Higher attendance at theme parks and stronger box office receipts from its newest films, "Finding Nemo" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl," helped catapult The Walt Disney Company to the top of Delahaye's most recent Media Reputation Index, a quarterly assessment of how news coverage affects corporate reputation. 

Second quarter results also indicated a shift of the corporate news focus from lingering scandals that generated mainly negative corporate news to overwhelmingly positive coverage. According to this year's second quarter results, the positive net effect of news stories citing the MRi's top 100 companies grew nearly threefold from the same period in 2002.

For example, damaging stories about Enron have taken a back seat while several companies, including Disney, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, IBM, General Motors, Intel and Home Depot, have kept their good media reputations intact with more positive news. Also, MRi's results showed that although the volume of news stories has dipped since last year, the majority of the coverage has been very favorable.

The second quarter results, which are based on an analysis of more than 60,000 news items, also found that technology was the strongest of all sectors, with Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems and Dell claiming six of the top 20 spots.

Second Quarter 2003 Media Reputation Index
Top Ten Companies

1.  The Walt Disney Company
2.  Microsoft
3.  Intel
4.  Wal-Mart
5.  General Motors
6.  IBM
7.  Home Depot
8.  Coca-Cola
9.  Bank of America
10.  AOL Time Warner

"A change in reputation is likely to affect whether investors want to invest in the company's shares, which in turn changes a company's market value," said Reputation Institute founder Dr. Charles Fombrun. "Reputation has been repeatedly linked to multiple measures of value including better access to capital, higher market-to-book ratios, premium pricing, and attracting and retaining the best employees. It's important to monitor how companies are featured in the media because any change in a company's media coverage can influence how people perceive the company, thereby affecting its reputation."

Delahaye classified media content into the six categories of the Reputation Quotient developed by the Reputation Institute with Harris Interactive: products and services, emotional appeal, financial performance, social responsibility, vision and leadership, and workplace environment.