Businessmen are in every city and town in America.
They make the tractors that harvest your food, the jewelry you wear and the electricity that makes our society run. They sell vegetables at your farmers' market and help you get connected to the World Wide Web. They give heart surgeons a place to work and kids a place to play after school.
And whether you work for one of them, a non-profit, or the government, they pay for your job.
What do they earn for all of their hard work? Abuse.
Just tune in to almost any episode of "Law & Order" and you'll see that TV dramas portray businessmen as criminals. ("Bad Company I: For American Businessmen, Primetime is Crimetime.") Oscar-nominated films are just as bad, depicting businessmen as villains and rarely showing any positive portrayals. ("Bad Company II: Oscar-Nominated Movies Bash Business, but Hollywood Claims That's Entertainment.")
Gordon Gekko, the investment genius in the movie "Wall Street," inevitably gets invoked when businessmen are studied. His famous line, "Greed is good," seems to have become the foundation for media coverage of businessmen.
Businessmen on defense were by far the most popular portrayal, appearing more than four times as often as businessmen-philanthropists. CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" had almost half of its businessmen on defense.
In stories that had a viewpoint about businessmen, businessmen were portrayed in a defensive posture a third of the time in 2006. The most popular story templates were about money. Consumer prices, company profits and CEO pay were popular targets.
In a world of Enron and WorldCom, the business names people know are associated with scandal. A July 2007 Harris Poll asked people how they viewed different occupations. The highest rating was "very great prestige." Only 14 percent of respondents said they viewed businessmen as that prestigious. Professionals in the financial services, like stock brokers and bankers, ranked even lower.
BMI researchers examined all stories appearing from Jan. 1, 2006, to Dec. 31, 2006, on the three broadcast news shows, CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto," for portrayals of businessmen.
The findings were surprising: businessmen and women in the private sector employ more than 110 million Americans, yet they appeared in just 37 percent of business stories.
That could be because it's when something goes wrong that journalists notice business - which can mean executives have legal reasons not to appear on camera. Or maybe they just didn't want to get raked over the coals, as some businessmen in the study did. 
Certainly, some negativity was warranted. The collapse of Enron alone cost employees and shareholders alike. And journalists were right to report on it. But given the same news to report in 2006, why did the "CBS Evening News" mention Enron's guilty parties four times as often as ABC's "World News" did?
No one has to remind the media to do negative stories. What's lacking is the rest of the story. Where are the businessmen who give, who help and who inspire?
There were the outright attacks on "runaway pay" and the stories about "corporate crooks." But demeaning attitudes toward businessmen also crept into otherwise positive stories.
"He's so dear. He really is a hometown hero, isn't he?" said anchor Katie Couric on the December 15 "CBS Evening News." Reporter Steve Hartman had profiled a 17-year-old grocery store owner who had saved the local market in Truman, Minn.
Hartman's reply was telling: "He's a great kid, but he's a businessman, too. He makes his grandma pay full price for groceries."
Famed philosopher and free-market thinker Adam Smith said more than 200 years ago that "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the baker, or the brewer that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
In other words, goods and services don't just happen. There are people who create them and work hard to do so. If Americans wish to enjoy good food, electronics, houses and cars, business must go on.
As Gary Wolfram, a Hillsdale College economist and BMI adviser, has explained, "The greatest wealth is gained by those who produce something for which others willingly give up their income. A system that allows for enormous wealth in this way is one that creates an incentive for people to produce things of enormous value for others."
Businesspeople are doing just that. They're inventing and marketing and hoping to offer something that benefits other people - otherwise, they'll go out of business.
American businessmen and women - the country's builders, employers, innovators, taxpayers and philanthropists - are everywhere. The only place it's hard to find them is on the evening news.
That is, of course, until they have a product recall or layoffs. Maybe they have to raise their prices. Then the media will be there waiting to cover it, scrutinizing their balance sheets and making businessmen defend every inch of ground they gain.
Interviewing So Bad It Hurts
Quite possibly the worst example of an attack on a businessman came from ABC's Brian Ross. Far from simply putting a CEO in an uncomfortable situation, this "World News" excerpt of a longer ABC interview all but accused a businessman of killing his workers.
