455907

2012
EJC27310.1177/0267323112455907European Journal of CommunicationAllen and Savigny

Article

European Journal of Communication

Selling scandal or ideology? 27(3) 278­–290

© The Author(s) 2012

The politics of business crime

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DOI: 10.1177/0267323112455907
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Henry Allen and Heather Savigny

University of East Anglia, UK

Abstract
Financial scandals and controversies have recently attracted much attention in the British press.
The excesses of the bankers’ bonuses, MPs’ expenses scandals and those deemed ‘benefit
cheats’ and welfare scroungers have been given prominence by the print news media, and the
present Coalition government. The politicization of the current financial crisis has resulted in ‘the
privatization of loss and the socialization of costs’. Yet how do we make sense of this? Or how are
those responsible for financial wrongdoings able to ‘get away with it’? This article suggests that the
interests of business as a class remain largely uncontested in contemporary political discourse. Just
one way in which this is evident is through the coverage of financial crime, and this article offers as
illustration a case study of the political construction of business crime (price fixing) in the pages of
the British press. It is suggested that the way in which this crime is framed is reflective of a broader
ideological discursive commitment which privileges business interests over the public interest.

Keywords
Business as class, depoliticization, decriminalization, financial crime, journalism, news/information,
policy and law (media systems), political communication, public sphere

In contemporary public discourses in the UK, bankers have been vilified as greedy and
fat cats (which reflect the politer terms used) for their bonuses. The bankers themselves
seem to have little concern about the public condemnation of their actions; they have
sought to justify these payments as just desert for hard work, ‘fair remuneration’, and
argue that they are not doing anything legally reprehensible. At the other end of the spec-
trum, benefit claimants, like bankers, are regularly pilloried in the press. While criticism
is also connected to the size of payments, the difference between bankers and benefit
claimants (according to the right-wing press) is that the latter have obtained their income

Corresponding author:
Heather Savigny, The Media School, Bournemouth University, Weymouth House, Talbot Campus Poole,
Dorset BH12 5BB, UK.
Email: hsavigny@bournemouth.ac.uk

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Allen and Savigny 279

through nefarious and implicitly illegal means. Indeed, this (unsupported) assumption is
also one which the present Coalition government’s welfare reform agenda has been
premised upon. This vilification of benefit claimants, in particular, takes place in a con-
text in which businesses engaged in criminal activities are rarely held accountable in
public discourses (let alone subject to the demonization of those on welfare). (It is per-
haps worth noting here that the £7bn in bonuses that the City were rumoured to be paying
themselves in 2010, is roughly equivalent to the £7bn Osborne is axing from the welfare
budget [Treanor, 2010]). So why such a difference in response?
In the UK, a neoliberal political agenda is currently relentlessly pursued, markets are
liberalized and deregulated to prevent the ‘flight of capital’, politicians capitulate to the
demands of business, but what does this mean for the public? The rise of corporate
power and corporations as political actors is increasingly documented (see, for exam-
ple, Miller and Mooney, 2010) but what happens when they behave illegally? Or immor-
ally? How do the public institutions which are supposed to protect the public interest
respond? Much has been made of the failure of financial journalists in the recent finan-
cial crisis (see, for example, Tambini, 2010) but in a media environment generally sup-
portive of business interests, is this really surprising? The media are crucial to the
functioning of any democracy, and with the increasing political prominence of business
interests it becomes perhaps even more pertinent to ask questions about the relationship
between the media and business as a class. This article explores one aspect of that rela-
tionship, the coverage of business crime, in which we use the example of price fixing.
Price fixing may sound like an innocuous or inoffensive crime, although as Stephan has
observed (2008) chances are we have all been a victim of this crime. For example, the
dairy product price fixing case by some of the big supermarkets was said to have costs
consumers in the region of £270m (Attwood, 2007). On occasion companies are pros-
ecuted, yet these prosecutions fail to be met with the same levels of outrage in the press
that accompanies accusations of benefit ‘scrounging’. So why is this? While some of
this may be attributable to journalists themselves (see Tambini, 2010) it is also the case
that we need to consider the political context and structural features within which such
coverage takes place.

