cawacko
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The economist Roland Fryer wrote this (for those not familiar with him at age 30 he was the youngest black professor to earn tenure at Harvard). On one hand, we all can recognized the division in the media (Fox News, MSNBC among many others) and this gives good insight into why. As we continue to go further and further into our own corners, he asks a good question about can an objective source of news still flourish?
Americans have complained about media bias for years, and it’s hard to deny that they’re on to something. The country is divided rather evenly along partisan lines: While Donald Trump comfortably won the Electoral College, the popular-vote margin fell within 2 points. Yet the media, including mainstream sources, rarely tries to appear neutral. From news coverage to editorial columns, different outlets offer radically different views of reality.
Take the controversy over Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee to lead the Defense Department. Left-leaning media outlets have run countless stories, many based on anonymous sources, alleging sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement and problems with alcohol. “Pete Hegseth’s Troubles at Work Raise Questions About Leadership,” read one New York Times headline. In the same town, the New York Post highlights Mr. Hegseth’s support from his former colleagues and GOP lawmakers. The two publications seem to exist in different worlds.
Troubled by intense partisanship, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos this fall announced that his paper’s editorial board would no longer endorse presidential candidates. Liberal subscribers reportedly canceled in droves. It remains to be seen whether the decision will win the paper any credibility with conservatives, given that its editorial pages and news coverage still reliably skew left. Several other major papers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today, made a similar gamble this year.
All of this raises a question: Why are media outlets biased, even when delivering basic news coverage? Economics can help us think the matter through.
Twenty years ago Harvard graduate students Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro began developing the ideas that would form a series of foundational papers on the topic. In a 2006 paper, “Media Bias and Reputation,” they outlined the central dynamic on a theoretical level: If consumers perceive news to be of higher quality when it confirms what they already believe to be true, news companies will have an incentive to fit their coverage to their viewers’ pre-existing worldviews.
The authors later fleshed out other important factors, such as competition among outlets. Greater competition, they found, can mitigate bias in some scenarios by correcting bad information and encouraging timely, accurate reporting. This doesn’t always hold, however, especially if audiences are demanding a distorted worldview.
In another paper, “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers,” Messrs. Gentzkow and Shapiro introduced more empirical data. They statistically compared the language used in various newspapers to that of Republicans and Democrats in Congress as a way to classify patterns as left- or right-leaning. They found a sizable correlation between the ideological leanings of local markets and the language used by their newspapers—and much less of a link between newspapers’ biases and their owners’ political leanings. Even when they compared outlets owned by the same person, the link between local political leanings and newspaper slant remained.
There is a limit to such findings. These types of market pressures have always existed, so while Messrs. Gentzkow and Shapiro help to explain why bias happens, they can’t explain why it has accelerated.
One theory is that the media landscape’s fragmentation has turbocharged the incentives for product differentiation. Local papers have declined and been replaced by countless alternatives, including online editions of national newspapers, cable news, social media and podcasts. In an increasingly polarized country, political bias can be an effective way to stand out.
Years ago, the Associated Press wire copy and broadcast television network news had to appeal to the broad American public to maximize profit. The entire country’s eyeballs were there for the taking if journalists could keep their own biases in check. Many cities had a dominant newspaper that didn’t want to alienate the local community.
But cable news—where Fox News debuted in 1996 and MSNBC deliberately shifted left around 10 years later—was an early example of how a different strategy could succeed. In a 2017 paper, Gregory J. Martin and Ali Yurukoglu measured the growing partisan divergence of both networks. They also modeled the process by which ideologically inclined viewers gravitated to like-minded content and showed how Fox News viewership affected voting. Cable shows with lower channel numbers in a given market appear higher on the list of options and as a result have somewhat higher viewership. It turned out that having Fox News in a lower position shifted an area’s voting to the right.
Hardly any news source today can hope to have truly broad-spectrum appeal, as consumers of every persuasion can find a product tailored to their own worldviews. That reinforces viewers’ trust in the source or encourages them to sample other products that give them the mix they want. There’s never been a better time for someone who likes to read broadly—or someone who wants to live in a bubble.
It’s difficult not to grant a special role to Donald Trump, though doing so mostly requires stepping away from economic theory and into the realm of punditry. Mr. Trump’s populist, often crude, brand of politics is uniquely distasteful to the educated liberals who work in journalism. Yet that style also turned out to be lucrative thanks to the constant flow of controversial comments. As a Washington Post headline noted after Mr. Trump left the White House in 2021: “Trump predicted news ratings would ‘tank if I’m not there.’ He wasn’t wrong.”
This combination of vulgarity and profitability proved potent, especially when mixed with journalists’ natural desire to see themselves as heroes bringing down corrupt politicians. Mainstream outlets, especially those with flagging popularity, leaned into Trump coverage. They did so, however, with outrage rather than objective reporting, which attracted more liberal viewers.
With several papers declining to make presidential endorsements this year, one hopes there’s a future for unifying, objective sources of news. My hunch is that it will get worse before it gets better. I am skeptical that there is enough demand for objectivity and believe there are powerful economic forces pushing media outlets to give audiences the red meat they desire. If we truly want less-biased media, we need to stop consuming the unhealthy options on offer. The market will give us what we want.
