Partisan bias in economic news
Subtitle: evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of u.s. newspapers
By: Valentino Larcinese, Riccardo Puglisi, James M. Snyder, Jr..
Contributors: Puglisi, Riccardo; Snyder, James M. Jr; National Bureau of Economic Research
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 13378; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 13378.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] :
Description: "We study the agenda-setting political behavior of a large sample of U.S.  newspapers during the last decade, and the behavior of smaller samples for longer time periods.  Our purpose is to examine the intensity of coverage of economic issues as a function of the underlying economic conditions and the political affiliation of the incumbent president, focusing on unemployment, inflation, the federal budget and the trade deficit.  We investigate whether there is any significant correlation between the endorsement policy of newspapers, and the differential coverage of bad/good economic news as a function of the president's political affiliation.  We find evidence that newspapers with pro-Democratic endorsement pattern systematically give more coverage to high unemployment when the incumbent president is a Republican than when the president is Democratic, compared to newspapers with pro-Republican endorsement pattern.  This result is not driven by the partisanship of readers.  There is on the contrary no evidence of a partisan bias -- or at least of a bias that is correlated with the endorsement policy -- for stories on inflation, budget deficit or trade deficit"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 9/10/2007.

Includes bibliographical references.

Also available in print.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.