The political media

It is accepted that the media play a role in circulating public discourse. But it is also
assumed that the media are not simply passive conduits of information, rather that they
perform an active role in constructing said discourse/s. This assumption draws attention
to the tensions between the overt political motivations which have been ascribed to the
media (see, for example, Street, 2001). While the media have the capacity to exhibit
agency, that is not to deny the structural function of the media. The dominant ideology
thesis (Abercrombie et al., 1980) or propaganda model (Herman and Chomsky, 1988)
draw attention to the role of the media in circulating dominant discourses (akin to
Gramsci’s notion of hegemony). As Abercrombie et al. observe, ideology is important in
explaining the ‘coherence of the dominant class’, crucially for them though it does not
explain the ‘coherence of society as a whole’ (1980: 3). We reject, however, the structural
determinism implied by the dominant ideology thesis, and suggest there is an interaction

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280 European Journal of Communication 27(3)

within the media, who operate as both structures and agents, not passively disseminating
dominant ideologies (as suggested by structural accounts) but playing an active role in
their creation, construction, articulation and communication. Our argument is located in
the context of the tension between business as a dominant class structure, but one which
incorporates the media (whose business desires clash with the democratic ideals of lib-
eral theory).
As such, the media, given their own pursuit of profit, also play a role in promoting the
interests of business as a dominant class, while, at the same time, appearing to provide a
site where ideologies are negotiated and contested. However, this clash of objectives
means that it is the politically and economically dominant groups in society who have the
capacity to define the parameters of debate; defining discourse and the way in which
dominant ideas are framed, produced and reproduced. While this may not necessarily be
an overt intention, arguably this is a consequence of interaction between media owners
seeking to act strategically in the pursuit of profit and power (e.g. Street, 2001). The
existence of the media in their own competitive marketplace means that they have a
vested interest in the maintenance of the system status quo, which translates into not
questioning the methods of business too closely.

Media and crime coverage

Much of the literature on crime coverage has been polarized around content and audi-
ences. Focus has been upon the production and consumption of crime coverage
(Schlesinger et al., 1991); the content of coverage of criminal action and prosecutions
(Lofquist, 1997; for an extensive review see Reiner, 2007); the potential effects upon
audiences (Schlesinger et al., 1991; Shelley and Adkins, 1981); as a sensationalist means
to attract audiences (Schlesinger et al., 1991); and the difference in coverage and reality
(Shelley and Adkins, 1981). While direct effects seem to be debatable, the media
coverage of crime has been argued to have raised levels of fear (Schlesinger et al., 1991);
both for individuals and within communities (Liska and Baccaglini, 1990); and in this
sense has been argued to have played a role in the creation of societal ‘moral panics’
(Cohen, 2002 [1972]; Hall et al., 1978).
In 1949 Sutherland coined the phrase ‘white collar crime’, defined as a ‘crime
committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his
[sic] occupation’ (1983 [1949]: 7). This definition openly asserted a class base to
crime. Attempts to narrow the concept have focused on the workplace, either as a site
where crime is committed or a place on whose behalf a crime is committed
(Braithwaite, 1985; Clinard and Quinney, 1973; Pearce, 2001; and for review of its
interdisciplinary roots and development see Lofquist, 1997). In media coverage,
white collar crime tends to be marginalized and given much less prominence than
that of ‘street crime’ (Welch et al., 1998: 222). For Welch et al. (1998), this is an
ideological act which favours the construction of crime as something which is car-
ried out by low income individuals, which lacks reference to the broader social con-
text within which this crime occurred. Many of the studies above suggest that crime
is something to be afraid of, defined by elite level actors and perpetrated by those at
street level – whose voices we don’t hear.

