Many political commentators diagnose an increasing polarization of the U.S. electorate into two opposing camps. However, in standard spatial voting models, changes in the political preference distribution are irrelevant as long as the position of the median voter does not change. We show that media bias provides a mechanism through which political polarization can affect electoral outcomes. In our model, media firms’ profits depend on their audience rating. Maximizing profits may involve catering to a partisan audience by slanting the news. While voters are rational, understand the nature of the news suppression bias and update appropriately, important information is lost through bias, potentially resulting in inefficient electoral outcomes. We show that polarization increases the profitability of slanting news, thereby raising the likelihood of electoral mistakes. We also show that, if media are biased, then there are some news realizations such that the electorate appears more polarized to an outside observer, even if citizens’ policy preferences do not change.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1798.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Jeffrey Milyo & Tim Groseclose, 2005.
"A Measure of Media Bias,"
Working Papers
0501, Department of Economics, University of Missouri, revised 25 Aug 2005.
[Downloadable!]
Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005.
"The Market for News,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
[Downloadable!]
Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse Shapiro, 2005.
"Media Bias and Reputation,"
NBER Working Papers
11664, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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