Wilbur Ross, head of the International Coal Group (ICG), was in the reporter's sights following a tragic collapse at the ICG-owned Sago Mine in West Virginia. Twelve miners died. By January 6, when Brian Ross's "World News" interview aired, an investigation into the cause of the collapse was under way, but ABC didn't wait to place blame.
Elizabeth Vargas opened saying the "billionaire chairman was well aware of the mine's extensive safety problems." Brian Ross re-emphasized that Wilbur Ross was a "socially prominent billionaire" and pummeled him with stinging questions.
Wilbur Ross could barely get in a word - in the 400-word report, he was shown speaking only 37 words. Even those words were brief responses between being cut off by the reporter.
With time, the truth about the mine's collapse and the fallen miners came out. But ABC treated that with a mere news brief.
On the May 9, 2007, "World News," anchor Charles Gibson read the item that countered reporter Ross's treatment of the coal CEO.
"A final report on last year's Sago Mine disaster offers new details about the explosion that killed 12 miners," Gibson said. "While lightning is blamed, federal investigators identified three root causes of the West Virginia tragedy. They say two lightning bolts struck at the same time, sending an electrical current to a buried cable, touching off the deadly methane blast in a sealed section of the mine."
Two lightning bolts found guilty after a lengthy investigation. And a brief follow up, with no apologies to the businessman ABC had skewered and practically accused of murder months earlier.
Usually, however, it wasn't murder businessmen were accused of - it was making too much money, or not giving away enough.
Fox News, which on the whole was slightly more negative than positive, had more portrayals of businessmen on defense than any other study category. One interview on the November 30 "Your World with Neil Cavuto" was particularly hard on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Ballmer was trying to promote his company's new operating system, Vista, but guest anchor Stuart Varney pressed him on practically every topic imaginable. Varney's volleys included: "You've lost your reputation. You've lost your reputation as being the innovators." "The stock has done virtually nothing in five years."
Finally, Varney pointedly asked Ballmer what he did with his personal money.
Ballmer answered graciously, "Well, I like to handle things a little bit more privately."
CEO Pay: An Easy Target
The media motto seems to be that it's okay to make money as long as you give it away. But if there's any hint that a businessman was actually accepting a big paycheck, journalists became critics.
The idea that CEOs should "apologize" for their pay, even if their companies do well, isn't new in media coverage.
"Though both Exxon and UnitedHealthCare prospered and so did their shareholders under Raymond and McGuire's leadership, some still see their huge compensation packages as CEO pay run amok," Thompson said.
She ended the report with a class-warfare comparison: "…the outrage remains, with the average CEO taking home by one estimate 431 times what the average worker does."
CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" used the same comparison October 19, as Lisa Sylvester and Dobbs editorialized about CEOs.
"According to the AFL-CIO, the average CEO - now these are just, not the CEOs at the top, but the average chief executive officer - makes 431 times the salary of a median worker in the United States," Sylvester said.
Dobbs replied: "That would work out to mean that a CEO would make in one day what it would take that so-called average worker two years to earn. That seems just a little disproportionate." Sylvester agreed: "A little unfair indeed, Lou."
Dobbs and Sylvester, hardly giving an objective report, echoed the same class-warfare "outrage" that NBC's Thompson had depicted. But as for accuracy and usefulness, their comparison came up short.
The
Whether the press used the inflated union comparison or another figure, the comparison itself is a red herring, according to a leading economist.
"In the wake of the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals, the purveyors of envy have found another opportunity to preach about what they consider the evils of high CEO salaries, retirements and bonuses,"
"If one company has an effective CEO, it is not the only company that would like to have him on the payroll," Williams wrote. "In order to keep him, the company must pay him enough so that he can't be lured elsewhere."
What Have You Got to Say to This?
Sometimes during the year stories set up businessmen so that their answers looked feeble in the face of an onslaught of criticism. In those cases, having the businessman in the story didn't do much to help his case. In fact, it probably hurt because of the way the journalists presented things.
