TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gentzkow,Matthew
AU  - Shapiro,Jesse M.
TI  - What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12707
PY  - 2006
Y2  - November 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12707
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12707.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Matthew Gentzkow
University of Chicago
Booth School of Business
5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/834-2177
Fax: 773/702-0458
E-Mail: gentzkow@chicagobooth.edu

Jesse M. Shapiro
University of Chicago
Booth School of Business
5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/834-2688
Fax: 773-753-0563
E-Mail: jmshapir@uchicago.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2007-07-01
AB  - We construct a new index of media slant that measures whether a news outlet.s language is more similar to that of a congressional Republican or Democrat. We apply the measure to study the market forces that determine political con- tent 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 profits, and compare these ideal points with .rms. actual choices. Our analysis confirms an economically significant demand for news slanted toward one's 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 newspaper's owner explains far less of the variation in slant. We also present evidence on the role of pressure from incumbent politicians, tastes of reporters, and newspaper competition in determining slant.
ER  -