This paper introduces unpacks media favorability into two dimensions and investigates their relationship with firms’ public esteem. A firm’s focal media favorability refers to the overall evaluation of a firm presented in a stream of media stories. A firm’s peripheral media favorability refers the overall evaluative tone accumulating from a stream of media stories where a firm is mentioned, yet is independent of how the focal firm is portrayed relative to the content. The study used a content analysis of The New York Times (n= 2,711) articles dating six months preceding the 2000 Annual Reputation Quotient, a nationwide public opinion poll (n= 22,359) on firms’ reputations. Relationships were found between firms’ focal media favorability and their public esteem for respondents with more knowledge of the firms’ attributes and between firms’ peripheral media favorability and their public esteem for respondents having little to no knowledge about the firms’ attributes.