The Economics of Media Bias
In a polarized country and crowded market, partisan coverage allows outlets to differentiate themselves.
Americans have complained about media bias for years, and it’s hard to deny that they’re on to something. The country is divided rather evenly along partisan lines: While Donald Trump comfortably won the Electoral College, the popular-vote margin fell within 2 points. Yet the media, including mainstream sources, rarely tries to appear neutral. From news coverage to editorial columns, different outlets offer radically different views of reality.
Take the controversy over Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee to lead the Defense Department. Left-leaning media outlets have run countless stories, many based on anonymous sources, alleging sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement and problems with alcohol. “Pete Hegseth’s Troubles at Work Raise Questions About Leadership,” read one New York Times headline. In the same town, the New York Post highlights Mr. Hegseth’s support from his former colleagues and GOP lawmakers. The two publications seem to exist in different worlds.
Troubled by intense partisanship, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos this fall announced that his paper’s editorial board would no longer endorse presidential candidates. Liberal subscribers reportedly canceled in droves. It remains to be seen whether the decision will win the paper any credibility with conservatives, given that its editorial pages and news coverage still reliably skew left. Several other major papers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today, made a similar gamble this year.
All of this raises a question: Why are media outlets biased, even when delivering basic news coverage? Economics can help us think the matter through.
Twenty years ago Harvard graduate students Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro began developing the ideas that would form a series of foundational papers on the topic. In a 2006 paper, “Media Bias and Reputation,” they outlined the central dynamic on a theoretical level: If consumers perceive news to be of higher quality when it confirms what they already believe to be true, news companies will have an incentive to fit their coverage to their viewers’ pre-existing worldviews.
The authors later fleshed out other important factors, such as competition among outlets. Greater competition, they found, can mitigate bias in some scenarios by correcting bad information and encouraging timely, accurate reporting. This doesn’t always hold, however, especially if audiences are demanding a distorted worldview.
In another paper, “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers,” Messrs. Gentzkow and Shapiro introduced more empirical data. They statistically compared the language used in various newspapers to that of Republicans and Democrats in Congress as a way to classify patterns as left- or right-leaning. They found a sizable correlation between the ideological leanings of local markets and the language used by their newspapers—and much less of a link between newspapers’ biases and their owners’ political leanings. Even when they compared outlets owned by the same person, the link between local political leanings and newspaper slant remained.
There is a limit to such findings. These types of market pressures have always existed, so while Messrs. Gentzkow and Shapiro help to explain why bias happens, they can’t explain why it has accelerated.
One theory is that the media landscape’s fragmentation has turbocharged the incentives for product differentiation. Local papers have declined and been replaced by countless alternatives, including online editions of national newspapers, cable news, social media and podcasts. In an increasingly polarized country, political bias can be an effective way to stand out.
Years ago, the Associated Press wire copy and broadcast television network news had to appeal to the broad American public to maximize profit. The entire country’s eyeballs were there for the taking if journalists could keep their own biases in check. Many cities had a dominant newspaper that didn’t want to alienate the local community.
But cable news—where Fox News debuted in 1996 and MSNBC deliberately shifted left around 10 years later—was an early example of how a different strategy could succeed. In a 2017 paper, Gregory J. Martin and Ali Yurukoglu measured the growing partisan divergence of both networks. They also modeled the process by which ideologically inclined viewers gravitated to like-minded content and showed how Fox News viewership affected voting. Cable shows with lower channel numbers in a given market appear higher on the list of options and as a result have somewhat higher viewership. It turned out that having Fox News in a lower position shifted an area’s voting to the right.
Hardly any news source today can hope to have truly broad-spectrum appeal, as consumers of every persuasion can find a product tailored to their own worldviews. That reinforces viewers’ trust in the source or encourages them to sample other products that give them the mix they want. There’s never been a better time for someone who likes to read broadly—or someone who wants to live in a bubble.
It’s difficult not to grant a special role to Donald Trump, though doing so mostly requires stepping away from economic theory and into the realm of punditry. Mr. Trump’s populist, often crude, brand of politics is uniquely distasteful to the educated liberals who work in journalism. Yet that style also turned out to be lucrative thanks to the constant flow of controversial comments. As a Washington Post headline noted after Mr. Trump left the White House in 2021: “Trump predicted news ratings would ‘tank if I’m not there.’ He wasn’t wrong.”
This combination of vulgarity and profitability proved potent, especially when mixed with journalists’ natural desire to see themselves as heroes bringing down corrupt politicians. Mainstream outlets, especially those with flagging popularity, leaned into Trump coverage. They did so, however, with outrage rather than objective reporting, which attracted more liberal viewers.
With several papers declining to make presidential endorsements this year, one hopes there’s a future for unifying, objective sources of news. My hunch is that it will get worse before it gets better. I am skeptical that there is enough demand for objectivity and believe there are powerful economic forces pushing media outlets to give audiences the red meat they desire. If we truly want less-biased media, we need to stop consuming the unhealthy options on offer. The market will give us what we want.
