How Partisan is the Press? Multiple Measures of Media Slant
Date
2012
Authors
Gans, Joshua S
Leigh, Andrew
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Abstract
We employ several different approaches to estimate the political position of Australian media outlets, relative to federal parliamentarians. First, we use parliamentary mentions to code over 100 public intellectuals on a left-right scale. We then estimate slant by using the number of mentions that each public intellectual receives in each media outlet. Second, we have independent raters separately code front-page election stories and headlines. Third, we tabulate the number of electoral endorsements that newspapers give to each side of politics in federal elections. Overall, we find that the Australian media are quite centrist, with very few outlets being statistically distinguishable from the middle of Australian politics. It is possible that this is because of the lack of competition in the Australian media market. To the extent that we can separate content slant from editorial slant, we find some evidence that editors are more partisan than journalists.
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Keywords
Keywords: competition (economics); electoral system; estimation method; federal system; mass media; politics; Australia
Citation
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Source
The Economic Record
Type
Journal article
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Restricted until
2037-12-31
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