In late December 2023, former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet said, dropped a bombshell in an article for The Economist. “The leadership of The New York Times is losing control of its principles,” he wrote, saying biased coverage of the institution was “pervasive.”
In the article, Bennet spoke concerning the pressures resulting in what he described as “liberal bias” at considered one of the world's most influential newspapers. While recounting his final days on the New York Times – he resigned attributable to controversy in 2020 about an editorial by Republican Senator Tom Cotton – he also discussed what economists call demand and provide side aspects behind the rise in media bias.
Demand bias occurs when newspapers offer distorted news to appeal to readers. Supply-side bias arises from the ideological leanings of homeowners or employees. Bennet noted that each influenced decision-making at The New York Times.
To be fair, not everyone agreed with Bennet's diagnosis – not least the present leadership on the New York Times. But people across the political spectrum are inclined to agree that media bias is an issue, and not only on the Times.
I wanted to know which source of bias is more vital: supply or demand. So I did an experiment.
Why I “read” 100,000 articles.
As an economist As an authority on the economics of digital, I even have long been fascinated by how recent technologies give editors unprecedented control.
For example, it was once nearly not possible for newspapers to update their “front pages” after publication; If you wanted to vary something, you literally needed to stop the printing presses. But the rise of digital platforms allows editors to make minute-by-minute updates. This helps keep certain stories within the highlight and subtly steers public discourse.
So along with my colleague Coleman Smurf At Wake Forest University, I checked out how this affects two of America's leading newspapers: the New York Times, which individuals generally consider as leaning to the left, and the Wall Street Journal, which is usually seen as leaning to the proper tends to be viewed. We analyzed greater than 100,000 items from each newspapers and 22 million tweets linking to them to search out out the aspects that influence how long articles stay on digital homepages.
By controlling for demand-side preferences—measured by the variety of times each story was shared on Twitter, which we used as an indicator of reader interest—we found that supply-side preferences were a very important think about keeping articles on a homepage. In other words, newspapers placed articles prominently due to their very own political preferences, not because people read them.
Two examples from the New York Times
Using a machine learning approach, we assigned each article a political rating, with probably the most Republican-leaning articles rated “zero” and probably the most Democratic-leaning articles rated “one.” We found that each the variety of tweets and a publication's ideological leanings influence how long a given article stays on the homepage.
To illustrate this, consider two stories from The New York Times. The first, “For many who marched, January 6th was just the beginningpublished on January 23, 2022, had a clearly liberal tone and described the event as the “worst attack on American democracy” and received a “pro-democracy” rating of 0.93. The article was published at 3 a.m., posted on the homepage at 6 a.m., collected around 200 tweet shares by noon, and stayed on the homepage for greater than two days.
Compare this to the second article: “At least 46 migrants found dead in tractor-trailer in San Antonio“, published June 27, 2022. This article had a more conservative tone and emphasized Texas Governor Greg Abbott's criticism of President Joe Biden. The story, which received a “Pro-Democrat” rating of just 0.22, was published at 9 p.m., immediately posted to the homepage and received greater than 600 tweet shares inside two hours. However, despite his strong commitment, it was faraway from the homepage inside the subsequent hour.
Media bias as a bigger phenomenon
Of course, unrelated issues corresponding to competition from breaking news could even have affected the rankings of those two articles. But they weren't isolated cases.
We found that articles that align with the political leanings of their respective newspapers—liberal for the New York Times and conservative for the Wall Street Journal—are inclined to stay on the homepage longer, even when popularity is taken into consideration.
Keystone France via Getty Images
This is obvious evidence of supply-side media bias. Editorial decisions usually are not only a response to reader demand; They reflect the ideological leanings of a publication. This influences which stories are highlighted and which narratives dominate public discourse. (The New York Times and Wall Street Journal didn’t reply to requests for comment on the time of publication.)
Determining whether media distortions are brought on by supply or demand issues isn’t just an instructional game. It has profound real-world implications.
Most importantly, it might help the general public understand how competition within the media industry affects bias. If bias is essentially about publications responding to demand, more competition could actually make the issue worse as media outlets struggle to cater to the precise preferences of their audiences.
On the opposite hand, if the distortion is essentially supply-related, competition might be a corrective. Because in a competitive market, media firms have incentives to appeal to the widest possible audience, which implies bias is bad for business.
The recent waves of Consolidation within the media industrycoupled with that noticeable increase in perception of media bias over the past decade, the availability side argument appears to be supported. With fewer firms controlling a bigger portion of the media landscape, media firms have less incentive to take care of a broad, unbiased approach.
image credit : theconversation.com