Media bias

This paper analyzes a two-sided market for news where two rival advertisers may pay a media outlet to conceal negative information about the quality of their own product (paying positive to avoid negative) and/or to disclose negative information about the quality of their competitor׳s product (paying positive to go negative). We show that competition in the product market does not necessarily prevent the emergence of commercial media bias.

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on commercial media bias (i.e., advertisers influence over media accuracy) and then introduces a simple model to summarize the main elements of the theoretical literature. The analysis provides three main …