CBS gave James May, president of the Air Transport Association, a quick lesson about this tactic by letting him provide an answer to his industry's woes - after those woes had been described in detail.
"Two hundred thousand jobs have been eliminated in the past five years," said CBS's Bob Orr on April 8. "Pensions and benefits have been scratched. But that's not been enough. Fuel costs three times what it did in 1998, the last year airlines made a profit."
Orr spent most of the story building the case against the airlines, mentioning rising passenger costs and union negotiations.
Near the end of the story, he showed May saying, "I think the passenger has got the best deal they've ever had."
Likewise, on April 22 CBS was setting up a case for oil "price gouging." Reporter Tony Guida accused: "Not hard to believe when you see prices at the pump jump three cents overnight, but Big Oil says, 'Don't blame us.'"
With the deck already stacked against him, John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute had a mere 11 words to argue: "Our companies don't set the price. The market sets the prices."
Whether it was consumer prices, profits, or their own pay, businessmen spent a lot of time defending the role of money in business. Journalists also cited at least 19 businessmen for layoffs, while several more had to stammer in response to E.coli scares in food distribution. The defensive category was by far the largest in the positive or negative portrayals of businessmen.
And those were just the law-abiding ones.
Associated Press referenced a very different number in June 2007: "A recent report by the Congressional Research Service helps to put the executive pay issue into a real-world context. CEOs make, on average, 179 times as much as rank and file workers, double the 90-to-1 ratio in 1994, according to the agency's calculations."wrote George Mason University economics professor Walter Williams. "After all, according to them, evil must be afoot when a corporate executive earns more in a week that the average worker earns in an entire year."
Evening news shows have furthered the same anti-business attitudes, reporting on "corporate fat cats," "CEO pay run amok," and executives "paraded and disgraced to jail" - when they bother to mention them at all.
'Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen' - and We Covered It 105 Times
"If ever there was a story that starts with 'Oh, how the mighty have fallen,' this has to be it," said CBS's Bob Schieffer on the May 25 "Evening News."
Two guilty verdicts in the Enron trials - Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay - had entered the historical record, and CBS was clear about what that meant for business.
"Lay and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling are now the official poster boys for corporate greed and scandal …" declared reporter Lee Cowan.
Over on ABC the same night, Chris Cuomo agreed.
"Enron has become the poster child for corporate greed and deception," Cuomo said. "The question was whether the system could hold those at the top accountable. And today, the jury sent a clear message: Justice can reach her hand into the boardrooms of the rich and powerful."
He added: "The stakes for the prosecution went way beyond the defendants at trial. If, after four years of investigating, they couldn't win this case, which had become the symbol for corporate greed, it would seem as if CEOs were beyond the reach of the law."
The public drama and symbolism of "corporate greed" wasn't lost on the American people, as Alan Murray noted in his book "Revolt in the Boardroom: The New Rules of Power in Corporate America" (2007). He wrote about a change in how people viewed business leadership.
Iconic, invincible CEOs went the way of the dodo bird, Murray wrote, "as the new century witnessed a string of calamitous events - the collapse of the stock market bubble, the terror attacks of September 11 and the corporate scandals of Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco. Suddenly, the public perception of CEOs plummeted. Regulators, legislators and attorneys general swung into action."
The media swung into action, too - the public perception didn't change on its own. In 2006, businessmen tied to Enron were mentioned 64 times on the evening news shows. Enron's ranks alone were almost equal to the number of philanthropists who showed up across all five networks.
Business crime does happen - but ABC proved just because something is in the news, you don't have to cover it to death. "World News" had six mentions of Enron-related businessmen - by far the fewest of the broadcast networks. NBC had 12, while CBS had 24 - four times as many as ABC.
Overall, the number of criminal portrayals in 2006 surpassed businessmen who were donating money and resources for good causes. In fact, businessmen showed up as criminals 1½ times more often than they did as philanthropists.
That meant viewers were hearing about "another corporate crook heading to the slammer" or "the last of the corporate fat cats to go down with Enron" more often than they heard about businessmen using their success for the good of others. At 105 portrayals across the five shows, that averages out to almost two per week for the year.
