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Hosting Media Bias: Evidence From the Universe of French Broadcasts, 2002-2020

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  • Julia Cagé
  • Moritz Hengel
  • Nicolas Hervé
  • Camille Urvoy

Abstract

For democracies to function, voters need to be exposed to a variety of views, and media outlets play a key role in this process. Using novel data on hosts and guests appearing in millions of French television and radio shows over 20 years, this article shows that media largely differ in how much attention they devote to different political groups. We investigate the inner workings of media organizations leading to such differences, and in particular quantify the role played by hosts when it comes to deciding who to invite. Thanks to thousands of hosts moving across outlets, we őrst estimate a two-way őxed effects model and decompose the across-outlet variance in political group representation into three factors: (i) differences in host composition, (ii) host compliance with distinct editorial lines, and (iii) host sorting on outlets. We show that channel-level decisions and sorting largely explain across-outlet differences. Overall, hosts have little agency, but we document heterogeneity depending on their characteristics. To complement this analysis, we then study how hosts adapt to a major ownership-driven change in the editorial line, relying on a difference-in-differences framework. We őnd that hosts who stayed after the takeover largely complied with the new editorial line, but that many others left the acquired outlets. Our őndings have important implications for the optimal regulation of the media industry and highlight the limitations of existing legislation on media pluralism.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Cagé & Moritz Hengel & Nicolas Hervé & Camille Urvoy, 2024. "Hosting Media Bias: Evidence From the Universe of French Broadcasts, 2002-2020," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_537, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_537
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    Cited by:

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    2. Thiemo Fetzer & Christina Palmou & Jakob Schneebacher, 2024. "How Do Firms Cope with Economic Shocks in Real Time?," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 337, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    3. Thiemo Fetzer & Christina Palmou & Jakob Schneebacher, 2024. "How Do Firms Cope with Economic Shocks in Real Time?," CESifo Working Paper Series 11367, CESifo.
    4. Louis-Sidois, Charles & Mougin, Elisa, 2023. "Silence the media or the story? Theory and evidence of media capture," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    5. Tin Cheuk Leung & Koleman Strumpf, 2024. "Disentangling Demand and Supply of Media Bias: The Case of Newspaper Homepages," CESifo Working Paper Series 10890, CESifo.
    6. Fetzer, Thiemo & Palmou, Christina & Schneebacher, Jakob, 2024. "How do firms cope with economic shocks in real time?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1517, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Media bias; Slant; Journalists; Pluralism; Media ownership; Media capture;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - General

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