CSR Ratings and Contradiction of Real and Communicated Aims of Media Organization: The Case of News Corporation

The article aims at the critical analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ratings in accordance with reports presented by the largest organization which evaluates corporate social responsibility—the CSRHUB. The analysis refers to media corporations, such as News Corporations, and it aims at providing an answer to the question how the crisis of social trust towards media which belong to a media corporation affects their CSR ratings. In the article, there have been two hypotheses formulated: (1) the complex character of social, political and market aims pursued by media corporations is not clearly reflected by CSR ratings; (2) the comprehensiveness of CSR ratings does not contribute to the identification of key threats which result from the lack of social responsibility in a media corporation. The analysis indicates that—in their scope which is difficult to verify—CSR ratings of media corporations take into consideration the following elements: media specificity, and lobbying nature of some organizations (e.g. News Corporation). Their complexity and aggregated character makes it difficult to identify the sources of the problem. Furthermore, image disasters of particular entities within corporations insignificantly affect their CSR ratings.