecariously slim. Today, the company’spress office has expanded from two peopleto eight. More significantly, a new annualseries of unusually candid ‘Shell Reports’helped win over many critics. But Wadesays a key step involved building bridgesbetween Shell and NGOs like Amnesty,Greenpeace and Transparency.

One lesson: Expect the unexpected. Whileit may be possible to improve a company’sreputation by tackling accountability,transparency and performance issues, thechallenge never really goes away. Shellmay now be the subject of positive casestudies in the Harvard Business Review,and balanced coverage in media like TheEconomist, Financial Times and Wall StreetJournal, but there are plenty of others‘prepared to regurgitate inaccurate or out-of-date information.’ And new issues canalways emerge.

‘If I were to put a CSR or SD champion on hold and pick up the phone to a Marxist or Roman Catholic, they would also be pushing their agenda and saying that in order to be a good Marxist or Catholic you would have to look at everything through their respective lenses.’

64 Douglas Rushkoff, Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture,Ballantine Books, 1994.

65 DuPont’s Leslie Cormier says that DuPont CEO Chad Holliday’s HBR article on sustainable growth followed HBR editors’ sight of a WBCSD study, SevenSteps to Sustainability, in which Holliday was involved.


As recessions bite and short-term issuesdistract editors and newsrooms, many triplebottom line-focused journalists are maderedundant. ‘Environmental journalists arechopped the quickest,’ warns Robert Bisset,European press officer for UNEP. CSRjournalists soon follow. They are replaced bycontrarians, who write elegantly — andentertainingly — about the importance ofself-interest, materialism, short-term time-scales and the ‘moral bankruptcy’ of thosewho would argue otherwise.

Against this deteriorating backdrop,journalists like Terry Slavin, who works forThe Observer, continue to play a ‘stealth’game. She has covered CSR and SD issues byfocusing on business leaders, like thefounders of companies like IKEA andTetrapak. But, in this scenario, the editorialappetite for such stories falls off sharply.

In countries like Russia, there is growingstigmatization of CSR and SD campaignersand journalists. Tom Whitehouse, previouslyMoscow correspondent for The Guardian,recalls what happened to Aleksandr Nikitin:‘This Russian journalist and former navyofficer exposed the decrepitude of theretired nuclear fleet — and was then throwninto prison as a spy, and persecuted forspotlighting the problem.’ Think, too, ofZimbabwe, with proposed new laws givingthe state powers to silence independentnewspapers and journalists. 66

Some media people see this pessimisticscenario as only too likely. ‘Sure, in 20 years’time journalists are going to be looking backand acknowledging that the press failed toaddress these issues in a responsible way,’said one leading newswire reporter, speakingoff the record. ‘Just as they still do abouttheir naïveté during the McCarthy witch-hunt period.’ He added: ‘If climate changehappens, then sure the media will cover it.But it probably won’t happen until Floridasinks and New Jersey is under water.’

Breakthrough

Whatever we may hope, this is the leastlikely of the three scenarios. This is a worldin which the global economy mutatestowards much higher levels of sustain-ability.67 But some interviewees saw reasonsfor hope in the very nature of the mediasector’s reactions to emergent trends. ‘The media is like a herd,’ said Mike Tidwell.‘Once they get an issue, they all run with it.This could work to our advantage.’

In the third, breakthrough scenario, themedia sector itself comes under intensescrutiny. Some SRI analysts see this processas already under way. ‘Once, the only issuefor the sector was pornography,’ says NickRobins of Henderson Global Investors, ‘butthis is now changing dramatically.’

Across at Sustainable Asset Management(SAM), part of the Dow Jones SustainabilityGroup, they are also developing specificassessment criteria for the sector. ‘SAM is particularly concerned with the media,’says researcher Niki Rosinksi, ‘because of its essential role as a facilitator andcommunicator for this agenda.’

But even the most intense SRI pressure may not be sufficient. What else might help? Thoughtful comments came fromMediaChannel senior editor Aliza Dichterand executive editor Danny Schechter (aformer producer of the popular news show20/20, and co-founding CNN producer).

Before the first (‘Limits’) wave took hold,they note, things were different. ‘Peoplewere concerned about individual issues:clean water, clean air, nukes, endangeredspecies. Then a rubric of ‘The Environment’took hold, and ‘Environmentalism’ emerged.There is as yet no ‘Media-ism’ movement, no general acknowledgement of the political and social issues surroundingmedia. This is what needs to happen next.’

Happily, new entrants bring new priorities,new passion. Young journalists emerge,connecting with new audiences. So, forexample, New Internationalist ‘YoungJournalist’ and editor Katharine Aingerproposed a special issue on media — whichtriggered a great deal of positive comment,and was even picked up in the AustralianFinancial Review.

