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A Citizens-Editors Model of News Media

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  • Sobbrio, Francesco
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    Abstract

    We model a market for news where profit maximizing media outlets choose their editors from a population of rational citizens. We show that when information acquisition is costly, liberal (conservative) citizens find optimal to acquire information from a media outlet having a liberal (conservative) editor. Consequently, we show that depending on the distribution of citizens' ideological preferences, a media outlet may choose to hire a non-moderate editor even in a monopolistic market. Moreover, the higher the degree of competition in the market for news, the more likely that media outlets will hire non-moderate editors. Finally, less moderate editors are more likely to be hired in a news market where the opportunity cost of acquiring information for citizens is low.

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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 18213.

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    Date of creation: Oct 2009
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    Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:18213

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    Keywords: Media Bias; Information Acquisition; Valence; Competition;

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