Off with their heads! It’s a cry that was frequently heard from the New York Times over the past couple of years, as it delighted in recounting the details of each of our nation’s corporate scandals.
“Downsize the Imperial CEO,” roared an editorial headline from the Times last summer. “(T)he move to hold top managers personally liable for any misrepresentations made to investors is a watershed worth celebrating.”
New York Times executives, of course, faced their own scandal recently as the once-proud newspaper learned one of its reporters plagiarized, lied and bungled facts for years – while his supervisors and top executives looked the other way.
In a Times article exploring the debacle, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. urged the public not to scapegoat his executives. “The person who did this is (reporter) Jayson Blair,” Sulzberger was quoted as saying. “Let’s not begin to demonize our executives – either the desk editors or the executive editor or, dare I say, the publisher.”
So no one is eating cake at the New York Times today, now that the two top newsroom execs were sent packing and the man Sulzberger passed over last time — Bill Keller — was installed. Yelling “Off with Their Heads” is certainly more fun when you’re calling for other people’s noggins.
As the Times now realizes, executives sometimes don’t know everything that’s going on within their walls. Consider this: Companies balancing billion-dollar revenue streams and hyper-complex business models involve a few more details than, say, making sure a quote in a newspaper article isn’t fabricated, or that a reporter is actually in the city he claims to be filing a story from.
Yet Times executives couldn’t even do that.
The paper’s columnists and reporters now may want to take a deep breath for a moment and think about this: Isn’t it possible that top executives like Jeffrey Skilling at Enron or HealthSouth’s Richard Scrushy were trying earnestly to steer a sound course?
When the press urges the public toward the bloodthirst of instant justice, that question doesn’t merit a thought, let alone an answer.
In any economic downturn, companies — and, yes, even big ones — are going to struggle and sometimes fail. Investors will lose money and employees their jobs. That is well worth studying but it does not necessarily mean that there’s been some nefarious backroom conspiracy going on.
Yet this over-simplified storyline appears again and again. The idea is that when something goes wrong, there’s surely a bad guy at the top who conceived the dark scheme — and a legion of underlings that marched in lockstep to carry it out.
Of course, the next act in that predictable drama is the “perp walk” — the made-for-TV scene when the notorious chief executive is paraded in handcuffs to a waiting squad car. Prosecutors get their high-profile bad guy (see, we nab the rich guys, too). The media get their pictures (there’s the bad guy!). Members of Congress get to preen at flashbulb-popping hearings (harrumph, tsk-tsk, harrumph). And the public is treated to a vague, and ultimately empty, sense of visceral satisfaction.
Does it really help our system of corporate scrutiny when mistakes are met by a lynch mob mentality? It is the crude dramatization of these business stories that is precisely what creates the pressure on prosecutors and the federal government.
Editorials abounded, for example, chiding Senators for holding photo-op hearings that elicited little more than terse legal defenses. Little of actual value was learned.
Which, in the final analysis, is more likely? That members of Congress studied the spreadsheets and quarterly reports? Or that they crafted a few zinger questions of indignation, ready-made for soundbite consumption?
What the press fails to report can be just as telling. When HealthSouth’s Scrushy had his assets temporarily frozen in a court case, the news was blared on front pages and newscasts. When a federal judge criticized the government’s investigation of Scrushy and gave him access to his assets, the story received a few paragraphs on inside pages and barely a mention on evening newscasts.
In any organization, people can behave badly. The should be an obvious truism. Sometimes they are simply trying to please the boss and other times they will deceive. They will cut corners and often do whatever it takes to meet goals. It might not make for a banner headline, but the top executives are not always to blame.
No one realizes this better right now than the New York Times itself. “Let’s not begin to demonize our executives,” urged the publisher. Amazing, isn’t it, how the press suddenly discovers the virtue of nuance when the mob suddenly turns toward them?
– Craig Shirley is a longtime Republican strategist and president of the government affairs and public relations firm of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs in Alexandria, VA.
– “Outside View” commentaries are written for UPI by outside writers who specialize in a variety of important global issues.
LOAD-DATE: July 25, 2003
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
Copyright 2003 U.P.I.