Best of all, media consumers begin to getthe message. ‘These issues are central towhat is going on,’ stresses Peter Knight (whopioneered environmental coverage in TheFinancial Times), ‘but they’re not necessarilyseen as such. So how do you make themrelevant to people who live ordinary lives?Who like riding motorbikes, getting their hairdone, buying lipstick, having sex?’ Theanswer, he suggests, is to link the macrowith the micro. ‘Ordinary people notice iftheir child gets asthma, or their partner diesof cancer. The media depend on NGOs orpoliticians to make the necessary links.’

In this scenario, the links are made. Insteadof closing their eyes and ears and ‘livingwith the contradiction’, ordinary people startto pay serious attention — and demandbetter service. Even channels like MTV getinvolved. ‘MTV is about escapism,’ says MTVNetworks senior vice-president SvenjaGeissmar. ‘But,’ she wonders, ‘does this makesense for a company whose targetdemographics are interested in the discoveryof new issues — and new causes? Isn’t youththe most radical demographic?’

Some surveys suggest that Generation Y is strongly interested in triple bottom lineissues, but the evidence suggests thatneither MTV nor the rest of the media world are likely to lead the charge into the ‘Breakthrough’ world. If the fourth andfifth waves spotlight issues with sufficientpublic appeal, however, the media’s instinctcould well switch in to advantage. In thiscontext, expect growing scrutiny of mediaethics, and growing interest in the work ofsuch organizations as the Committee ofConcerned Journalists. 68

‘Sure the media will cover [climate change]. . . but it probably won’t happen until Florida sinks and New Jersey is under water.’

66 Jan Raath, ‘Zimbabwe’s new law to silence journalists’, The Times,December 1, 2001.

67 See The Chrysalis Economy,John Elkington, Capstone / John Wiley, 2001.

68 See Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, Crown Publishers, 2001.

69 Denis Brian, Pulitzer: A Life,John Wiley, 2001


Among the issues we expect to drive futurewaves are demographic trends, includingpopulation growth in the poorer countriesand the linked issues of aging andimmigration in richer regions.

Paradoxically, the issues that may well endup putting sustainability four-square onthe political agenda (and therefore on themedia agenda) will be problems with theequitable provision of public healthservices and pensions. These emergingchallenges could help ordinary citizensunderstand the urgent realities of intra-and inter-generational equity.

As the transition builds, the old squabbleswill continue — and new ones explode.‘When I hear the words sustainability orsustainable development,’ one newswirecorrespondent growled, ‘I just hear a loadof jargon and jingoism.’ By contrast, over atthe BBC News, assignments editor JamieDonald says CSR and SD coverage ‘isalready mainstream. It’s neither niche norfringe as far as the BBC is concerned — andthat won’t change.’

Major change will not mute such dis-agreements. But, here is the $64 trillionquestion: Will we have the will — andpolitical wisdom — to respond efficiently,effectively and in time?

Figure 45, overleaf, offers a series of Do’s and Don’ts for those trying to respond.Our recommendations for the media sectoron how progress might best be made canbe found on the inside back cover of thereport.

Whichever way we go, David Fenton ofFenton Communications argues that theCSR and SD communities must worktogether on intensive, sustained mediacampaigns designed to simplify and punchthrough their key messages. At a timewhen mainstream media interest incomplex issues is trending downward, heargues, ‘It’s time to cut the jargon andinvest in short, lively, dramatic forms ofpresentation.’ Given the background noiselikely in 2002 and beyond, the need forsuch an approach can only grow.

‘Always fight for progress and reform. Never tolerate injustice or corruption; always fight demagogues of all parties — never lack sympathy for the poor; always remain devoted to the public welfare; never be satisfied with merely printing the news; always be drastically independent; never be afraid to attack wrong.’Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), media mogul 69

Joseph Pulitzer

45 Do’s and Don’ts


1 Do think strategically. Media relations is often thought of as a crisis management tool. Wrong: it should be a strategic, ongoing process. Evolve an integrated strategy, linking your media, CSR/SD and marketing people. Bring them together regularly, with top management support and plenty of time, to break down internal silos.

2 Do be honest. Give the good news — and the bad. Accept that some bad coverage may be necessary to build long-term credibility and trust.

3 Do be open and accessible. As Shell explained, ‘The key is to be available and responsive.’ Put your best, least defensive, people into the front line. But always assume you are speaking on the record.

4 Do KISS. Keep it simple, seriously.

5 Do learn. Work to understand what the media ‘takes’ are on key issues for your company, brands and markets. Find out what they are saying — ‘contrarians’ and skeptics included — about CSR and SD.

