The corporate scandals of Enron and WorldCom were the shots heard ’round the business world. As a result, "the reactionary media [acted] like every American company was a sham; every CEO a criminal," said Fox’s Dagen McDowell on the October 23 "Your World with Neil Cavuto."

     That negativity spread throughout media coverage of business until "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," said Jeff Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management on the same October show.

     The Business & Media Institute previously found that slant – negative to the point of painting businessmen as criminals – in American entertainment media.

     This was the third installment of BMI’s look at how the media portray the American businessman. The results, though unsurprising, are very disappointing. No matter where you turn in the mainstream media – TV dramas, Oscar-nominated movies or the evening news – businessmen are depicted as criminals.

     BMI started with the mission of finding businessmen on news shows and seeing how they were covered. Researchers devoted thousands of man-hours to the most detailed analysis possible.

     The findings on the portrayal of businessmen showed how network news shows, and by extension the American public, view those who build our society. The news audience sees people on the street fuming about oil companies as they buy their gasoline. They see workers fuming because their bosses made a lot more money than they did.

     Men-on-the-street are a dime a dozen, but businessmen stay behind the scenes in media coverage until something goes wrong. Then the Enron and WorldCom templates come out, and businessmen get blamed for the scandal du jour.

     They are put on the spot to defend themselves, sometimes from legitimate complaints but sometimes simply for doing business. The year 2006 showed that the media focused on criminal businessmen more often than those who were philanthropists publicly giving to others. That didn’t even touch on those whose gifts and actions weren’t publicized, who go about their business every day across the country.

     American businessmen and women were busy in 2006. They were building companies, hiring workers and promoting products. U.S. businesses created 1.8 million jobs. And businessmen were sharing their success through donations to millions of people at home and abroad.

     But in evening news portrayals, they were most likely to be under attack – when the news focused on businessmen at all. On the three broadcast networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), businessmen appeared in about 37 percent of business stories. Not just all stories, but stories about business, where they would be expected.

     A year of close examination revealed that the nightly news shows have a long way to go to represent the role of businessmen in American life and to portray it in a balanced way. Until journalists can curtail knee-jerk negative reactions to money and present ways the free market helps consumers and employers alike, the audience’s understanding and appreciation of business will continue to suffer.

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