CNN was the worst in this category with a 7-to-1 criminal-to-philanthropist ratio. "Lou Dobbs Tonight" had an overall lack of businessmen, which made those appearances stand out.
CBS and Fox both had a more than 2-to-1 ratio of criminals to philanthropists. In contrast, both other broadcast networks (ABC and NBC) did more charity portrayals than criminal ones.
"Five years ago you would have thought the sky was falling and every company was led by rogue CEOs, when it turns out 97 percent of them are brilliantly led and certainly honestly led," Sonnenfeld said.
"Dishonest Enron and WorldCom CEOs are rare among corporate executives," Williams wrote. "As such, all CEOs shouldn't be tarnished for the misdeeds of a few any more than we'd tarnish all newspaper reporters because a few among their ranks were liars like the Boston Globe's Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair of The New York Times, and The Washington Post's Janet Cooke."
America depends on philanthropy. Schools, universities, hospitals, performing arts centers - many foundations of the community couldn't run without generous donors.
"Ours is certainly not the only nation to have philanthropy - in fact, most societies have traditions of giving in some form or other. But we are one in which philanthropy affects almost all parts of our culture and a huge proportion of our people."
That quote was from Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford, who is on Forbes' list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World. She added: "At the heart of U.S. philanthropy is freedom."
Berresford extolled the freedom Americans have to support causes that are important to them - a diversity of causes. But there wasn't much diversity in the nightly news coverage of philanthropy.
The star of 2006 was Warren Buffett's historic $43.5-billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose causes include AIDS relief, vaccine research, libraries, education and computers for children.
Granted, such a historic gift easily merited media coverage. But if it hadn't been for Buffett, audiences would have heard little about philanthropy at all. For example, even on ABC - which had the most coverage of philanthropy - the Gates Foundation's causes made up 24 of the 30 causes mentioned. That's a whopping 80 percent of ABC's charity coverage. Overall, Gates' causes claimed 56 percent of all the charity coverage across the five networks.
Before he started giving away billions of dollars to poor people, Gates' name was synonymous with his own Big Business, Microsoft, and worries about a corporate monopoly. In March 1998, ABC's Peter Jennings introduced one story: "Now we're going to take 'A Closer Look' at whether we consumers should be afraid of Bill Gates, and if so, why?"
The broadcast networks detailed the case against Microsoft and Gates, with little free-market defense of the company, according to analysis by the Media Research Center's Rich Noyes.
For other businessmen, giving to a media-approved cause went a long way toward getting positive press. For example, businessmen from the air travel industry appeared 37 times in 2006. They were usually defending price hikes, flight cancellations and the like. But at least one was different.
CBS featured Richard Branson, one of "a growing list of billionaires who are donating to philanthropic causes," Katie Couric said on September 21. The "Evening News" wasn't bashing this airline executive - because he was pledging $3 billion of his profits to develop alternative fuels in an attempt to stem global warming.
Global warming and AIDS aren't the only causes out there, however. A peek at
Americans are very generous. According to the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation's numbers, crunched by the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Prosperity, U.S. private assistance abroad amounted to $92.2 billion in 2005. About $2.2 billion came from foundations, and $5.1 billion from corporations. But $61.7 billion of that was from individuals.
Yet the evening news shows portrayed businessmen and women who were donating only 66 times - and more than half of those mentions referenced just two people, Buffett and Gates.
ABC was the best network when it came to showing the generosity of businesspeople, with 11 percent of its portrayals as philanthropists. NBC was close behind at 10 percent. Fox and CBS tied with 6 percent each.
CNN trailed the lot with a paltry 1.6 percent. Only one out of 62 portrayals with a viewpoint about businessmen had to do with charitable giving. Adding insult to injury, CNN had seven portrayals of criminal businessmen, giving it a 7-to-1 criminal-to-philanthropist ratio.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Most Generous Donors shows 60 people in addition to Buffett who pledged $30 million or more in 2006, including 21 gifts of $100 million or more. Their beneficiaries included college scholarships, religious education, countless health organizations, universities, scientific research and the arts.
