Scholars in the field of communication have long recognised the mass media’s socio-economic imperative, which exerts widespread influence on individuals and society. For example, media attentiveness to policy issues offers the public accessible information about the political environment and activities. While the media framing may not be able to change individual opinions about a certain issue, it has an impact on their perception of the collective salience of the issue and the dominant view which prevails within their communities (Mutz & Soss, 1997). In addition to acting as an agent which reports reality, the mass media are one of the information systems that are involved in shaping opinions and affecting people’s behaviour and social actions (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976; Fombrun & Shanley, 1990). Through editorials and feature articles, the mass media set the agenda for the public by telling people what issues to think about, and more importantly, how to think about these issues (Carroll & McCombs, 2003). In the business field, the mass media also play a critical role. Prior studies have discovered that media disclosures and narratives may affect stock returns (e.g. Fang & Peress, 2009), corporate reputation (e.g. Carroll & McCombs, 2003; Wartick, 1992), corporate social responsibility (e.g. Grafström & Windell, 2011; Zyglidopoulos, Georgiadis, Carroll, & Siegel, 2012) and the survival of an organisation in field-wide crisis (e.g. Desai, 2011). Extensive media coverage of particular firms, issues, or events implies a prominence in the public agenda which is likely to influence stakeholders’ and the public’s impressions of firms (Pollock & Rindova, 2003). Moreover, given the presence of information asymmetry, stakeholders and onlookers largely rely on information intermediaries to make inferences and assessments about a firm and its status (Deephouse, 2000). The market will not react to business events such as bankruptcy until relevant information is widely disseminated by major news media (Dawkins & Bamber, 1998). For decades, scholars have been studying the antecedents and consequences of business failure. Yet the existing literature in organisational research has documented limited evidence regarding the role of the mass media in business failure. Prior studies tend to explore media views on failure causes (e.g. Johnson, 2000) and how firms react to failure by influencing media exposure (e.g. Desai, 2011; Zavyalova, Pfarrer, Reger, & Shapiro, 2012), but there is little discussion on how the behaviour of information intermediaries such as the mass media potentially reflect and connect with business failure events. Given the increasing attention on the mass media in the business arena, this study aims to address this lacuna in our understanding by exploring the role of the mass media in business failure events. We are particularly interested in media visibility and news sentiment of underperforming firms in the Chinese stock market.