IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-14-00706.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Trust and Press Freedom

Author

Listed:
  • Pavel Yakovlev

    (Duquesne University)

  • David Gilson

    (Duquesne University)

Abstract

According to World Public Opinion poll, no country leader enjoyed worldwide trust in 2008. Only the leaders of China, Iran, and Russia received consistently higher trust ratings domestically than abroad. Not incidentally, these countries also score low in political and press freedoms. We build a parsimonious regression model that seeks to explain differences in trust ratings using country and leader characteristics. We find that just nine variables can explain over 60% of the variation in leader trust ratings. One of the strongest associative determinants of leader trust is press freedom.

Suggested Citation

  • Pavel Yakovlev & David Gilson, 2015. "Public Trust and Press Freedom," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(1), pages 214-225.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-14-00706
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2015/Volume35/EB-15-V35-I1-P24.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ruben Enikolopov & Maria Petrova & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2011. "Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3253-3285, December.
    2. Kalenborn, Christine & Lessmann, Christian, 2013. "The impact of democracy and press freedom on corruption: Conditionality matters," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 857-886.
    3. Puglisi Riccardo, 2011. "Being The New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-34, April.
    4. Stefano DellaVigna & Ethan Kaplan, 2007. "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1187-1234.
    5. Ruben Durante & Brian Knight, 2012. "Partisan Control, Media Bias, And Viewer Responses: Evidence From Berlusconi'S Italy," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 451-481, May.
    6. Baron, David P., 2006. "Persistent media bias," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 1-36, January.
    7. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2006. "Media Bias and Reputation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 280-316, April.
    8. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 35-71, January.
    9. J. Wilson Mixon, Jr. & Amit Sen & E. Frank Stephenson, 2004. "Are the Networks Biased? ``Calling'' States in the 2000 Presidential Election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 118(1_2), pages 53-59, January.
    10. Fuhai Hong & Xiaojian Zhao, 2014. "Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 96(3), pages 851-861.
    11. John Lott & Kevin Hassett, 2014. "Is newspaper coverage of economic events politically biased?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(1), pages 65-108, July.
    12. Conley, T. G., 1999. "GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-45, September.
    13. Fearon, James D, 2003. "Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 195-222, June.
    14. Peter T. Leeson, 2008. "Media Freedom, Political Knowledge, and Participation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 155-169, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marc Oliver Rieger & Mei Wang, 2022. "Trust in Government Actions During the COVID-19 Crisis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 967-989, February.
    2. Frye, Timothy & Borisova, Ekaterina, 2016. "Elections, protest and trust in government: A natural experiment from Russia," BOFIT Discussion Papers 9/2016, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gehlbach, Scott & Sonin, Konstantin, 2014. "Government control of the media," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 163-171.
    2. Jetter, Michael, 2017. "Terrorism and the Media: The Effect of US Television Coverage on Al-Qaeda Attacks," IZA Discussion Papers 10708, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Friebel, Guido & Heinz, Matthias, 2014. "Media slant against foreign owners: Downsizing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 97-106.
    4. Strömberg, David & Prat, Andrea, 2011. "The Political Economy of Mass Media," CEPR Discussion Papers 8246, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Francesco Sobbrio, 2014. "The political economy of news media: theory, evidence and open issues," Chapters, in: Francesco Forte & Ram Mudambi & Pietro Maria Navarra (ed.), A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 13, pages 278-320, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Bernhardt, Lea & Dewenter, Ralf & Thomas, Tobias, 2023. "Measuring partisan media bias in US newscasts from 2001 to 2012," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    7. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    8. Francesco Sobbrio, 2012. "A Citizen-Editors Model of News Media," RSCAS Working Papers 2012/61, European University Institute.
    9. Sun, Junze & Schram, Arthur & Sloof, Randolph, 2021. "Elections under biased candidate endorsements — an experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 141-158.
    10. Ruben Enikolopov & Maria Petrova & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2011. "Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3253-3285, December.
    11. repec:tiu:tiucen:2013072 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Sobbrio, Francesco, 2014. "Citizen-editors' endogenous information acquisition and news accuracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 43-53.
    13. Adam Szeidl & Ferenc Szucs, 2021. "Media Capture Through Favor Exchange," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(1), pages 281-310, January.
    14. repec:dgr:kubcen:2013072 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    16. Redlicki, B., 2017. "Spreading Lies," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1747, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    17. Guglielmo Barone & Francesco D'Acunto & Gaia Narciso, 2015. "Telecracy: Testing for Channels of Persuasion," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 30-60, May.
    18. Andrea Prat, 2018. "Media Power," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(4), pages 1747-1783.
    19. Michael Jetter, 2017. "Mediated Terrorism: US News and Al-Qaeda Attacks," CESifo Working Paper Series 6804, CESifo.
    20. Jetter, Michael, 2019. "The inadvertent consequences of al-Qaeda news coverage," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 391-410.
    21. Inés Moreno de Barreda & Gilat Levy & Ronny Razin, 2017. "Persuasion with Correlation Neglect: Media Power via Correlation of News Content," Economics Series Working Papers 836, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    22. Marcel Garz & Jonna Rickardsson, 2023. "Ownership and media slant: Evidence from Swedish newspapers," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(1), pages 18-40, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public trust; press freedom; media; bias; nationalism; democracy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C5 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-14-00706. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.