SEC oversight of publicly listed firms ranges from comment letter (CL) reviews of firms' reporting compliance to pursuing enforcement actions against violators. Prior literature finds that firm political connections (PC) negatively predict enforcement actions, inferring SEC capture. We present...

The media can impose reputational costs on firms because of its important role as an information intermediary and its ability to negatively slant coverage. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment that holds constant the information event across firms, but varies the availability of a major news...