Riccardo Puglisi

Newspaper Coverage of Political Scandals

We study the coverage of U.S. political scandals by U.S. newspapers during the past decade. Using automatic keyword-based searches we collected data on 32 scandals and approximately 200 newspapers. We find that Democratic-leaning newspapers—i.e., those with a higher propensity to endorse Democratic candidates in elections—provide relatively more coverage of scandals involving Republican politicians than scandals involving Democratic politicians, while Republican-leaning newspapers tend to do the opposite. This is true even after controlling for the average partisan leanings of readers. In contrast, newspapers appear to cater to the partisan tastes of readers only for local scandals.

Media Coverage of Political Scandals

We analyze the coverage of U.S. political scandals by U.S. newspapers during the past decade. Using automatic keyword-based searches we collected data on 35 scandals and approximately 200 newspapers. We find that Democratic-leaning newspapers -- i.e., those with a higher propensity to endorse Democratic candidates in elections -- give relatively more coverage to scandals involving Republican politicians than scandals involving Democratic politicians, while Republican-leaning newspapers tend to do the opposite. This is true even when controlling for the average partisan leanings of readers. In contrast, newspapers appear to cater to the partisan tastes of readers only for local scandals.

What do ads buy? Daily coverage of listed companies on the Italian press

We match data on the daily newspaper coverage of a sample of Italian listed companies with Nielsen data on the monthly amount of advertising that a given company has purchased on a given newspaper. Controlling for newspaper and company fixed effects, we show that newspaper coverage of a given company is positively related with the amount of ads purchased on that newspaper by that company. We also find that coverage of a company is higher the day after a press release, but especially so on newspapers where more ads are purchased. This result on press releases is robust to controlling for ownership links between newspapers and companies, and - more generally - controlling for time invariant features of each company-newspaper pair, i.e. for (company × newspaper) fixed effects. Moreover, coverage is correlated with past day absolute return and trading volume, and this relationship appears to be steeper for those newspapers where more ads are purchased.

The Spin Doctor Meets the Rational Voter: Electoral Competition with Agenda-Setting Effects

In a multidimensional policy space, citizens cast their vote on the basis of which policy issue they reckon as being more salient. An issue becomes salient if it is known that problems related to it have occurred, which deserve some policy action by the elected politician. Newspapers and TV news broadcasts provide pieces of news about which problems have taken place, but there is a limited amount of available space on each of them, so that an excluding choice must be made. I develop a simple model of electoral competition with agenda-setting effects. In a two-issue, one-newspaper environment, I define as spin the ability of the incumbent politician to make the story about the favorite issue sexier, so that it is published for sure, at the expense of the story about the other issue. As a function of the presence or lack of spin, the model offers testable predictions about the kind of news being published during the campaign, and the effects thereof on the electoral outcome. Moreover, the paper discusses the circumstances under which it would be ex ante optimal for the incumbent politician to commit not to engage himself in spin activity. This is true when the electorate is ideologically polarised.

Empirical Studies of Media Bias

Abstract In this chapter we survey the empirical literature on media bias, with a focus on partisan and ideological biases. First, we discuss the methods used to measure the relative positions of media outlets. We divide bias into two categories, explicit and implicit bias. We group existing measures of implicit bias into three categories: measures based on comparing media outlets with other actors, measures based on the intensity of media coverage, and measures based on tone. In the second part of the chapter we discuss the main factors that are found to be correlated with media bias, dividing these into demand-side and supply-side factors. We also discuss the role of competition across media outlets. In the third part of the chapter we discuss some of the attempts to measure the persuasive impact of media bias on citizens’ attitudes and behavior.

A Portal or A Mirror? The Reporting of Foreign Countries in ‘China Daily’

In this chapter I undertake a systematic investigation of the coverage of the main foreign countries in the Chinese newspaper China Daily, a state-run newspaper English (during the period from 2002–2009). The available empirical evidence allows for the conclusion that a country obtains significantly more coverage the higher its GDP and the geographically closer it is to China. The second finding is that ‘bad news’ are more newsworthy than ‘good news’: China Daily is found to devote more coverage to a country when its unemployment rate is high. In fact, how coverage of a given country does increase with higher unemployment does not in turn depend on its economic power and geographical proximity to China.