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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated
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From: Volsi Mimir4/4/2006 2:03:47 PM
   of 794001
 
Study-- Media Bias U of Chicago:
1 Introduction
On December 2, 2003, American troops fought a battle in the Iraqi city of Samarra. Fox News
began its story on the event with the following paragraph:
In one of the deadliest reported firefights in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, US
forces killed at least 54 Iraqis and captured eight others while fending off simultaneous convoy
ambushes Sunday in the northern city of Samarra (Fox News 2003).
The New York Times article on the same event began:
American commanders vowed Monday that the killing of as many as 54 insurgents in this central
Iraqi town would serve as a lesson to those fighting the United States, but Iraqis disputed the
death toll and said anger against America would only rise (New York Times 2003).
And the English-language website of the satellite network Al Jazeera began:
The US military has vowed to continue aggressive tactics after saying it killed 54 Iraqis following
an ambush, but commanders admitted they had no proof to back up their claims. The only
corpses at Samarra’s hospital were those of civilians, including two elderly Iranian visitors and
a child (AlJazeera.net 2003).
All of the accounts are based on the same set of underlying facts. Yet by selective omission, choice
of words, and varying credibility ascribed to the primary source, each conveys a radically different
impression of what actually happened. The choice to slant information in this way is what we will
mean in this paper by media bias.
(43 page pdf file link:)
home.uchicago.edu

Abstract
A Bayesian consumer who is uncertain about the quality of an information source will infer
that the source is of higher quality when its reports conform to the consumer’s prior expectations.
We use this fact to build a model of media bias in which firms slant their reports toward the
prior beliefs of their customers in order to build a reputation for quality. Bias emerges in our
model even though it can make all market participants worse off. The model predicts that bias
will be less severe when consumers receive independent evidence on the true state of the world,
and that competition between independently owned news outlets can reduce bias. We present
a variety of empirical evidence consistent with these predictions.
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