Media analysis of listed property vehicles in New Zealand

Abstract

The media plays an important part in informing and educating the “market” regarding the performance of different investment vehicles. However, in New Zealand there are doubts about the ability of many members of the media to adequately analyse and report the activities of the listed property sector. This is perceived to be due to a lack of property education and experience on the part of journalists, combined with few truly independent sources of expert opinion. In order to test this proposition an analysis of media reporting of New Zealand listed property vehicles over the last ten years was carried out. Specifically, the twelve conflict of interest categories identified by Sagalyn (1996) were used in a content analysis of media reports to assess the media’s reporting of the existence of agency problems. The findings confirmed perceptions in that most media reports were essentially a rewrite of press releases. Those articles that did contain independent analysis tended to only identify the most obvious agency issues.