World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

This study addresses corporate goals in worldwide media companies and the dualism between economic and journalistic goals that is inherent to the fulfilment of the functions of media in a democratic society. Content analysis was conducted on the letters to shareholders of annual reports of media companies in twelve countries, in order to study the prevalence of economic goals versus journalistic or society oriented goals in media organizations. Additionally, we studied whether external factors have an effect on the prevalence of economic, societal and journalistic goals in the communications of media organizations. The results show a negative correlation between economic and societal goals, establishing empirically the existence of a conflict between one type and the other. In addition, ownership was established as a driving factor of the focus on one type of goals over others, as publicly listed companies are less likely to report on societal and journalistic goals than non-listed private companies. Media concentration is found to have a significant and negative impact on the mention of journalistic goals, strong public service broadcasters seem to have a negative impact on journalistic goals among content companies.