Edited by Peter DeIonno. With contributions by Thabiso Mochiko, Roy Cokayne and Florence de Vries, Sept 10, 2009
Earlier this year, the Roberts Environmental Center in the US released research results on sustainability reporting by the world's biggest entertainment firms, including media groups. It found the sector lagging behind most others in corporate environmental and sustainability reporting.
The best-performing company was Bertelsmann, the world's third-biggest media group and the owner of RTL Group, Europe's biggest broadcaster.
The interesting observation was less that German-based Bertelsmann is located in a region facing greater pressure than most to integrate sustainability into business practices, but that Bertelsmann scored top of the log even though its corporate responsibility report had not been updated since 2005.
Poor sustainability reporting in the sector holds true in South Africa too. Last year, JSE media and entertainment companies scored miserably in research conducted by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which tracks voluntary reporting on carbon issues by the JSE's top 100 firms.
But there is quite possibly a bigger issue at play. BBC journalist Andrew Marr refers to it in his book My Trade: "We are the self-appointed referees of modern life and we are not greatly inclined to blow the whistle and send ourselves off the field."
This is not an attempt to point fingers at our opposition. It is hard to imagine a response would have been forthcoming from Ireland's Independent News & Media, which publishes Business Report, even if it was listed on the JSE, given a poor understanding of our own carbon footprint.
What is it with entertainment and media companies that they lag other industries on reporting non-financial performance to such a degree?
The most obvious answer is that, unlike the really big carbon emitters that are under intense public scrutiny, media and entertainment groups face less public pressure. And so they allocate less internal resources to collecting the necessary data.
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