Codes of Conduct

There is one independent organisation called the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in the United Kingdom. It sets the code of conduct which “attempt to encourage or enforce ethical standards in the media” (Welsh et al. 2005: 381), specifically all national and regional newspapers and magazines. It is a self-regulation guideline for journalists. The latest version of PCC’s codes of practice was ratified in August 2006.

Clause 13 of the codes is about the ‘financial journalism’, and it has three guidelines. Firstly, it is about the dishonest use of the information for the journalists’ profit. Journalists must not use the financial information receiving through their activity for their own profit “even where the law does not prohibit it”. Secondly, it is about the disclosure of journalists’ own financial interest in case of writing. They must not write about the companies’ shares or securities which they or their families have an interest without telling the interest to the editor. Lastly, they must not deal with the companies’ shares or securities which they are going to cover or recently covered (see the Appendix).

Chapter 4

METHODOLOGY

As Bakan describes, “Elements of Anglo-American model also increasingly shape its counterparts in other countries, especially in European nations and Japan” (2004:3). Therefore, this paper mainly focuses on the situation of the business/financial journalism in the United Kingdom and Japan.

This research applies the data gathering approach through a series of interviews and questionnaire. By doing them, the researcher expects to have the ideas and insights of what happens in the communication between journalists and news sources in reality. The interviewees were selected from both sides: journalists (including freelance journalist and ex-journalist) and the public relations people such as the PR agencies and the in-house corporation PR people. This study has twelve interviews with journalists and PR people, and one questionnaire answer from a Japanese corporation in total.

In order to have the realistic point of view about the financial/business journalism broadly, the researcher had tried to contact not only to the journalists in newspapers, but also to the people in broadcasting, newswires, magazines, web news and freelance. In addition, he offers the interviews with the corporations which have the in-house PR team and the PR agencies, and the non-governmental organisation which watchdogs the corporations’ behaviour as well. The interviewees are British, American and Japanese, who are the people of economically leading countries and financial/business journalism has been developed. All journalists who accepted the researcher’s interview have more than five years’ experience in journalism.

Interviews

The interviews were held from June to August 2006. Six interviews with the people who are in the United Kingdom were basically carried out at their office in London or Leeds during their business hours. The discussion was with open ended questions which allow the interviewees to answer as much as they want. In addition, the face to face communications brought the relaxed atmosphere rather than phone conversations or emails. The entire discussions were recorded with the interviewees’ permission to avoid misunderstanding of what the interviewees answer. They were transcribed afterwards.

In the case of the interviews with Japanese journalists or journalists who stay in Japan, most of the interviews were carried out over the phone with open ended questions during weekends when they were at home. The discussions were not recorded because of the difficulty to record the phone conversation, so the researcher wrote the conversation down to his notebook.

In sum, the journalists (including retired ones) who accept the researcher’s offer works for the Financial Times, Bloomberg, the Yorkshire Evening Post, the Business Week, Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), and the Economist (Japan). In addition, one reporter accepted the interview under the condition to be anonymous both name and organisation. The PR agency which accepted this interview was Weber Shandwick (London).

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