How Partisan is the Press? Multiple Measures of Media Slant

Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh

No 6156, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We employ several different approaches to estimate the political position of Australian media outlets, relative to federal parliamentarians. First, we use parliamentary mentions to code over 100 public intellectuals on a left-right scale. We then estimate slant by using the number of mentions that each public intellectual receives in each media outlet. Second, we have independent raters separately code front-page election stories and headlines. Third, we tabulate the number of electoral endorsements that newspapers give to each side of politics in federal elections. Overall, we find that the Australian media are quite centrist, with very few outlets being statistically distinguishable from the middle of Australian politics. It is possible that this is due to the lack of competition in the Australian media market. To the extent that we can separate content slant from editorial slant, we find some evidence that editors are more partisan than journalists.

Keywords: media slant; media bias; competition; economics of elections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Economic Record, 2012, 88 (280), 127-147

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Journal Article: How Partisan is the Press? Multiple Measures of Media Slant (2012)
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