Tobywebb.blogspot.com

Corporate Responsibility: CR history, modern times

and the media, in Pictures

1720 - 2013

See: http://www.historytoday.com/john-d-pelzer/coffee-houses-augustan-london

Isaac Newton lost £20,000 on the South Sea Company Bubble in 1720.

Newspapers of the 1720s were similar to UK tabloids today: Reporting gossip and rumour as well as trade numbers. Journalistic standards were low. Have we come full circle today?

First consumer boycott: 1770's UK Slave Trade

Middle class objections to slave labour conditions in West Indian Sugar began in the 1760s/1770s

Saltaire: Victorian morality/productivity concerns rose in the 19th Century

Cadbury's Bourneville site attempted to improve worker lives, and was reported

on in UK media in 19th Century

Ida Tarbell, the original “muck raker” journalist, blew the lid on the monopolistic / oligopolistic strategies of the Rockefellers. This lead to the era of “Trust Busting” around the turn of the 20th Century, and changed how Governments looked at markets and controls forever….

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” (1906) investigated labour conditions in Chicago Slaughter houses. The book helped create a groundswell of public indignation about worker exploitation. As a result of his campaigning journalism and incidents such factory fires, some of the first modern health and safety legislation – and enforcement – came about in early 20th Century USA.

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book created a media storm and societal debate about what new “miracle” chemicals may be doing to the environment. Silent Spring is cited by academics and environmentalists as a turning point in how citizens began to think about the downsides of rapid industrial development and pesticide use (DDT).

Friedman Picture

Friedman’s 1970 New York Times Magazine essay on the “business of business” is still highly controversial, and still debated today…

Ralph Nader was a major campaigning force in the 1960s and 1970s. His investigation into the “cost benefit” analyses undertaken by US automarkers when considering the recall of cars they knew may explode, was a seminal moment for the car industry, for media coverage, law suits and regulators.

Barry Commoner, the first environmentalist to be featured on the cover of a best selling magazine? Earth Day 1970 was a major media moment. Concerns about chemicals, wars, resources, agricultural productivity and population growth were front page news in the early 1970s.

As suggested by academics and others in the early 1970's

Formed in 1971 over nuclear testing, Greenpeace has been front page news ever since

THE iconic photograph of the 1970s: Dow and DuPont were blamed

The Union Carbide Bhopal Explosion in 1984 killed thousands. Dow later bought Carbide

The Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. An ecological disaster and front page news around the world. It changed the way oil was shipped.

The 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Packed with Presidents and Prime Ministers. A major media event.

1990’s: Anita Roddick: Garnered press headlines for Body Shop’s “ethical” approach.

Nike: The accidental poster child of globalisation and it’s negatives. The company, along with Gap and a few others, became an iconic symbol of the 1990’s anti-globalisation movement. Even though university professors earned more in its factories than they did in teaching, the company became a symbol of exploitation and uncaring capitalism. To this day, the media loves nothing better than a big brand sweatshop or child labour story. Today Nike leads the apparel industry in sustainability, partly as a result.

Brent Spar Oil Storage Plaftform, 1995. Shell wanted to dump it at sea. Greenpeace objected over precedent setting. Left, Shell water cannons versus Greenpeace inflatables. Shell stood no chance in the court of public opinion. A media storm ensured. Shell struggled to hire research chemists for some years afterwards.

Also in 1995-96, Nigeria’s Sani Abacha executes activist Ken Saro-wiwa. Shell is blamed. The media jumps on board. A Seminal period for CSR.

Andrew Fastow, Enron CFO. Enron went from being 7th largest Fortune 100 company to bankruptcy in months during 2001. Fortune magazine built up Enron, then tore it down when they realised they had been duped.

The early “noughties” saw China rise, and so did the sweatshop stories In the press, and reputational risks for companies.

The first run on a British bank in decades was fuelled by a media storm in 2007.

Corporations and indigenous peoples always made media headlines.

The Occupy Movement led to a long media debate about what kind of system we wanted. But did anything change?

Macondo 2010. The Deepwater Horizon disaster, forensically explored and covered by media, changed the oil industry and public attitudes.

Rupert and Rebecca: Golden media careers brought low as the media ended the "Conspiracy of Silence" in 2011

And the eventual result of phone hacking was...

The 2012 poster child for consumer brand tax avoidance

A changing media - The Observer: By 2013, only THREE newsroom journalists remained...

Twitter: Dangerous new journalism, kind of...

New types of activists emerge. Media loves to tear down icons Such as Apple.

Where 30 million followers can be normal…

1989: Tanks. 2011: CSR in the Chinese Police?

2013: India’s new generation of investigative journalists begin to shake things up.

Further resources:

www.ethicalcorp.com tobywebb.blogspot.com

www.slideshare.net/tobiaswebb www.stakeholderintel.com

Toby.Webb@stakeholderintel.com