6 Do change your footwear. Put yourself in the media’s shoes. Ensure you understand: (a) who covers your issues; (b) what stories and angles they are looking for; (c) what sort of deadlines they workto; and (d) whether they want soundbites or more in-depth analysis.

7 Do remember Rosetta. Two hundred years ago, the Rosetta Stone was found in Egypt, helping decode the hieroglyphs and language of ancient Egypt. Ensure you fully understand the differences between the CSR and SD languages, definitions and objectives.

8 Do teach. Help media people understand your company and its triple bottom line issues, targets and performance. Remember, as NRDC communications director Alan Metrick says, ‘Reporters are not enemies, and they’re not friends; they’re overworked and underpaid — and they’ll take help on generating stories.’

9 Do treasure jewels. Heed campaigner Chris Rose’s warning: ‘Only 1 in 100 journalists can think strategically.’ Consider these people jewels. Their time and attention is scarce, precious. Treasure them.

10 Do get into the flow. Join leading CSR/SD-focused initiatives and alliances, helping your key people meet thought-leaders and agenda-shapers — and co-evolve the agenda.

11 Don’t be narcissistic. It’s dangerous to let the desire for media coverage drive your triple bottom line strategies.

12 Don’t fire and forget. Leading companies know it’s a mistake to simply hand major issues to media relations or PR people and leave them to it. Get involved, stay involved. Keep a close eye on your PR, advertising and lobbying agencies.

13 Don’t play a single-note samba. If you produce regular, candid environmental, social or sustainability report, great. But don’t assume that even the most innovative reporting meets all stakeholder needs. View reporting as just one strand of your stakeholder engagement strategy.

14 Don’t overlook new media. It’s not just a matter of ‘Company X Sucks’ websites. New media mean new ways in which the outside world can track — and impact — corporate reputations and brands.

15 Don’t get stuck on costs, risks. These agendas have long been associated with risks and costs. But this is changing. Creative businesses will cross-link emerging CSR and SD constituencies (and markets) in unexpected ways. New business models will disrupt the status quo.

Good News & BadSustainAbility Publications

The Non-Reporting Report 1998Based on a survey of50 international non-reporting companies, spotlighting keybarriers to disclosureand learning from the experience ofsuccessful reporters,and suggesting waysforward.

The Social ReportingReport 1999An introduction tosocial reporting,linking growingdemands for socialaccountability withthe wider sustainabledevelopment debate.

The Internet ReportingReport 1999Explores the world of internet disclosureand reporting. WhichCERs are on the web?What have netreporters learned?How have usersreacted? Where willthe exploding net takeus next?

The Oil Sector Report 1999An 80-page reportthat examines howthe oil industry isaddressing theexpanding environ-mental and socialreporting agenda.

Life and Science2000Explores the newfrontier of bio-technology and howcompanies arereporting on theirperformance in themanagement of ‘lifesciences’.

The Global Reporters2000A ground-breakingbenchmark survey of corporate sustain-ability reporting.Presents an in-depthanalysis of 50 leading internationalsustainability reports,with a review ofsectoral issues andhot topics.

Buried Treasure2001Maps the impact of corporate sustain-able developmentperformance inreporting on businesssuccess, and tries touncover if, and how, it enhances businessvalues.

The Power to Change 2001Explores the linksbetween corporategovernance, the triplebottom line and theleadership role ofboards of directors indelivering sustainablevalue for markets and society.

Virtual Sustainability 2001Analyses thegrowing linkagesbetween sustainabledevelopment andthe internet. Topicsrange from web-based sustainabilityreporting to cyber-activism.

Driving Sustainability 2001Looks at the ways inwhich leading auto-motive companies are responding to thesustainable mobilityagenda. Key issues:climate change; lifecycle management;liveable cities; andimpacts on emergingeconomies.

Engaging Stakeholders publications areavailable as printed reports or as electronicPDF files. Reports can be ordered in eitherformat and electronic files can be down-loaded from the SustainAbility websiteat www.sustainability.com

Cannibals with Forks1997The book in whichJohn Elkingtonintroduced the triplebottom line to theworld. Paperback,Capstone/NewSociety, UK/US.

The Chrysalis Economy2001John Elkington’s newbook explores theinterface betweenvalues and valuecreation. Hardback,Capstone/John Wiley,UK/US.

Acknowledgements

This is SustainAbility’s second GordianKnot report. Once again, our sincerethanks go to our sponsors, listed on the back cover fold-out, who are itsgodparents. Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderelof UNEP has played the role of fairygodmother — alongside her colleaguesRobert Bisset and Laura Williamson, who helped wave the wand.

