Journalistic evaluation in financial news

Abstract

The business and financial press plays an important role for capital markets, as it routinely reports on the financial results of large companies, thereby influencing how investors perceive the economic prospects of these companies. Despite the numerical and factualized nature of such news, financial journalists have considerable power in interpreting corporate results and evaluating them as positive or negative. We examine these journalistic evaluations as metadiscourse, focusing on the variety of evaluative language resources financial journalists draw on to convey positive or negative evaluations of companies and their financial results in their news stories. Our findings illustrate how financial journalists problematize the financial results of companies, distance themselves from corporate claims or endorse them, and downtone or reinforce evaluations by means of contrast. Our analysis suggests that financial journalists convey evaluations in a manner seemingly conformant with the genre ideals of neutrality and objectivity, despite exercising considerable power over the evaluation of financial news.