媒体的公司治理作用——共识与分歧

The Corporate Governance Role of the Media;Consensus and Divergence

随着媒体在监督企业违规行为,保护中小投资者权益方面发挥日益重要的作用,媒体的公司治理作用逐渐成为主流财务学研究关注的焦点和重要内容。一方面,倡导者坚定的认为,作为法律外公司治理机制的重要环节,通过事前监督、事中深入调查和追踪报道,媒体能够有效提高企业在事后改正违规行为的概率;另一方面,反对者则坚持,由于受到政府和其他利益集团的影响,媒体很难做出客观、中立和公正的报道,由此产生的报道偏差可能削弱媒体的公司治理作用。更进一步,反对者指出,通过改变受众的信息分布,有偏报道甚至会危害整个社会资源的配置效率。本文将重点从媒体发挥公司治理作用的动机、机制、条件、效果以及"媒体报道偏差学派"对媒体公司治理作用的质疑人手,详细梳理近年来主流财务理论关于媒体公司治理作用的不同观点和最新研究成果,并在此基础上指出在我国制度背景下研究媒体公司治理作用的可能拓展方向。

Media is one of the important sources of corporate governance mechanism to monitor the corporate vio- lation behavior and protect the interests of minority shareholders, and its corporate governance role is rising to be the focus of mainstream financial economists. On the one hand, the proponents posit that media, as an im- portant extra - legal corporate governance mechanism, can ex post urge violating firms to address their misbeha- viors by ex ante monitoring and in - event thorough investigation. On the other hand, opponents claim that media can hardly make objective, unbiased and independent reports because of the pressure and intervene from the government and other interest groups, and therefore the biased reports may harm its corporate governance role. Furthermore, they point out that the biased reports, by influencing the distribution of ex ante belief and information of investors, can jeopardize the efficiency of overall resource allocation. This paper analyzes the mo- tivation, mechanisms, economic consequences, and challenges of the corporate governance role of the media and reviews from the mainstream financial theory, the contradicted views and latest literature on the corporate governance role of the media. Based on which this paper points out the future research directions within the con- text of China＇s institutional background.