As he seeks to leverage his crusade against corporate corruption into the [Empire] Statehouse, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is having a profound impact on U.S.
business. As goes Spitzer, so goes States AGs throughout the country. As a result, companies throughout the world will need to re-strategize their own responses if investigators
do indeed rethink how they will be pursuing (or not pursuing) their own initiatives in court and in the media, according to CARMA International, which recently conducted a global
media analysis of Eliot Spitzer on behalf of Levick Strategic Communications. CARMA examined 62 editorial and opinion pieces in major U.S. business and consumer publications
between Jan. 1, 2003, and June 30, 2004, discussing Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer continues to outperform federal regulators in the court of public opinion; many of those regulators
continue to be perceived as having fallen down on the job earlier in the decade amid a rash of corporate scandals. Even if Spitzer doesn't run for public office, public perception
of him will nonetheless shape the day-to-day realities confronting U.S. business. Some of the findings:
- Even though negative messages have increased across the board during the first half of 2004, the largest volume of opinion pieces agreed that Spitzer should be applauded
for the changes that his cases have brought to the business world. Most of these messages appeared in 2003 and referenced the global research settlement. Yet even in more recent,
and more critical, coverage of Spitzer's actions, a number of stories conceded that, while Spitzer has started to step over the line with some of his lawsuits, his initial fame
for outing research conflicts on Wall Street was well deserved, and he did indeed provide benefits to individual investors. Accordingly, these pieces generally painted a mixed
good guy/bad guy picture of Spitzer. - Watch the Grasso case carefully. It may be an important first chink in Spitzer's armor. Any media victory by Grasso in a public court innately biased against overpaid
executives (and, in this case, an executive who was not even working for a publicly traded company) is conspicuous. With Grasso too, there may be an appearance, however debatable,
of victimlessness. If Spitzer buckles on the legal end, or if Grasso wins (relative) media victories, businesses with much less to apologize for may well want to reexamine their
strategies in response to investigations by Spitzer or Spitzerlike officials. They may have more going for them in terms of public support than Spitzer's prominence would suggest.