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Allen and Savigny 281

In order to think about what is meant by ‘crime’, we need to understand the way in
which public discourses present and define crime. One way to do this is through analysis
of who gets to speak. Most literature highlights the role of elites, be they state managers
or intellectuals (Welch et al., 1998) or state officials, union leaders and pressure groups
(Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994). Those who speak about crime are thus structurally priv-
ileged and able to define what crime is. Carrabine (2008) argues that we need to under-
stand the social character of the construction of ‘crime’, that is the way in which crime
stories are produced, circulated and consumed. This means that the way in which crime
is constructed in the media becomes reflective of the agenda and interests of those speak-
ing, rather than representative of the interests of society more generally. In this way the
social construction of crime can have an ideological function (Hall et al., 1978), legiti-
mating and reinforcing dominant ideologies and ideas (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) and
assumptions about what constitutes crime (i.e. theft from other people or property) and
what doesn’t (such as theft from the taxpayer in the form of tax evasion). The media stud-
ies literature more widely draws our attention to perhaps the most significant effect of
media coverage: its capacity to produce effects which are ‘broadly ideological rather
than narrowly attitudinal’ (Sacco, 1995: 141). For us, the political dimension of this cov-
erage therefore lies in the question: in whose interests is the coverage presented? We
argue that the political dimension of business crime coverage is about more than the
state’s ability to control its citizens through the enforcement of legislation. Thus the
political dimension relates to not only what is said by political and economic elites, but
what is not said. The bigger issue of course, is whose interests this discourse benefits.

Business and economic news coverage

Economic news and business news tend to be discussed differently from other forms of
news. First, as Doyle (2006) observes, economic news tends to be relegated to specialist
outlets whose audiences are already financially literate. Alongside sport, business is the
only other specialist interest to get its own sections in the broadsheets. Again, the audi-
ences for this news are assumed to be business and financially literate, the pages are used
as a site for political, business and financial elites to speak to each other nationally
(Davis, 2007) and globally (Kantola, 2007). This then is not news that is constructed in
the public interest, rather it is news constructed in the interest of business. Where the
audiences or the public have been discussed in relation to business or economic news,
this has tended to be either in terms of its potential influence on voting publics at election
times (Blood and Phillips, 1995; De Boef and Kellstedt, 2004) or if the news is ‘sensa-
tional’ (Tiffen, 1989; Tumber, 1993), and thus is not seen as particularly controversial
(Baram, 1977). Davies (2008) eloquently maps the changing nature of news production.
As press releases flood newspaper offices, and time and economic pressures mean jour-
nalists become less likely to check business PR sources than official sources (Davies,
2008; Tumber, 1993), integration and lack of remoteness has meant that business news
has become more supportive and complimentary (Tumber, 1993). At the same time, as
the production of financial news becomes the largest source of revenue for the broad-
sheet press (Davis, 2005: 305) it is perhaps unsurprising that news of business crime
should be much less critical.

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282 European Journal of Communication 27(3)

Case study: Price fixing as business crime

The practice of price fixing has a historical lineage, identified in the writings of Adam
Smith in the eighteenth century. Smith argued that this particular business crime was
inevitable, given that as social beings traders would meet and agree on mechanisms
which would be beneficial to both parties (and against the interests of their customer/the
public):

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the
conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It
is impossible to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would
be consistent with liberty and justice. (Smith, 2008 [1776]: Book I x: 129)

