Endorse or Not to Endorse: Understanding the Determinants of Newspapers’ Likelihood of Making Political Recommendations

Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of newspapers' provision for political opinion. I empirically examine the role of newspapers' political preferences and market competition on newspapers' decision to make endorsements. Regression results suggest that market competition turns newspapers more likely to make endorsements. Results from a simple model show that newspapers' ideology determine their endorsements, making partisan papers more likely to make political recommendations and endorse challengers than non-partisan newspapers.

When Going to War Is Costly: A Comparative Study of Audiences and the Partisan Press

“…However, the 2004 NAES shows that more respondents had read a newspaper in the past week than had watched cable news. Moreover, American newspapers routinely endorse candidates, with the evidence being both that editorial preferences are correlated with newspapers’ reporting (de Leon 2016; Druckman and Parkin 2005; Entman 1989; Larcinese et al 2011; Puglisi and Snyder 2008)—“newspapers with relatively conservative (liberal) editorial pages also tend to have relatively conservative (liberal) news” (Puglisi and Snyder 2015: 262)—and also influence readers’ vote choices (Dalton et al 1998; Entman 1989). Our claim is not that U.S. newspapers are as partisan as the press in Britain; it is that they are in many cases recognizably partisan and that there is variation in that partisanship (Puglisi and Snyder 2015: 262).…”