The effects of media slant on firm behavior

Vishal P. Baloria and Jonas Heese

Journal of Financial Economics, 2018, vol. 129, issue 1, 184-202

Abstract: The media can impose reputational costs on firms because of its important role as an information intermediary and its ability to negatively slant coverage. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment that holds constant the information event across firms but varies the availability of a major news outlet in local markets. We find that firms subject to the threat of slanted coverage suppress the release of negative information before the event and release it subsequently. Our results are consistent with theory on the active role firms can play in managing their reputational capital through anticipatory actions to avoid negative media coverage.

Keywords: Fox News; Media slant; Reputational capital; Strategic corporate decisions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 G30 G34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X18300989
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:jfinec:v:129:y:2018:i:1:p:184-202

DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2018.04.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Economics is currently edited by G. William Schwert

More articles in Journal of Financial Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().