The Market for News

Sendhil Mullainathan and Andrei Shleifer

American Economic Review, 2005, vol. 95, issue 4, 1031-1053

Abstract: We investigate the market for news under two assumptions: that readers hold beliefs which they like to see confirmed, and that newspapers can slant stories toward these beliefs. We show that, on the topics where readers share common beliefs, one should not expect accuracy even from competitive media: competition results in lower prices, but common slanting toward reader biases. On topics where reader beliefs diverge (such as politically divisive issues), however, newspapers segment the market and slant toward extreme positions. Yet in the aggregate, a reader with access to all news sources could get an unbiased perspective. Generally speaking, reader heterogeneity is more important for accuracy in media than competition per se.

Date: 2005
Note: DOI: 10.1257/0002828054825619
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (451)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/0002828054825619 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Market for News (2005)
Working Paper: Media Bias (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:95:y:2005:i:4:p:1031-1053

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().