What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers
2010/01/01 by Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse M. Shapiro · 1,518 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Engineering · Social Sciences · #Advertising #Business #Economic Policies and Impacts #Economics #ICT Impact and Policies #Media Influence and Politics #Newspaper
paper · doi:10.3982/ecta7195
published in Econometrica 78(1), 35-71 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2010/01/01 · openalex created_date 2018/09/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract
We construct a new index of media slant that measures the similarity of a news outlet's language to that of a congressional Republican or Democrat. We estimate a model of newspaper demand that incorporates slant explicitly, estimate the slant that would be chosen if newspapers independently maximized their own profits, and compare these profit-maximizing points with firms' actual choices. We find that readers have an economically significant preference for like-minded news. Firms respond strongly to consumer preferences, which account for roughly 20 percent of the variation in measured slant in our sample. By contrast, the identity of a newspaper's owner explains far less of the variation in slant. Copyright 2010 The Econometric Society.
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