Neutral news sources could exploit today's polarized media landscape to extend their revenues – here's why they could select to not

Even news agencies considered politically neutral can profit from today's polarized media landscape.

The last decade has seen an increase in partisan online news sites that obviously goal one side of the American political spectrum, from the right-wing Blaze Media to the openly liberal Axios. Money is a significant driver of this media polarization: User engagement translates into dollars for subscriptions or promoting. Online news agencies’ revenues rely on attracting attention from a increasingly polarized reading public known Avoid journalism this doesn’t confirm their existing prejudices.

Surprisingly, these same dynamics can even attract readers of all stripes to officially non-partisan media. This is the unexpected conclusion of a Article I co-authored and published within the June 2024 issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems. It found that news sources perceived as unbiased sometimes adjust their story presentation to appeal to partisans.

This is sweet for his or her business results, at the least within the short term, nevertheless it is probably not so good for American democracy.

Polarized politics, polarized readers

My co-authors and I examined the interplay of political partisanship and the competition for audience attention between three hypothetical news channels: one left, one right, and one centrist.

In a series of studies using computer models and game theory, we simulated competition amongst news organizations in various kinds of media markets, including a market with minimal regulation, equivalent to the United States.

Studies show that American readers have grow to be more partisan Over the past 30 years, this has been the case for a lot of American news sources. At the identical time, a handful of perceived neutral web sites, equivalent to The Hill and Reuters, have gained notoriety without major controversy.

We desired to know: How might the US “marketplace” for information evolve within the face of accelerating polarization?

Our model assumed that in a market with minimal regulation, competition amongst news media corporations is a key driver of change.

Surprisingly, we found that news outlets perceived as relatively neutral can have a competitive advantage over partisan media on either side because they will still lean right or left. Unlike publications with an already well-articulated political area of interest, centrist media retain the pliability to distort their views.

This partisan bias might begin with small, isolated changes in wording, but when those changes result in greater partisan engagement, neutral news web sites may be encouraged to drive more lasting polarization.

Essentially, they were testing the boundaries and seeing how far they may turn left or right without losing their perceived neutrality.

Has this process already begun?

Many supposedly neutral web sites have recently been accused of becoming more biased, but they deny this accusation.

The Associated Press, a venerable American news agency, was criticized in July 2024 for allegedly using language favoring President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump. In 2019, the owner of the political website The Hill, Trump aide James Finkelstein, said got here under fire for the web site’s “conspiracy theory” reporting on Biden’s dealings in Ukraine.

However, there are still just a few online outlets that stubbornly remain neutral.

The website AllSides categorizes news as “left,” “right,” or “center.” It names about 10 news sources which might be widely read by Americans as “unbiased.” These include Newsweek magazine, the UK-based news agency Reuters, and The Hillwhich regained its centrist base after being sold by Finkelstein in 2021.

Our research shows that these stubbornly centrist media outlets could gain a bigger, more partisan readership by change your presentation Style barely to the best or left.

At first, this will appear to be thing: As these readers read more centrist news, they arrive out of their partisan echo chambers. But our results suggest that over time, partisan engagement would encourage previously neutral media to cater to those partisans.

Polarization sells higher than neutrality, but on the expense of journalistic objectivity.

Democracy lives from the press

The lack of unbiased media wouldn’t be good for American democracy.

Democracies need an informed electorate that makes political decisions based on facts quite than dogma. The media plays an important role on this task, as US law once recognized. Fairness Doctrine of 1949 The Federal Communications Commission required broadcast networks to offer airtime to dissenting opinions on public issues.

The agency formally repealed the doctrine in 1987citing First Amendment concerns. Similar constitutional issues would likely prevent the revival of the Fairness Doctrine and stop the creation of comparable restrictions on digital and print media today.

Unless there may be direct intervention by regulators, neutral news organizations have an economic incentive to win the battle within the echo chambers of the web press. Occupying these chambers would destroy a final forum for fact-based discourse.