ESG News Review 24 — 30 August 2013
Wal-Mart has been the most praised company last week as it opened-up healthcare benefits to employees’ same-sex partners, which The Newsweek/Daily Beast’s Daniel Gross describes as a “corporate shift”. Nissan and Ford also received positive coverage for creating jobs in the U.S., while Peugeot presented a new hybrid car.
On the other hand, Tokyo Electric Power Co. was again the most criticized company, because of radioactive water leaking from the Fukushima nuclear plant. A court settlement ordered Facebook to pay $20m to settle Sponsored Stories privacy breach, and McDonald’s Corp. was criticized as many US fast-food workers went on strike in protest at low wages.
The most praised companies last week were: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Caixa d Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., Ford Motor Co., and Peugeot S.A.
And the most criticized were: Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., Facebook, Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., McDonald’s Corp., and Bank of America Corporation.
The tag cloud below shows words found in news about these companies.
Words found in news about most praised and most criticized companies last week
This weekly review has been produced using the EthicalQuote reputation index run by Covalence, which tracks 2800 companies worldwide. It gives a summary of positive and negative news published last week about Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), ethics and sustainability.
The EthicalQuote reputation index integrates thousands of news pieces gathered online and classified according to 50 ESG criteria inspired by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and to their positive or negative sentiment.
The next heatmap represents the sentiment calculated for each of the 50 criteria last week. The 50 criteria are embedded into 7 groups, following the structure of the GRI. The color indicates the ratio of positive news / total news.
Ratio of positive news / total news for 50 criteria last week 0 % 
100 %
The map below represents countries where action described in the news takes place, the color reflecting the ratio of positive news / total news for each active country using last week’s data.
Ratio of positive news / total news 0 % 100 %
In terms of volume of information USA, Japan, France, South Africa, UK, Spain, Germany, and China.
Last week statistics
| Positives | 764 | Companies | 293 | Countries | 59 |
| Negatives | 1491 | Mostly praised | 143 | Sources | 436 |
| Total | 2255 | Mostly criticized | 143 | ||
| Positives / Total | 34% |
These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 24 – 30 August 2013.
Historical statistics
 |
||
| Positives | 339794 | |
| Negatives | 194647 | |
| Total | 534441 | |
| Sources | 35098 | |
| Start | 01.01.2002 | |
| End | 30.08.2013 | |
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