‘A building of shame and disgrace’ or ‘trial by media’? Media framing of KPMG Netherlands’ head office

Abstract

This paper centers on the role that a material artefact—KPMG Netherlands’ head office—has played in the Dutch media’s attempt to hold the audit profession to account. It employs the literatures on news framing and the media’s social control function, to analyze how the press mobilized the building as a perceived space that epitomized extant professional conduct. Using a strategy of temporal bracketing, the paper traces how an initially weak claim against KPMG amplified and expanded after successive revelations, which ultimately triggered a criminal investigation into charges of fraud, tax evasion, and forgery. The paper shows the media’s ability to construct and enact reporting frames that suppress voices from the audit field and that set a reform agenda for both firm and profession. It also reveals the contrast between the values that audit firm offices seek to convey and those they come to embody in the eyes of the public.