In the course of a thoughtful post on the prospect of Rupert Murdoch controlling the W$J, Larry Ribstein makes a broader point:
In my Public Face of Scholarship, I explore the sources of journalist bias, by way of indicating the benefits of offsetting academic involvement in the journalistic enterprise. I identify “demand” and “supply” side theories. On the demand side, journalists try to give readers what they expect to hear. On the supply side, journalists arguably lean leftward and against markets. See David Baron, Persistent Media Bias. This comes from, among other sources, personal predilection. ...
I point out that journalists’ bias can help shape public policy, particularly where interest groups are closely divided. For example, enactment of SOX followed highly negative coverage of business in the first half of 2002: 77 percent of the 613 major network evening news stories on business concerned corporate scandals. See Roberta Romano, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Making of Quack Corporate Governance, 114 YALE L.J. 1521, 1559 (2005). ...
And the press can directly affect corporate benavior. I note evidence that firms reduce the incentive effects of their compensation in response to news stories distorting compensation practices. See Core, Guay & Larcker, The Power of the Pen and Executive Compensation.
All of which provides an academic background to Matthew Sheffield's post:
American media elites often deny that they attempt to influence the national agenda. They're professionals, so the story goes, and completely capable of not letting their personal viewpoints intrude accidentally into their stories. It's laughable given the mountain of evidence to the contrary and the fact that journalists support affirmative action on the grounds that white reporters can't cover minority issues as fairly.
Every so often, however, you hear journalists privately say the complete opposite--that not only do they have the ability to influence news, they also choose to influence it. Such statements are usually more common among the non-American press where the sham of "objectivity" is not perpetrated on the public.
With that in mind, I was still quite surprised to see the following statements said at a panel discussion in Israel on the influence that country's media has had on its foreign policy:
A former Israel Broadcasting Authority news editor admits: "We slanted the news towards a withdrawal from Lebanon - because we had sons there."
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