In this paper, we study the bureaucratic reputational strategies of the EU’s Directorate-General for Competition (DG Competition) and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the context of antitrust regulation. Both regulatory bodies navigate reputational and political pressures during politicisation, which shapes how they communicate and justify their regulatory decisions to the public. This study employs claims-making analysis to explore how DG Competition and the FTC navigate these pressures across Irish and US media outlets, as well as how they communicate their positions through official press releases in response to contestation in the media. The paper goes a step further than most existing studies of reputation management by comparing media reports with regulators’ own communications in press releases, highlighting the ways in which these bodies attempt to manage their reputations amidst public and political scrutiny. Preliminary findings indicate that the nature of contestation differs in unexpected ways. The FTC is routinely portrayed as a more technocratic and independent institution than the more politically attuned DG Competition. Still, the FTC faces more ideologically charged criticism, prompting it to rely more heavily on moral justifications to bolster its bureaucratic reputation, whereas DG Competition emphasises procedural and performative claims. By incorporating both media and institutional communication, this study provides a deeper understanding of how contestation shapes technocratic communication strategies in antitrust regulation.
