 Political relations and media coverageJun Myung Song, Bohui Zhang and Thomas Ruf Journal of Banking & Finance, 2025, vol. 171, issue C Abstract: We study the impact of political relations on media coverage. Using a sample of 3,290 American Depository Receipts (ADRs) from 45 countries, we find that deteriorating political relations between the US and an ADR firm's home country induce negative coverage by the US media of the ADR firm. To alleviate endogeneity, we adopt France's and Germany's opposition to the Iraq War and the inauguration of the US president as two shocks to bilateral political relations between the US and foreign countries. In placebo tests, we show no negative effect of political relations on ADR firms’ press releases or non-US media coverage. We further document the three economic mechanisms underlying the impact of political relations on media coverage: US journalists’ country sentiment, a country's popularity among US readers, and the US media's political beliefs. Finally, we document two consequences of negative coverage by the US media: investors respond less to negative news of firms from countries with deteriorating political relations with the US, and negative coverage leads to a greater likelihood of firms terminating their ADRs. Keywords: Political Relations; Media Coverage; Media Slant; ADRs; Sentiment; Stock Returns (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:171:y:2025:i:c:s0378426624002784 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2024.107364 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier |
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