Johan Lidberg

Reporting The Global Financial Crisis

During the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, the financial press attracted criticism for its coverage: specifically that it did not provide any forewarnings to the general public; that it lacked sufficient scepticism when reporting on financial and economic trends; and that reporters were too close to the sources they used for information. This paper argues the GFC represents only the latest manifestation of dissatisfaction with the financial press, with similar concerns being raised in previous financial crises such as the recession of the late 1990s and the Dot Com boom in 2000. The paper presents the results of a longitudinal tri-nation quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the reportage in three mainstream newspapers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia across three decades, along with industry insights provided by interviews with reporters in each of the countries studied. The interviews and empirical evidence indicate there has been a decline in mainstream financial journalism standards since the 1980s, as the media have faced increasing institutional, ideological, and industrial pressures.

The International Freedom of Information Index

Abstract During the past two decades, the number of countries that have enacted Freedom of Information (FOI) laws has increased dramatically. In many respects, FOI laws have become a democratic ‘right of passage’. No FOI, no ‘proper’ democracy. The promises of FOI regimes are far-reaching: extensive independent access to government-held information will lead to increased transparency, prevention of corruption and maladministration and greater public participation in the political process. But are these promises borne out by the practice of FOI? This article describes a study that tracked a number of real-life FOI requests in five countries. The project puts forward a prototype for the first International Freedom of Information Index, ranking the five countries of study on how their FOI regimes function in practice. In conclusion, the paper suggest that the FOI Index should be expanded to cover all 65 plus countries that have implemented FOI laws. It is argued that such an index could play an important role in furthering some of the core properties of liberal democracy: transparency, political accountability and good governance.

Who Captures the Voice of the Climate? Policy Networks and the Political Role of Media in Australia, France and Japan

Climate change is by some scholars labelled a “wicked problem”, with no single problem definition and hence no ultimate solution. Such wickedness makes climate change policy-making dependent on complex networks of actors with specific interests and resources, so-called ‘policy networks’. From the perspective of policy networks, in this chapter we compare voice representation in the IPCC AR5 coverage across three countries, Australia, France and Japan. Understanding who is selected by media to speak about climate change assists in building knowledge of how media operate in climate policy networks. Our aim was to understand how news coverage is constructed in local political cultures, but also to address questions about the media’s role in the complex nexus of science–policy–media networks in different countries. To conclude, based on the findings and our analysis, we suggest that a new role of broker-journalism would aid navigation of the heavily politicised and ideologically driven discourse about climate change.