He argues that it is not possible to prevent companies and individuals in the pursuit of
profit, from meeting to collude to fix prices. Indeed, he implies that price fixing is an
inevitable consequence of free, unregulated trade (and on a deeper level, human nature).
This recognition of weaknesses with ‘free markets’ draws attention to the existence of
inequality within the market: given the self-interest of those producers within markets,
there was an almost inevitable likelihood of exploitation of the consumer.
Smith also argued that it was not possible to legislate against this type of behaviour
(2008 [1776]: 129), and successive UK governments had accepted that view until 2002
when legislation was introduced. This brought the UK into line with EU policy in this
area. The British Enterprise Act 2002, which made price fixing illegal, followed on from
the prohibition of cartels in the Competition Act. This allowed for the prosecution of
individuals within companies (where previously when price fixing was first criminalized
in 2000 under the Competition Act, it allowed only for the prosecution of business rather
than individuals). The Competition Act was introduced in 1988; it was a key piece of
legalisation designed to promote and protect competition (in markets), which enshrined
the normative political values of neoliberalism: a commitment to free markets, competi-
tion and light touch regulation. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is charged with ensur-
ing the implementation of Competition Policy. According to its website it functions to
‘make markets work well for consumers’ and as such, it states that ‘We achieve this by
promoting and protecting consumer interests throughout the UK, while ensuring that
businesses are fair and competitive’ (OFT, 2009). Here the OFT both claims it is regula-
tor, in its mission statement, and enshrines a neoliberal commitment to markets ulti-
mately as provider of consumer interests.
Competition policy illustrates the way in which economic theory itself has been
important in informing policy (as economic modelling has played a key role in informing
the formulation and implementation of said policy). This is not something which has
happened in isolation, rather it is representative of a broader shift in the way in which
Anglo-American politics of the last 30 years has evolved. The Thatcher/Reagan era ush-
ered in a period which arguably marked the beginning of an era of neoliberal consensus
(e.g. Hay, 1997) as subsequent British and US governments have both accepted eco-
nomic monetarist policies. It is too simplistic to attribute change to one individual, but
this shift was also heavily influenced by the Montpelier group and, in the UK, a decline
in manufacturing base, the rise of financial institutions and the destruction of the unions.

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Allen and Savigny 283

In short, the broader picture in which this policy was situated was one of a reassertion of
the role of capital against the increasing power of labour.
This has not simply been about changes at the material level. The ideological assault
of neoliberalism has been as significant. For Thatcher and the policies which emanated
from her administration, ‘Economics [were] the method . . . but the object [has been] to
change the soul’ (cited in Harvey, 2005: 23). Harvey’s phrase the ‘construction of con-
sent’ highlights the way in which the dominant classes have organized against labour,
and the way in which business has refined its capacity to act as a class, protecting its own
interest. It is not only through lack of regulation that businesses benefit, where legisla-
tion is enacted, what becomes clear is that business benefits through its obscurity (Harvey,
2005). As Stephan (2010) observes, the workings of the anti-competitive practices legis-
lation in the UK is so obscure as to make the pursuit of prosecutions extremely difficult:
the broader context in which the extreme generation of wealth is legitimated.

Price fixing in the British press

It is in the aforementioned historical, legislative and ideological context, that our discus-
sion takes place. Earlier academic analyses of price fixing press coverage have focused
on the US. Evans and Lundman (1983) argued that press coverage lacked the energy,
condemnation or the ‘brimstone smell’ of regular street crimes. This they attributed leg-
islatively, to the ‘lack of recognition that corporations are juristic persons capable of
criminal deviance’, the indirect harm of price fixing – that like other financial crimes no
one victim can be personified and indentified – and a general reluctance for large organi-
zations to link other organizations to criminality (Evans and Lundman, 1983). Despite
cultural differences between the US and the UK, the introduction of recent legislation in
the UK and the passage of nearly 50 years since their original study, we argue that, nearly
30 years later, very little is different. Our analysis focused upon UK broadsheet newspa-
per coverage of price fixing prosecutions since the introduction of its criminalization in
2002 until 2010 when the study took place. The relatively small number of prosecutions
is in part responsible, we would suggest, for the relatively small number of articles which
cover this issue. From our search of UK broadsheet newspapers, using the search terms
price fixing, cartel and collusion, we uncovered 128 articles which referred to such cases.
Given the small number of articles in the coverage our sample contained all the items. As
we were seeking to explore the way in which the crime coverage was framed, we accepted
the premise (as noted earlier) that the agenda is set by those who speak. As such our
empirical research revolved around who spoke, what did they say and how did they say
it? As noted in each section below, we coded each article, we began by identifying who
spoke, and so our first set of categories sought to quantify the number of times the fol-
lowing voices were represented:

• Business in the form of press releases;

• Business in the form of direct quotes from the CEO, or a spokesperson;
• Representatives of business as class (such as business analysts, or the CBI);
• Shareholders
• Consumers as individuals (or victims of crime);

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284 European Journal of Communication 27(3)

• Consumer representative bodies (such as Which?);

• Consumers represented by the OFT;
• Government and/or ministers;
• Opposition/shadow ministers;
• Regulatory bodies (such as the OFT, Serious Fraud Office [SFO] and Competition
Commission).

