Morton Mintz

Excerpts from article in Nieman Reports, Summer 2000:

"How often have you seen or heard of a newspaper editorial or columnist or talking head criticizing grave corporate crime or misconduct, and, particularly, the executives personally responsible for such crime or misconduct?"

"I can't remember the most recent occasion."

An exchange between the writer and Assistant Attorney General James K. Robinson, Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, February 17, 1999.

Of course James Robinson was stumped: He couldn't recall media criticism of corporate immorality because so little of it occurs-none, in fact, in many major newspapers. Year after year after year, leading mainstream opinion-shapers shun the subject. Moreover, they generally prefer not to admit the shunning. It's fleedom of the press.

These conclusions arise from a survey early last year of columnists and editorial writers that was created to determine the extent of commentary in the print and electronic press on "immoral corporate behavior." Included in this category were incidents involving corporate crime as well as corporate conduct that "significantly harms the environment and human life, safety or health, or defrauds federal, state or local governments or large groups of individuals."....

In all, 124 editorial writers, columnists and commentators were queried about what they had said about egregious corporate behavior during the 10 years ending December 1998. Examples of news reports about companies' misconduct were included with the query...From the responses I received, it's fair to say that it's a rare day in 3,650 days when the national media expose Americans to opinions on corporate wrongdoing....

In 1998...The (Louisville) Courier-Journal...blasted a mainstay of Kentucky's economy. That paper's 14- editorial series began:

"COAL is an outlaw industry. It is now, and it always has been.

"COAL is the closest thing to brute, unrepentant, late 19th century capital-ism that we have left in American life."....

William F. Buckley, Jr., was one of four nationally syndicated columnists who addressed the "why" of my inquiry regarding the relative silence on the topic of corporate immorality...[He wrote] "Are conservatives ethically callous about business delinquencies? It is true that they don't feature heavily in conservative commentary. But there is a humdrumness to business malpractice that simply makes it all less eye-catching than misbehavior by individuals."....

Three Washington heavy hitters (and non-responders to this survey), all published and syndicated by The Washington Post, have made remarkable pronouncements relating to corporate immorality:

George F. Will endorses "punishing by shaming," a practice in which the names of "drug users, drunken drivers or men who solicit prostitutes or are delinquent in child support" are published or broadcast. Corporate wrong-doers? They didn't make Will's cut.

Robert J. Samuelson: "Big business has been brought to heel politically." Campaign financing? Not to worry: It amounted, in 1996, to only "one-twentieth of one percent of the gross domestic product."

Charles Krauthammer: Only "Luddites" protest genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (BGH) in their milk, such milk being "perfectly normal."....

Meanwhile, among the non-responders-a large majority of those queried-was The Wall Street Journal, whose publisher, Peter R. Kann, annually lauds his editorial page in an op-ed report to readers. In 1997 he boasted that the page "does not shrink from discussing morality." Indeed, for seven years now, a torrent of Journal editorials has denounced the morality of the President. However, during the 28 years Robert L. Bartley has edited the opinion page, no editorial could be found that impugned the morality of the many persons responsible for the corporate crimes reported by the Journal's own reporting staff.

Journal news columns surround the editorial page with so much information on corporate crime that Ralph Nader suggests renaming it "The Crime Street Journal." The Nation's Robert Sherrill tested and verified the Nader assertion by monitoring Journal coverage throughout 1996. Among the examples from Sherrill's research that appeared in the story, "A Year in Corporate Crime," in 1997, were these:

* Lucas Industries pleaded guilty to falsifying quality records for F-18 fighter gearboxes, hiding defects the Navy blamed "for 71 emergency landings and several in-flight fires, as well as the loss of an F-18 during the Gulf War." Lucas was fined $106 million.
* Archer Daniels Midland pleaded guilty to conspiring to fix prices for a livestock feed supplement and citric acid. ADM was fined $100 million....

[T]he Atlanta Constitution...chastised DuPont management for suppressing adverse evidence at a Georgia trial centered on a crop-destroying fungicide....

The Houston Chronicle...published recent editorials, columns and op-ed pieces criticizing several major companies. Conoco was targeted for doing "business with rogue Middle Eastern states." Champion International's "apparent double standard for safety precautions as they apply to Hispanic workers vs. Anglo workers" was the topic of an editorial....

No such toughness was claimed in three large Midwest cities where editorial page editors admitted to not being stirred by corporate misconduct: "We generally focuson the policy implications of events and trends" wrote Thomas J. Bray, of The Detroit News. Richard Hood, at The Kansas City Star, hasn't "editorialized on the subject" since taking charge in 1972. And Russell Pulliam, at The Indianapolis Star, told us he "can't recall any [editorials] that specifically address corporate immorality."....

The trigger for doing the survey was a stunning episode of sustained corporate immorality. Its toll on people and the environment was enormous, and its visible impact on media opinion-molders zero.

During the last decade, some 1.3 million large trucks poisoned the air everyone breathes with illegal emissions of millions of tons of nitrogen oxide. NOx helps to form pollutants - smog (ozone), soot and dust-that can cause premature death and numerous ills, including asthma attacks and bronchitis. The elderly and children are particularly at risk. NOx also helps to cause acid rain. During 1998 alone, the trucks released 1.3 million extra tons of NOx, a ton each, on average, and almost 10 pounds for every man, woman and child in America....

In October 1998 the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department jointly released these facts, and many more, about how the seven largest manufacturers of heavy-duty diesel engines had illegally increased noxious emissions in order to increase fuel efficiency five to eight percent. This was a classic trade of private gain for public pain. The tradeoff was made possible by a computerized "defeat" device governing emission con-trols. In stop-and-go driving it turned on the emission controls, limiting release of NOx emissions in testing stations where such driving was simulated. But in highway driving, the device automatically disabled the controls, saving fuel while at the same time as much as tripling legally permitted outputs of NOx. Carol M. Browner, the EPA administrator, referred to them as "'deceit' devices."

Beginning in 1989, Caterpillar and Detroit Diesel had become the first of the seven manufacturers of heavy-duty diesel engines to offer this device. Inevitably, competitors felt pressure to fall in line. Mack Trucks and its partner, Renault Vehicules Industriels, s.a., followed, then Cummins Engine, and, finally, Navistar and Volvo Truck. Once the deceit was uncovered and the companies faced litigation, the manufacturers consented to a settlement....

[T]the settlement...made page one in The New York Times and Washington Post. The Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and CBS News all carried solid accounts. Thus editorial writers, columnists and talking heads were staring at an obvious and rich lode of content. Yet not one editorial or commentary that mined this news could be found.