Being the New York Times: the political behaviour of a newspaper

Riccardo Puglisi

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: I analyze a dataset of news from the New York Times, from 1946 to 1997. Controlling for the incumbent President's activity across issues, I find that during the presidential campaign the New York Times gives more emphasis to topics that are owned by the Democratic party (civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare), when the incumbent President is a Republican. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some "watchdog" aspects, in that -during the presidential campaign- it gives more emphasis to issues over which the (Republican) incumbent is weak. In the post-1960 period the Times displays a more symmetric type of watchdog behaviour, just because during presidential campaigns it gives more more coverage to the typically Republican issue of Defense when the incumbent President is a Democrat, and less so when the incumbent is a Republican.

Keywords: News; media; information; elections; media bias; New York Times; issue ownership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2006-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19292/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Being The New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper (2011)
Working Paper: BEING THE NEW YORK TIMES: THEPOLITICAL BEHAVIOUR OF A NEWSPAPER (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:19292

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