When CEOs complain about negative business coverage

Olivia Barrow, a reporter for the Milwaukee Business Journal, writes about how chief executive officers and other business executives complain that they only receive negative coverage from the financial media.

Barrow writes, “In my case, writing for a local business publication, I write stories that aim to help businesses grow by giving them leads they can use to make sales, interviewing industry leaders, explaining tough issues, analyzing trends and helping them avoid huge pitfalls. That last part often involves ‘negative’ seeming stories — like reporting when a company is laying off hundreds of workers, or when their sales decreased for the third year in a row, or when they get sued, because other business owners need to know who NOT to do business with just as much as they need to know who TO do business with. Does this possibly compound the hurt of the company we’re reporting the news about? Yes. Am I conflicted about that? Sometimes, yes. Especially if I have friends who work for that company. But businesses fail all the time, and their owners learn something, and come back stronger. So I hold on to that.

“The disgruntled CEO also called on the media to help the manufacturing community change the perception of manufacturing jobs by covering the ‘good news’ of events like the one I was right then attending. I wanted to stand up and say, “I am literally here. What more do you want from me?” But at the same time, I’m not an extension of a business or an industry’s marketing department.

Read more here.