America depends on philanthropy. Schools, universities, hospitals, performing arts centers - many foundations of the community couldn't run without generous donors.
"Ours is certainly not the only nation to have philanthropy - in fact, most societies have traditions of giving in some form or other. But we are one in which philanthropy affects almost all parts of our culture and a huge proportion of our people."
That quote was from Ford Foundation President Susan Berresford, who is on Forbes' list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World. She added: "At the heart of U.S. philanthropy is freedom."
Berresford extolled the freedom Americans have to support causes that are important to them - a diversity of causes. But there wasn't much diversity in the nightly news coverage of philanthropy.
The star of 2006 was Warren Buffett's historic $43.5-billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose causes include AIDS relief, vaccine research, libraries, education and computers for children.
Granted, such a historic gift easily merited media coverage. But if it hadn't been for Buffett, audiences would have heard little about philanthropy at all. For example, even on ABC - which had the most coverage of philanthropy - the Gates Foundation's causes made up 24 of the 30 causes mentioned. That's a whopping 80 percent of ABC's charity coverage. Overall, Gates' causes claimed 56 percent of all the charity coverage across the five networks.
Before he started giving away billions of dollars to poor people, Gates' name was synonymous with his own Big Business, Microsoft, and worries about a corporate monopoly. In March 1998, ABC's Peter Jennings introduced one story: "Now we're going to take 'A Closer Look' at whether we consumers should be afraid of Bill Gates, and if so, why?"
The broadcast networks detailed the case against Microsoft and Gates, with little free-market defense of the company, according to analysis by the Media Research Center's Rich Noyes.
For other businessmen, giving to a media-approved cause went a long way toward getting positive press. For example, businessmen from the air travel industry appeared 37 times in 2006. They were usually defending price hikes, flight cancellations and the like. But at least one was different.
CBS featured Richard Branson, one of "a growing list of billionaires who are donating to philanthropic causes," Katie Couric said on September 21. The "Evening News" wasn't bashing this airline executive - because he was pledging $3 billion of his profits to develop alternative fuels in an attempt to stem global warming.
Global warming and AIDS aren't the only causes out there, however. A peek at
Americans are very generous. According to the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation's numbers, crunched by the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Prosperity, U.S. private assistance abroad amounted to $92.2 billion in 2005. About $2.2 billion came from foundations, and $5.1 billion from corporations. But $61.7 billion of that was from individuals.
Yet the evening news shows portrayed businessmen and women who were donating only 66 times - and more than half of those mentions referenced just two people, Buffett and Gates.
ABC was the best network when it came to showing the generosity of businesspeople, with 11 percent of its portrayals as philanthropists. NBC was close behind at 10 percent. Fox and CBS tied with 6 percent each.
CNN trailed the lot with a paltry 1.6 percent. Only one out of 62 portrayals with a viewpoint about businessmen had to do with charitable giving. Adding insult to injury, CNN had seven portrayals of criminal businessmen, giving it a 7-to-1 criminal-to-philanthropist ratio.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy's Most Generous Donors shows 60 people in addition to Buffett who pledged $30 million or more in 2006, including 21 gifts of $100 million or more. Their beneficiaries included college scholarships, religious education, countless health organizations, universities, scientific research and the arts.
Small Business vs. Big Business
Two companies make money at the same business, but one is called "Goliath" and tied to consumers' "pain," while the other is the site of a happy "rags-to-riches story" when its jobs are boosted - by rising consumer prices. What are the differences between a hated oil company and a beloved one?
Size and money.
This study showed a marked difference in reporting on small businesses and bigger ones, and it was obvious when it came to the oil industry.
"Today, as the price of gas ticked higher across the country, in Atlanta, David threatened Goliath with a boycott," declared CBS's Byron Pitts on April 26. This time "David" wasn't just the consumers - who were under the influence of an oil industry ad campaign, Pitts said, "to convince Americans their profits have nothing to do with your pain."
This time "David" included a gas station owner, who mentioned the fat-cat image at the top of his own industry chain.
