Affiliation:
1. University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
Sustainable Finance (SF) has been identified as one of the biggest trends in the financial industry in the past years. By channeling capital into sustainable investments, it is hoped that finance can accelerate the transition towards a greener and more sustainable future. However, given that the discussion about SF lacks consistency and a common understanding of SF, the role of financial journalists in reporting about this trend and in enacting their role as watchdogs becomes of paramount interest. To do so, 33 semi-structured interviews with journalists who have covered SF in six countries (AT, BE, CH, DE, NL, UK) were conducted to find out about journalistic role perceptions and daily journalistic practices (such as sources, style of writing and role of the audience). Findings show that journalists mainly enact the role of a chronicler, informant and educator when writing about SF, but fail to fulfil an active watchdog role. Furthermore, the coverage of SF is predominately event-driven, directed at a financial elite, and has become highly professionalized at financial news outlets. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, journalists reported that they found themselves in a moral dilemma between enacting their professional role as a journalist on the one hand and providing a platform for unsubstantiated claims about SF (greenwashing) made by the industry, on the other hand.
Funder
H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
Subject
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous),Communication
Cited by
10 articles.
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