The second part of our analysis explored the qualitative nature of news coverage, and
the language used in the description of the case, the crime and the responses of consum-
ers and companies, and this is discussed in the section ‘what was said’, below. To ensure
consistency two coders used the same coding frame, and cross-checked each other’s
coding.

Who speaks: Depoliticization

We began by looking at all the voices that were represented in our sample. Figure 1 shows
each time a voice was either directly quoted or featured as reported speech. While we
had quite detailed categories (as shown above) we found that voices could be clustered
around four key groups – business, consumer, governments and OFT (as regulator).
The first thing to note is the dominance of business voices at 45%. If we follow the
logic of media scholars, then as business voices are more prominent they become signifi-
cant in constructing how we understand price fixing as a crime (or something less seri-
ous). Second, we see that consumers have an incredibly small voice – only 18%. If
consumer voices are marginalized, this suggests not quite the equal relationship sug-
gested in a neoliberal ‘free market’; leaving the question, just how far are consumer
interests being represented and protected and by whom? The voice of business is thus
privileged over the victims of the crime (consumers) and also over the political actors
(who set the ‘rules of the game’). Finally, where political voice is given, the main politi-
cal actor is the regulator. As such, responsibility for policy representation is devolved
away from government, which could be viewed as part of a broader governance strategy
of depoliticization.
Depoliticization is not about the direct removal of politics from political issues, rather
it is viewed as a governing strategy (Burnham, 2001; see also Kettell, 2008). It has been

Figure 1. Voices represented in newspaper coverage.

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Allen and Savigny 285

defined as ‘the range of tools, mechanisms and institutions through which politicians can
attempt to move to an indirect governing relationship and/or seek to persuade the demos
that they can no longer reasonably be held responsible for a certain issue, policy field or
specific decision’ (Flinders and Buller, 2006: 295–296; emphasis in original).
Depoliticization narratives highlight the way in which policy issues are devolved away
from ministers and politicians to civil servants, agencies or regulatory bodies (in this
analysis this is the OFT). Politicians are thus able to distance themselves from policy
outcomes. In our case study, the ‘political’ voice sees only 7% of reported coverage
reflecting comments or views by politicians, and 30% of reported coverage reflecting the
OFT. Not only is this issue depoliticized in that accountability and responsibility is being
devolved from politicians to unelected bodies, but at the same time the dominant voice
in the coverage is that of business. While business voices, and therefore interests, domi-
nate coverage, devolved political accountability takes second place. In political science,
there is a tendency to focus upon the discourse of individual politicians and policy per se
(e.g. Kettell, 2008; Rogers, 2009), rather than the manner in which this is uncritically
reproduced within the media. What our case study highlights is the way in which the
media also play a role in the reproduction of a depoliticized discourse.

