4 smart ways to cover ESG issues

Veteran journalist Cary O'Reilly offers tips to aspiring journalists on covering how corporations balance environmental, social and governance concerns with profits

ESG issues are transforming the way businesses around the world operate as more and more companies balance their push for profits with social responsibility to their communities and humankind.

The global investment market for companies embracing ESG priorities has gone from zero at the turn of the century to $29.77 trillion (U.S.) in 2024 as concern about environmental protection, social progress and humane corporate governance has grown. So how do reporters find good stories about ESG?

”Sometimes it’s there in plain sight,” says O’Reilly, a Tsinghua University journalism professor with over three decades of experience in the business journalism industry.

O'Reilly's expertise is sifting out ESG information. He’s done it at Bloomberg News and has been based in Washington, D.C., Switzerland, Japan, and Singapore during his career. He created a financial newsletter dedicated to ESG issues for the Washington-based publisher CQ Roll Call.

He says ideas for compelling ESG stories often come from real people, such as activists, gadfly investors and whistleblowers. One example he pointed out was a group of nuns, the Sisters of St. Joseph, who bought shares in the firearms company Smith & Wesson so they could discover more about its corporate governance. Other stories come from careful study of publicly available corporate filings or agendas for quarterly board meetings. Others come from developing sources inside companies, and among their competitors.

Here are four of O'Reilly's top ESG reporting tips for journalists in the U.S., Europe and China: 

1. Decode complexity

​​ESG reporters’ main job is to decode complex company document filings and shareholder proposals. That means translating business documents into easily understood language. Sometimes, the corporate authors of shareholder proposals don't necessarily want the public to have a complete picture of what the proposal is calling for. These proposals often are written in obtuse legalese. 

An ESG reporter needs to be able to find that information and talk to experts who can help them decipher it. It's rare that a reporter will have a kind of in-depth knowledge of law, finance, accounting and corporate governance rules to fully understand every word in a document. In these cases, make the experts your best friend.

2. Attend shareholder meetings

ESG reporters can also attend shareholder meetings and study the shareholder proposals. The meetings are not always open to reporters (depending on local laws and company policies), but there has been a global push for more openness in corporate governance. Often there is public resistance if a company tries to close its meetings, as some shareholders will oppose it, saying it would make the company look bad.

There are a lot of stories to be gleaned just by studying the shareholder meeting itself. Read between the lines! What's actually happening, who's sitting by whom? All of a sudden, the person that everyone thought was going to be the next CEO is not in the room at this meeting. What does that mean, what are they saying and what are they not saying?

”A lot of really good reporters who follow companies closely will pick up a lot of the kabuki theater,” O’Reilly says.

 3. Investigate greenwashing or ESG policy gaps

Corporations want to benefit from the public's increasing interest in ESG and environmental issues.

”The companies will put out numbers, information and statements that make it appear like they are saints, like they are being excellent corporate citizens,” O’Reilly said.

That has led to a growth in "greenwashing," a corporate strategy to publicize pro-environmental actions as an attempt to deflect attention from alleged environmental degradation.

ESG reporters need to be very skeptical about what the companies are putting out. Did they really reduce CO2 emissions by 46% last year, or how are they measuring that? Did their CEOs continue to fly their jet-stream planes three times a day, sometimes on personal missions? Reporters can use stockholder meetings as opportunities to investigate greenwashing allegations.

Look for policy gaps between what the company says and what the company does by comparing their policies with reports from the community. What's actually happening on the ground? Is a petroleum company that polluted a region's beaches with an oil spill now sponsoring community events? Is a company with a poor record of hiring women boasting about a new women's outreach program?

This is also where you can compile your own data. You can look at reports from various non-profits and others about the environment around these companies, where they're operating and measuring for various pollutants. Build your own database and see if what the company is saying meets the real world.

”This is accountability journalism in its purest form,” said O’Reilly.

4. Provide context

One of the responsibilities of ESG reporters – and all reporters – is to provide important context in their stories. Valuable sources of historical context include investors, NGOs, and regulators.

For example, a company could still be polluting unacceptably, but the pollution levels are down 80% from 10 years ago. This context doesn't excuse what is going on now, but it provides the public with a bigger picture.

”Another example is if a company has a terrible record on civil rights or diversity and has made a few token hires of women or minority groups,” explained O’Reilly. ”While that might look good in isolation, given the context of its overall behavior, it's a drop in the bucket.”

There are lots of opportunities here to leverage ESG reporting into cool stories. One of O’Reilly’s personal examples is his reporting on fuel oil shipments moving in and out of China.

”I happened to be there when all the bunker fuel shipments started to reverse course,” he stated. ”China had been an exporter of bunker fuels up until around this time. And then what the data was showing was that more fuel was going back towards China.”

This was major news in the bunker fuel market, as China was now importing instead of being an exporter of this particular kind of fuel, at the same time as the Chinese economy was growing faster and faster.

”It was a momentous change,” O’Reilly says. ”This was just using the data that was being issued, and again, any given month, is this number correct?

”It's hard to verify, but the trend was unmistakable.”

When everything comes together, ESG reporting highlights important business trends – and exposes the information that’s not easily available to the public. O'Reilly said this kind of journalism is invaluable to readers interested in corporate decision-making.

”ESG is not just data, it is values in action,” says O’Reilly.

For the good ESG reporter, he points out, there is little time for rest.

”Keep an eye out for the shareholder meetings coming up in the next weeks, because there’ll be a lot of fireworks,” he states.

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