A Distorting Mirror: Major Media Coverage of Americans` Tax Policy Preferences

Daniel Chomsky ()
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Daniel Chomsky: University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

No 73, Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking

Abstract: Over the last four decades, Americans have consistently told pollsters that they favor higher taxes on business and the wealthy, even as tax policy has moved sharply in the other direction. Political scientists and political commentators regularly assume that elected officials respond to the preferences of citizens, despite recent findings that the correlations between public preferences and policy outcomes disappear when accounting for the preferences of the wealthy. This paper quantitatively assesses the failure of democratic responsiveness on this issue. It examines coverage of American’s tax policy preferences in two major national newspapers, the New York Times and USA Today. Both newspapers exhibit nearly identical behavior: they privilege elite sources, ignore the voices of ordinary citizens, and misrepresent public preferences. They also highlight expressions of public opposition to taxes and suppress evidence of persistent public support for higher taxes on business and the wealthy.

Keywords: Tax Policy; Democratic Theory; Mass Media; Public Opinion; New York Times; USA Today (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H20 H30 L82 M38 P16 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-cdm, nep-ore, nep-pbe and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:thk:wpaper:73

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3228781

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