How was it said: The privileged role of public relations, or the PR-
ization of news
Having explored whose voice dominated the news coverage, we then sought to analyse
how that voice was presented. As public relations increasingly dominate the news
agenda, we were interested to see the extent to which businesses now used PR – in a bid
to mitigate the effects of potentially adverse news coverage.
The rise of PR as a means for influencing news coverage is not only something which
politicians engage in. Aeron Davis (2005) demonstrates the way in which corporate
elites have manipulated the business news agenda through the extensive and aggressive
use of PR and in so doing have gained competitive advantage over their rivals. While he
recognizes that there may be tensions between journalistic objectives and those of busi-
ness, nonetheless he argues that corporate elites are ultimately successful in pursuing
their own agenda through the pages of the press. This process serves to exclude the pub-
lic, and business news becomes a site whereby business elites compete and communicate
with each other. One of the key conclusions that Davis (2005) draws is that as a conse-
quence of this, a significant proportion of financial activity, corporate regulation and
economic policy-making takes place largely to benefit corporate elites, and out of view
of the public. In this way, the public sphere becomes a quasi-marketplace, where com-
petitive advantage is being sought out by rival elites. Moreover, exclusion of the public
from this space also serves to generate an elite space where business and economic inter-
ests are privileged over those of society, negating any notion of a ‘public good’.
The focus upon the PR-ization of news (Jackson and Moloney, 2010) is one developed
by Nick Davies (2008) whose political economy of the media industry draws attention to
the way in which PR dominates as a consequence of economic constraints which hamper
journalists. He argues that this reliance on PR has two key effects. First it enables business
to represent its view unchallenged and often uncritically repeated. Second, through

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286 European Journal of Communication 27(3)

providing copy to journalists, Davies observes, the view of business is more likely to be
represented, in the way that business would like it to be. In short, the use of PR reinforces
the notion that both quantity and quality of coverage matter. As we see in Figure 2, where
the voice of business is presented, this is predominantly in terms of PR (56%) rather than
direct quotes of business people themselves. If we accept Davies’ argument about the way
in which newsrooms operate, then we can safely assume that through the use of PR com-
panies are having their words reprinted word for word by an overworked, but ultimately
compliant press. While the stories about companies prosecuted for price fixing activities
may be potentially damaging for firms, successful use of PR may well mitigate adverse
perceptions on the part of other political and economic elites.

Figure 2.  PR as percentage of total business coverage.

What was said: Decriminalization

The concern about the qualitative nature of the news coverage meant that our final focus
was on the way in which news coverage of business crime was constructed. Here we were
interested in the nature of the coverage, with a particular focus on the language that was
being used. How far did press coverage express outrage at fraudulent behaviour of business
elites? How far did it encourage its audience to accept or even express sympathy with those
engaged in criminal activity?
What we found was not only that the voice of business dominated coverage, but where
business did speak, linguistic and lexical choices served to play an important role in
decriminalizing the activity. Much literature has been devoted to the extent to which
white collar crime has been ‘decriminalized’ through, for example, reluctance of the
media to use the term ‘crime’ to describe corporate illegality (Bohm, 1993; Wright et al.,
1995). Our coverage reinforced this, with much greater emphasis upon soft terminology
such as wrongdoing; misdemeanour was used to describe the behaviour of those firms
involved in illegal activity, rather than crime. Firms were asked to respond to the charges
against them – which were accompanied by strong defensive adjectives such as ‘vehe-
mently deny’. Stephan contends that newspaper readership seems to have little effect
upon public attitudes, he argues this is because the media are poor at disseminating infor-
mation about the ‘effects [of price fixing], current cartel laws, and prosecutions in the
UK’ (2008: 130). However, what our findings below suggest is that it is not only the lack
of information but the nature of that information which is important in providing the
backdrop through which public opinion is formed.

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Allen and Savigny 287

In our case study, we found the discussion of those who committed the crimes took
place in sympathetic terms. The following is perhaps illustrative of a wider sympathy for
business criminals as not having committed a ‘real’ crime: under the headline ‘A white
collar Guantanamo’ The Times goes on to describe how,

Ian Norris is a frightened man. He fears he may be removed against his will from Britain and
thrown into jail in the United States to languish for a year or more awaiting trial, without having
had chance to profess his innocence in a British court. . . . If he were someone that the American
authorities suspected was plotting to blow up the White house or contaminate water supplies, then
such draconian measures might be understandable. . . . Mr Norris, however, stands accused of
being involved in the dastardly crime of fixing the prices of carbon brushes. (Wheatcroft, 2005)

