"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.
Was the criminal-heavy coverage
realistic? Not at all, said Jeff Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of
Management on the October 23 "Your World with Neil Cavuto." He
recalled the media frenzy that started with the breaking of the
Enron story.
"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.
The business world didn’t deserve
exaggerated treatment of its criminals any more than any other
field, as economist Walter Williams
