Media Slant is Contagious
This addresses the problem of media bias diffusion for researchers and policymakers interested in political communication and media effects, representing an incremental study on a known phenomenon.
The paper investigates how Fox News Channel's viewership influences the partisan slant of U.S. local newspapers from 1995 to 2008, finding that higher viewership causes newspapers to adopt more right-wing slant, with the effect emerging gradually over several years.
This paper examines the diffusion of media slant. We document the influence of Fox News Channel (FNC) on the partisan slant of local newspapers in the U.S. over the years 1995-2008. We measure the political slant of local newspapers by scaling the news article texts to Republicans' and Democrats' speeches in Congress. Using channel positioning as an instrument for viewership, we find that higher FNC viewership causes local newspapers to adopt more right-wing slant. The effect emerges gradually, only several years after FNC's introduction, mirroring the channel's growing influence on voting behavior. A main driver of the shift in newspaper slant appears to be a change in local political preferences.