Partisan Bias in Economic News

Can newspapers influence public opinion based on their coverage of economic matters? That’s the question Melissa Lafsky asks in the New York Times Freakanomics blog, citing a buzzy paper entitled ”Partisan Bias in Economic News: Evidence on the Agenda-Setting Behavior of U.S. Newspapers.” In the paper three professors — Riccardo Puglisi, James Snyder and Valentino Larcinese — examined ”a large sample” of American newspapers over the last decade, identifying whether or not they were liberal or conservative based on their endorsement policies.