What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers
نویسندگان
چکیده
We construct a new index of media slant that measures whether a news outlets language is more similar to a congressional Republican or Democrat. We apply the measure to study the market forces that determine political content in the news. We estimate a model of newspaper demand that incorporates slant explicitly, estimate the slant that would be chosen if newspapers independently maximized their own pro ts, and compare these ideal points with rmsactual choices. Our analysis con rms an economically signi cant demand for news slanted toward ones own political ideology. 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 newspapers owner explains far less of the variation in slant, and we nd little evidence that media conglomerates homogenize news to minimize xed costs in the production of content. JEL classi cation: L82, K23, D78
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