Distributing News and Political Influence

Mass media affect both who receives political information, and what information is received. This influences policy formation since politicians tend to favor informed voters and well covered issues. Politicians do so for good reasons, not only are well informed voters more likely to vote than uninformed voters,1 but also more likely to vote for the candidate who furthers their interests.2 Voters are also more responsive to favorable policies which are thoroughly exposed by the media. This chapter discusses recent work by the author on how mass media may affect policy formation. First, I discuss how the cost and revenue structures of mass-media are likely to influence their news coverage, and how the resulting news bias may affect public policy. One finding is that the increasing-returns-to-scale in news production undermines the political power of special-interest groups and minorities, and enhances the political power of large groups. Next, I present an empirical investigation of how the invention of radio and TV affected public policy and voting behavior in the US. This study uses US county-level data on radio and TV-ownership, voter turnout,