Partisan bias in economic news: Evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of U.S. newspapers

Abstract

seminar participants at Bristol, Cambridge, Columbia, Durham, Rome (Ente Einaudi), LSE, MIT, Milan, Suffolk, the World Meeting of the Public Choice Societies (Amsterdam) for helpful comments. We also give a very special thanks to Michael Naber for making the data collection possible. AbstractWe study the agenda-setting political behavior of a large sample of U.S. newspapers during the last decade, and the behavior of smaller samples for longer time periods. Our purpose is to examine the intensity of coverage of economic issues as a function of the underlying economic conditions and the political affiliation of the incumbent president, focusing on unemployment, inflation, the federal budget and the trade deficit. We investigate whether there is any significant correlation between the endorsement policy of newspapers, and the differential coverage of bad/good economic news as a function of the president's political affiliation. We find evidence that newspapers with pro-

Deception in Speeches of Candidates for Public Office

“…For example, Gentzkow and Shapiro (2010) and Ansolabehere, Lessem, and Snyder (2006) observe that newspaper editorials heavily favor incumbents. Similarly, Larcinese, Puglisi and Snyder (2011) observe partisan bias favoring incumbents in economic reporting. Most of the work in this field which focuses on the effect of political discourse on the audience in areas such as persuasion (Merton, 1946) and the manipulation of public opinion (Deutsch, 1963;Chafee, 1975;Nimmo & Savage 1976;Nimmo et al, 1981;Edelman, 1977Edelman, , 1988Edelman, , 2001Rank, 1984;Paletz, 1987;Swanson & Nimmo, 1990;Pierce at al., 1992;Stuckey, 1996;Watts, 1997;Perlmutter, 1999;Kaid, 2004;Esser & Pfetsch., 2004;Lilleker, 2006;Stanyer, 2007;McNair, 2007).…”

How Partisan is the Press? Multiple Measures of Media Slant*

“…This suggests that slant is determined at an editorial level rather than through pressure or article selection by journalists. We note that previous papers on media slant, such as Larcinese et al. (2011) and Puglisi and Snyder (2010), have not distinguished between the text and the headline of each article and, therefore, did not capture this nuance.…”

Instrumentalizing Fukushima: Comparing Media Coverage of Fukushima in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland

“…Instrumental actualization is documented in various empirical studies (Flegel & Chaffee, 1971;Kepplinger et al, 1991a;Kepplinger, 1992b;Kleinnijenhuis, 1989;Larcinese, Puglisi, & Snyder, 2011;Schulz et al, 1998, pp. 75-106).…”