Does media bias fuel the confrontation? How decision-makers perceive news coverage and how this impression shapes their negotiation strategy

According to several elite surveys, political decision-makers are quite dissatisfied with media coverage. Following claims raised as part of the mediatization paradigm, this dissatisfaction is assumed to impact their decision-making. However, it remains largely unclear where this dissatisfaction originates from and which facets of media coverage give reason to their critique. Furthermore, we lack empirical evidence that links political decision-makers’ differentiated assessment of the media coverage to their actual decision-making. Based on a survey of high-rank decision-makers (N = 326), we shed light on the subjective manner of their evaluation of media coverage and show that journalism is also rated in light of presumed influences and one's own media activities. Additionally, this assessment is associated with their strategic choices in the decision-making process. Here, our results reveal that perceived bias in the coverage about one’s own decision-making process is linked to a more competitive strategy, while a perceived lack of accuracy is negatively linked to a compromise-oriented strategy.