Pitts piled onto that imagery: "The oil industry makes no apologies. For some perspective on how big is big, ExxonMobil can make a record $41 billion in profit by the end of this year. That's enough money to give every American man, woman and child a check for $137."
Of course, as the Business & Media Institute has pointed out, that $41 billion didn't go to one person getting "fat" at the top. ExxonMobil is one of the world's largest public companies, meaning its shareholders profit when the company profits. The company has more than 2.5 million individual shareholders - and that's before you count institutional shareholders, such as retirement plans and mutual funds, representing even more investors.
The profits from gasoline sales don't all go straight to ExxonMobil, either. As the American Petroleum Institute's Rayola Dougher explained on "CNN Live" April 27, "the profits are distributed among the crude oil producers, the refiners, the distributors, the marketers. All together last year, the oil industry earned 8.5 cents on every dollar of sales. The rest of U.S. industry earned about 7.7."
Other industries, too - like the media - have much larger profit margins than oil companies.
While oil companies might have a 9- to 10-percent profit margin,
CBS had a greater profit margin than that. In 2006, the company made $1.66 billion profit - 11.6 percent of their total earnings of $14.3 billion.
And other media companies have even higher margins. David Carlson, former president of the Society of Professional Journalists,
Media Rules Different for Small Businesses
Oddly enough, in the midst of anti-Big-Oil stories, ABC produced a positive story about smaller oil firms - even though they were prospering from the same higher oil and gas prices.
"With oil prices at near-record highs, these are boom times for people in the oil business, including small-time producers scattered across the country," said Elizabeth Vargas on May 9.
Mike Von Fremd's report showed businessmen whose companies had suffered when prices were lower - shutting down oil wells and laying off workers. Now, the report said, they were back in business and even drilling new wells. But instead of bringing on oil critics, the story was positive.
Covering Big Oil's "Goliath," CBS spoke of consumers' "pain"; for Little Oil, ABC obliged with happy "a rags-to-riches story in America's oil patch," as Von Fremd put it.
Pitting small businesses against big ones was a theme in the coverage, which was dominated by the big guys - 78 percent of the businessmen in the news stories. Twenty percent came from smaller firms.
That's interesting when you consider that small businesses employ about half of America's private-sector workers,
Oil wasn't the only industry journalists cast in a "David versus Goliath" storyline. In fantasy baseball, the little guy should be able to play … but what about the cost to the big guy?
"Charlie Wiegert runs a St. Louis-based Internet game company that's now locked in a David and Goliath legal battle with MLB.com, the Internet arm of Major League Baseball," said CBS's Anthony Mason August 7.
MLB's arrangement sounded clear enough - the league "pays the players' union $10 million a year" for the players' Internet rights, Mason said, and then in turn licenses those rights to other sites for a fee. But fantasy leaguers like Wiegert apparently didn't think they should have to pay.
Wiegert insisted "to them this is about money and about how much money they can make and controlling everything." Another fantasy leaguer interviewed by CBS said, "I think Major League Baseball's trying to make an extra buck."
In business, as this report shows, the negativity in stories often comes from "trying to make an extra buck."
But who decides when a buck becomes "extra"?
Economist and BMI adviser Walter Williams has explained that "profits are misunderstood, seen as unearned and sometimes condemned as evil." That could apply to media coverage, where the role of money is often maligned. Williams said it is important to remember that profits are a price in the marketplace.
"Just as workers will not provide their services without wages, entrepreneurs will not provide theirs without profits," he
Profits keep them in business - and that sustains jobs, investments, insurance payments, utility consumption, and all those other pieces of the economy to which each employer - and employee - contributes.
When CBS's Trish Regan asked Owens, "What surprises you the most about how Americans perceive manufacturing here in the U.S.?" he responded: "I guess it surprises me that Americans think somehow we're losing." Regan then explained, "We're not. Last year America produced $1.79 trillion worth of goods, almost twice as much as second-place Japan." She credited a "steady increase in worker productivity." Principle over Profit Another positive story wasn't as surprising - as media coverage showed disdain for businesses' bottom-line focus, CBS appreciated one businessman who set that concern aside once a week.
