Ownership and media slant: Evidence from Swedish newspapers

Abstract

This study investigates the role of media owners for the political bias of newspapers in Sweden, using an original dataset on outlets, consumer preferences, and ownership between January 2014 and April 2019. We construct an index of slant based on similarities in the language between newspapers and speeches given by members of parliament.Our results indicate that newspapers held by the same owner tend to offer the same mix of slant, rather than aligning their bias with consumer preferences in their area of circulation.Owners are even less inclined to differentiate the slant across outlets before elections, when the political returns to persuasion are high. We find no evidence that owners impose a one-size-fits-all slant because product differentiation is too costly. In addition, we find suggestive evidence of owner-independent bias induced by the writers of opinion articles. The Swedish context illustrates that supply-driven slant cannot be ruled out in market-based media systems if the ties between media and politics are strong. | INTRODUCTIONPolitical media slant 1 can be driven by the demand side and the supply side of the news market. According to demand-side explanations, consumers often have a preference for news that confirms their existing beliefs. 1 We define political media slant as bias in news coverage that favors a certain ideology or political party. This bias may occur in the form of distortion or filtering, where the former implies that outlets frame the same fact in different ways, whereas the latter refers to the selection of facts and topics covered (Gentzkow et al., 2015).

Media coverage and pandemic behavior: Evidence from Sweden

“…For instance, our data indicate that the three largest newspaper companies owned 60% of newspapers in 2020. Garz and Rickardsson (2022) show that 40% of the variation in political slant across Swedish newspapers can be explained by newspaper ownership. As our findings highlight the importance of locally-relevant media coverage, this concentration of ownership and resulting "copy journalism" threatens the ability of local media to function as an effective communication tool for crisis management and behavioral change.…”

Is Science Able to Perform under Pressure?

“…For example, media coverage during pandemics is often overreaching, which challenges the demands inherent to the seriousness and informative nature of a policy analysis. Media slant exists and is affected by ownership [66]. Impulsivity or arbitrary whimsicality and emotionality are more likely to emerge in a pandemic, and scientists are not free of such emotions.…”