Norris’s personalization and the description of his ‘fear’, and the analogous depiction
of the US torture camp, are aimed to evoke sympathy with the criminal, rather than anger
at. Here then not only is the ‘crime’ decriminalized, but we are encouraged to feel sym-
pathy for the criminal, who has not committed a real crime.
For crime to be ‘successfully’ discussed it needs personification, to be presented as
the consequence of the actions of an individual (Kappeler et al., 1996). Yet the represen-
tation of Norris is unusual, not only for the extremity of analogy, but for its personaliza-
tion. In price fixing cases the company is often presented as the ‘criminal’ rather than any
individual. By denying agency to firms, this denies their capacity to commit crime. The
decriminalization of these white collar crimes represents a way in which moral discus-
sions about the way in which markets operate and the assumptions which underlie this
are removed from the public agenda. While the morality of actors within markets may be
discussed, these are individuals, personalized, implying that it is a personality flaw which
leads these characters to behave in this way, rather than a problem with the market per se.
The media discuss greedy bankers, implying an almost as innate, natural or at least
human attribute, rather than any kind of systemic problem. This denies the possibility
that it is the market itself that structures those choices that individuals (i.e. bankers) may
make. This is not to negate the autonomy or choices that bankers have made, rather we
suggest it is an interaction of bankers in the market context that they operate in which
leads to these outcomes. Depersonalizing the behaviour of firms suggests that there is no
criminal, and therefore no immoral activity. If we restore agency to firms we may begin
to reopen the discussion about the nature of morality within markets per se, in which the
personalization of white collar crime has been excluded from the public debate.

Conclusion
Business does not operate in a vacuum. If we are to make sense of the wider lack of
accountability with which our business elites are subjected to publicly, we might begin
with a glance around our political classes. Mandelson famously remarked that Labour
was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’, and ‘a Labour government
which hands out ASBOs to the poor and peerages to the financiers’ (Irvin, 2008: 206).
An observation made prior to the banking crisis, perhaps presciently noted the actions
of the bankers collecting their bonuses irrespective of public opinion: ‘Today’s super

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288 European Journal of Communication 27(3)

rich feel that they deserve their rewards irrespective of the jobs that are lost through
downsizing, the deteriorating working conditions entailed by locking out trade unions
or the environmental damage resulting from relaxing emissions standards and the dete-
riorating public provision from lobbying for corporate and personal tax breaks’ (Irvin,
2008: 206; emphasis added). This culture of ‘deserving’ rich is a phrase more recently
articulated by the Coalition government, but in part has been reinvigorated, or revived
from its Victorian roots in contemporary neoliberalism.
While much has been made of the individuals caught up in the recent financial crises,
less attention has been paid to the way in which businesses behave within markets. In the
UK, with the decline of manufacturing, the lessening of the power of the trade unions,
Britain’s economy has emphasized finance and big business as a necessary and good
thing. Business power is reinforced as elite policy-makers seem reluctant to introduce
progressive taxation measures – maybe for fear of the flight of capital (see, for example,
Peston, 2008), but this is also reinforced through public discourse.
We have looked at the way in which public discourse is constructed around business
crime through a case study of press coverage of ‘price fixing’. We are not suggesting a
monolithic dominant media discourse, but what we have sought to do is reflect upon the
way in which consensus is negotiated through public discourses. That individual bankers
were still able to claim their bonuses, despite their role in the financial crisis, perhaps
reveals something about the way in which we view business wrongdoing. The credit
crunch may have shaken our economic system, and required responses from political
elites of ‘outmoded’ fiscal Keynesian policies (Crouch, 2009; Watson, 2009), but it could
be argued that the foundations of consensus around the methods, behaviour and morality
of business were solid. The failure of the press to condone immoral, illegal behaviour of
businesses prior to the financial crisis reveals much about the dominant ideology thesis.
Where the very real tensions of a neoliberal hegemonic agenda were exposed within the
financial crisis, dominant discourses had already excluded the vocabulary through which
alternative viewpoints of the relationship between the economy and society and the role
of markets in society might be legitimately debated.

Funding and Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank the ESRC funded Centre for Competition Policy, University of East
Anglia, Norwich, for supporting and funding this work.

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