American Economic Review Vol. 108 No. 9 2018
Media Bias in China
Abstract
This paper examines whether and how market competition affected the political bias of government-owned newspapers in China from 1981 to 2011. We measure media bias based on coverage of government mouthpiece content ( propaganda) relative to commercial content. We first find that a reform that forced newspaper exits (reduced competition) affected media bias by increasing product specialization, with some papers focusing on propaganda and others on commercial content. Second, lower-level governments produce less-biased content and launch commercial newspapers earlier, eroding higher-level governments’ political goals. Third, bottom-up competition intensifies the politico-economic trade-off, leading to product proliferation and less audience exposure to propaganda.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20170947
- Volume
- 108
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 2442-2476
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex