Ethical Corporate Culture Abuse Influences Brand Trust? A Media Framing Analysis: A case of the FDIC-USA

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Introduction
Are we reading or watching the news? No, I don’t think so! We rather consume patches and shades of organised mental frames about events. Each frame is meant to propel the mind towards a particular sense of meaning and truth. These frames determine how the media expects society to think about a culture, corporate entity, an issue or how consumers should think and relate to a particular brand in a competitive business environment. The function of the media in directing how the public mentally perceives an event or a narrative is referred to as media framing. In its process, the media employs macro and micro framing perspectives on news events and brand stories. First, macro framing is about the big picture a story projects or in other words, the context within which the media presents a story or an event. Micro framing on the other hand is about specific language choices the media employs, the implications of the language, the tone of the language and its invocation of associated mental images. It is therefore worthy of a note in knowing how media framing could influence public perceptions about government and nongovernment agencies. This article focuses on how trusted media such as The Wall Street Journal’s media frames could throw different shades of public trust on United States of America’s (USA) federal financial agency. That agency is none but The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which is an independent agency created by the Congress to maintain stability and public confidence in America’s financial institutions and systems. (www.fdic.gov)

Significantly, the media’s presentation of media frames around the corporate culture existing at the United States of America’s (USA) Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is likely to impact on trust, public perceptions and even direct negative public sentiments towards the FDIC’s brand. Primarily, corporate cultural values form an intrinsic part of a corporate’s belief systems which subsequently drive growth and sustainable business and should be guarded and protected from harmful media frames. The media as both consumers and workers remain sensitive to corporates’ ethical cultures for their sense of belonging, trust, working-harmony, personal health, professional career development, quality and ethical service delivery.

Upholding ethical corporate culture remains important as “it shapes everything from employee engagement to business success” (Rinaily Bonifacio, May 30, 2024) since a “negative corporate culture can damage a brand’s reputation and loyalty” (Jorgen Sunderberg, www.linkhumans.com ) and hence perhaps the need for a Wall Street Journal’s investigation audited by the Law Firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton on the corporate culture existing at the FDIC “found out that one in 10 employees at FDIC complained of sexual harassment, discrimination, other personal misconduct in workplace” (Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2024)

Similarly, how the FDIC’s brand is frame by the media could lead to a reputational deficit or gains among its stakeholders and the general public. It is against the backdrop of corporate culture framing and its possible impact on brand confidence and corporate success has this article employed media narrative analysis in analyzing 324 story statements of 13 news articles in the Wall Street Journal for May 2024 whilst FDIC constitute the study units. The inter coder validity of this study is 85%. The study below revealed the framing contexts within which the FDIC was portrayed before the public, citizenry, stakeholders and prospective professionals interested in the FDIC corporate brand.

Framing The FDIC:
Globally, the media acts as an agent for social change. The media’s agenda is therefore not gratifying itself in publishing negative stories about brands and organizations but a media performing its civic responsibility in a public sphere by mobilizing opinions towards the upliftment of moral and ethical values across all spheres of human life. The media framed FDIC with a high degree of ethical corporate culture abuses hinging on toxic working cultural values, sexual harassment, sexualized working environment, bullying, racism, Superiors misconducting themselves, patriarchal abuses and many more as seen in the figures A and B.

The Public’s mental picture of FDIC could be influenced by the media’s frame of the FDIC brand. The frames are not encouraging for positive working environment. Corporate executives are inspired to uphold mechanisms and strategies that seek to promote positive working environment and subsequently media frames of high civic ethics. Strategic corporate brand story monitoring should be embraced as efforts for managing their brand’s media frames. Media frames should be at the apex of all brand health and brand equity management since it contributes immensely to the trust the public repose in a brand.

It must also be emphasized that this article’s intent is to contribute to brands’ media frame management without any political intent and should be perceived in the context of understanding how the power of media frames if not checked, could impact negatively on a brand’s health sustainability, consumer values and publictrust.

Fig. A: - FDIC was framed within the following media frames: