这是一篇公司治理方向的本科Proposal,讨论了俄罗斯的证据和新闻市场。在现代社会,报纸和杂志是两个最重要的信息媒体。它们是投资者在股票市场制定投资策略的主要信息来源。如果来自报纸和杂志的新闻始终高效,准确,及时,这些信息将对投资者的投资决策产生积极影响。目前,有两篇文章对新闻报道中的扭曲原因持有两种不同的观点。首先,记者和新闻机构都有自己的兴趣,因此他们的报告可能存在信息偏见。其次,读者在阅读新闻时有自己的偏好,因此他们更有可能相信他们认为正确的事情。
在“媒体的公司治理角色:来自俄罗斯的证据”中,作者研究了覆盖对1999 - 2002年期间俄罗斯公司声誉的影响。他们发现,如果新闻媒体宣布公司新闻,股价将受到强烈影响;关于公司的事故报告越少,媒体的可靠性越高(报告公司)和股票价格越高(Dyck,Volchkova)和Zingales,2008)。因此,公司倾向于披露对他们有利的公司。为此,该公司花了相当多的钱,要求相关媒体披露对他们有利的信息。同样,该公司已推迟发布负面新闻。因此,金融机构经常使用财经新闻和广告来影响投资者对信息的判断。
In a modern society, newspaper and magazine are two of the most important information media. They the main source of information for investors in developing investment strategies in stock market. If news from newspapers and magazines could always be efficient, accurate, timely in transferring information, it will have a positive impact on investors’ investment decision-making. Currently, there are two articles which held two different opinions about reasons leading to distortions of news report. Firstly, journalists and news organizations have their interest demands, so their reports may have information bias. Secondly, readers have their own preferences in reading news, thus they are more likely to believe in the content that they think is correct.
In “The Corporate Governance Role of the Media: Evidence from Russia”, the authors studied the influence of the coverage on the reputation of companies in Russia during 1999-2002. They found that if the news media announced earning news of companies, the stock price would be strongly influenced; the less incident reports about a company, the more reliable that a media (which reported the company) was, the more increase in the stock price there would be (Dyck, Volchkova and Zingales, 2008). Thus companies preferred to disclose those were favorable for them, to this end, companies spent a considerable amount of money on asking relevant media to disclose information in their favor. Similarly, companies also postponed the release of negative news as late as possible. Consequently, financial institutions often used financial news and advertisements to influence investors’ judgment on information.
The authors of The Market for News made an assumption: heterogeneity of readers will have an impact on accuracy of readers’ understanding reports. They explained two reasons for that. On the one hand, readers would choose those they believed to read, and they tried to verify what their expected; on the other hand, media tended to cater to this preference of readers by publishing the news that the majority of readers wanted (Mullainathan and Shleifer, 2005). According to this article, the Internet bubble is a good example. When the market was a bull market, financial companies would try to promote their financial investment products; however, when the market was at a the bottom, financial institutions turned to emphasize the safety of their investment products in avoid loss. As the great mass of readers has limited information about the market, they are more like to read news and information which is consistent with their taste.
In summary, these two articles put forward their analysis on why the information that investors had an access to would be deviated. The first article believed that it was cause by financial companies’ publishing selective news by their favors; the second considered that it was readers’ bias that led to imprecise information. Based on these two articles, the author of this essay thought that to solve the problem of distortion of information, it should first of all address problems in the following two aspects. Firstly, as far as news media is concerned, they should establish a monitoring and evaluation system, as well as cultivate professional ethics of journalists to maintain the authenticity, objective nature, neutrality and comprehensiveness of news reports, so as to eliminate the negative impact caused by false news, biased news, and one-sided news on investors. Equity-related news coverage should also include provision of warning on risk for investors. Secondly, from an investor's point of view, they should increase tier access to reliable sources of information to obtain more comprehensive and real news as much as possible. Investors should improve their ability to analyze and identify information offered by media, by rational and objective analysis to find out the real favorable news or bad news, therefore providing a reliable basis for making their investment decisions.
References
Dyck, A., Volchkova, N. & Zingales, L. (2008). The Corporate Governance Role of the Media: Evidence from Russia.
Mullainathan, S. & Shleifer, A. (2005). The Market for News. The American Economic Review. Vol. 95, No. 4, pp. 1031-1053.
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