Synopses & Reviews
In Complacency and Collusion, Keith J. Butterick draws on extensive experience as a journalist and scholar to show why financial and business journalism is so often toothless. He offers compelling explanations for why big business needs the press—and vice versa—and presents piercing analyses of the inadequacies of reporting in such major outlets as the Economist and the Financial Times, showing how those failures are rooted in the close relationship between businesses and those covering them. He concludes with a reflection on what the growth and spread of a complacent, complicit corporate journalism will mean for the future of a truly free media.
Synopsis
Business Journalism: A Critical Political Economy Approach critically explores the failures of business journalists in striking the balance between the bottom line business model and their role in defending the public interest.
Drawing on historical and political economic perspectives and analysing these in relation to critical political economic theory, the book explores failures of business journalism through the dwindling of social responsibility in the business journalist's role in holding political and corporate power to account.
Ibrahim Seaga Shaw draws on a diverse range of case studies, including:
- investigative journalism in The Standard Oil and Enron Scandals
- corporate propaganda in relation to business reporting
- financial Journalism and the global financial crises of the late-90s and 2008
- public business journalism and subprime mortgage loans, horsemeat and bent iPhone 6 scandals
- ethical challenges of business and journalism from developed to emerging BRICS economies
- business or financial journalism? Modernity vs postmodernity, macroeconomics vs microeconomics
- challenges of business journalism in the digital age.
Business Journalism: A Critical Political Economy Approach is essential reading for students and scholars interested in understanding the historical failings and potential futures for business journalism and those wishing to develop specialist financial, economic and business reporting in today's globalised media landscape.
About the Author
Keith J. Butterick is director of the Huddersfield Centre for Communication and Consultation Research at the University of Huddersfield.