The Financial Press

This chapter discusses how national newspapers have reported on business and the economy, particularly during economic crises and its relation to the Treasury orthodoxy. It focuses on the dramatic expansion of financial reporting in the latter part of the 20th Century to move beyond the City beat to encompass personal finance, the economy and labour reporting. The scale and scope of financial reporting has always been closely tied to Britain’s economic position, with coverage shrinking in the interwar years as Britain lost its international dominance and expanding in the era of globalisation when deregulation of the City revived London as an international financial centre. This boosted the profitability and circulation of the leading financial publications, The Economist and the Financial Times, which also gained a large global audience. The nature of financial reporting also changed with the rise of financial PR firms which sought to influence the coverage of companies, especially during take-overs.