Good News & Bad owes a great deal to thehard work of the Ketchum team. We are indebted to Gavin Power and hiscolleagues, Richard Aldwinckle, ClaireBaty, Nhu-Y Canh, Yasmin Crowther, Erika Gabrielsen, Jorge Gonzalez, Chris Liu,John Paluszek and Sarah Partrick.

At SustainAbility, we thank all ourcolleagues, both in London and New York. But we would particularly like toacknowledge the key roles played by Seb Beloe in developing the relationshipwith Ketchum, Sue Newell in shepherding,Tell Münzing and Peter Zollinger forongoing inputs, Jan Scherer, and FrancesScott for keeping an watchful eye on thefinal stages of production.

We would also like to express ourgratitude to all the interviewees listed onthe inside front cover — and to those whotook the time to review an advanced draftof the report. Special thanks for anassortment of inputs to Linda Descano ofCitigroup; Leyla Alyanak and Aliza Dichterof MediaChannel; Helen Holdaway of theEnvironment Foundation; Chris Rose, PeterSinton of The San Francisco Chronicle; andFrank Werner of oekom research AG.

The report’s design, once again, is the workof Rupert Bassett. His influence has beenan increasingly powerful leitmotif in ourwork. Thank you, Rupert. In terms ofillustrations, we thank — among others —Panos Pictures and Still Pictures.

We have done our best to ensure thatGood News & Bad is accurate. At this pointit is standard practice to say that anyremaining errors are our responsibility, butthe fact that this report is also availableelectronically gives us the opportunity tomake corrections. So please let us know if you spotsomething we didn’t.

Publication Details

Good News & BadFirst Edition 2002ISBN 1-903168–04-X

© SustainAbility, Ketchum and the United Nations Environment Programme 2002. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system ortransmitted in any form or by any means:electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape,photocopying, recording or otherwise,without permission in writing from thecopyright holders. Designations employedand the presentation of material in thispublication do not imply the expression ofany opinion whatsoever on the part ofUNEP concerning the legal status of anycountry, territory, city or area or of itsfrontiers or boundaries. Moreover, theviews expressed do not necessarilyrepresent the decision or the stated policyof UNEP nor does citing of trade names orcommercial processes constituteendorsement.

PrinterThe Beacon PressT +44 (0)1825 768611www.beaconpress.co.uk Beacon, who printed Good News & Bad,are registered under both the EMAS andISO14001 schemes. Recent progresshighlights include the following:vegetable-based inks are used; film andfilm processing chemicals have beeneliminated; ‘green’ electricity is sourcedfrom Ecotricity; 95% of all press cleaningsolvents are now recycled; and wasterecycling is now at 90%. The firm has justwon its 21st environmental performanceaward.

DesignerRupert BassettT +44 (0)7958 629 290

Engaging Stakeholders Program

The companies listed on the back coverparticipate in the 2001 EngagingStakeholders program — our joint initiativewith UNEP focused on tools for transparency, accountability andengagement. Engaging Stakeholderspublications are available as printedreports or as electronic PDF files. Reports can be ordered in either formatand electronic files can be downloadedfrom the SustainAbility website atwww.sustainability.com

The Eye of Horus The Media Program’s logotype is arepresentation of the left eye of Eye ofHorus. In Ancient Egypt, this symbolizeduniversal fertility, prosperity, trans-formation, completeness and the keen eyeof justice, from which no action — publicor private — could escape. With the medianow seen as extensions of the humansenses, note that the all-seeing eye alsorepresented the senses: sight, touch,hearing, taste, smell — and (in the case of the left eye) the sixth sense, intuition.Finally, with trust in the media nowprecariously low, recall that the left eye ofHorus was destroyed, but then restored.

SustainAbility Ltd11-13 KnightsbridgeLondon SW1X 7LY United KingdomT +44 (0)20 7245 1116 F +44 (0)20 7245 1117www.sustainability.com

United Nations Environment Programme — Technology, Industry and Economics Division39—43 Quai André Citroën 75739 Paris Cedex 15 FranceT +33 (0)1 4437 1450F +33 (0)1 4437 1474www.unepie.org

Ketchum711 Third AvenueNew York, NY 10017USAT +1 646 935 3900F +1 646 935 4499www.ketchum.com

AstraZeneca Bayer BASF BPThe BodyShop

NovoGroup

Rohm and Haas

Bristol-MyersSquibbCompany

CISInsurance

Statoil TXU Europe UBS VolkswagenGroup

The DowChemicalCompany

SkanskaGeneralMotors

ESAB

Canon

NovartisITT Flygt Nike SouthAfricanBreweries

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