nucleation

THEORY-851: In Argentina's four main national newspapers, April 1998 to December 2007, a newspaper's monthly front-page coverage of the federal government's corruption scandals was lower in months when it received more government advertising, within newspaper and month and within each newspaper-president pair (about 0.31 of a front page per standard deviation of advertising in the 2010 working paper); the association held for advertising placed through the presidency's agency and not for autonomous agencies, and not for scandals of non-political actors

3 min read

Properties4
StatusActive
Tagssociety-and-governance, social-science
SourceLIT-1319 — Government Advertising and Media Coverage of Corruption Scandals
SupportsCLAIM-404 — An organization can be governed from outside without any of its decisions being made for it, through the evidence its own procedures receive or through the criteria by which they weigh evidence; the two routes are distinct and each is possible without the other, so informational and evaluative independence do not imply each other; and where the organization's role is to evaluate another that affects its evidence or resources, the interpretation–authority loop can close between the two institutions, so that formal independence of the evaluator's procedure does not make its evaluation independent

Graph View

Source

Di Tella and Franceschelli, “Government Advertising and Media Coverage of Corruption Scandals”, NBER Working Paper 15402 (October 2009, revised July 2010), published in AEJ: Applied Economics 3(4) (2011), LIT-1319, read in full in NOTE-1040 from the working paper.

What was actually shown

For Clarín, La Nación, Página 12 and Ámbito Financiero, the monthly sum of the share of each front page given to scandals involving the current administration (Front Pages) was regressed on the log of that month’s federal advertising in the paper, over 466 newspaper-months. With newspaper and month fixed effects the coefficient is −3.303 (s.e. 0.682). Adding a dummy for each newspaper-president pair halves it to −1.652 (0.643). Adding a linear trend for each pair gives −1.008 (0.589). At the mean of advertising, one standard deviation (0.26 million 2000 pesos) corresponds to 0.31 fewer front pages a month, 25% of a standard deviation of Front Pages. Rechecked: 1.652 × [ln(1.49) − ln(1.23)] = 0.317.

Two contrasts could have come out otherwise. Advertising placed by agencies outside the presidency’s agency Télam shows no association (0.115, s.e. 1.454). And front-page coverage of scandals of the police, unions, the church and piqueteros shows none either (−0.489, s.e. 0.427). Lagged coverage does not predict advertising (F = 0.96).

What this does not say

  • Not that advertising bought coverage. The design removes stable paper-president affinity, not shocks within a pair that move both. The authors: the findings are “consistent with” newspapers biasing reporting in exchange for transfers, and they “do not offer any further interpretation”. An instrumental-variable estimate appears only in a footnote.
  • Not that scandals went unreported. The timing measure, Hide, shows no robust association. Advertising goes with how much space a scandal gets, not with whether it is reported.
  • Not robust to every cut. Without the Kirchner presidency the coefficient is −0.531 with a standard error of 1.704.
  • Not about absolute bias. Coverage is compared within paper and across papers. A bias shared by all four would not show.
  • Not the published estimate. The 2011 article reports 0.23 of a front page and 18 percent of a standard deviation.

Connections

  • THEORY-837. The model this paper takes as its frame. Its transfers are here advertising, and the association runs in the direction the model predicts. The model’s all-or-nothing logic does not fit four papers covering scandals in different amounts, as the authors note.
  • THEORY-850. Szeidl and Szucs’s Hungarian evidence adds private advertisers as a control, which addresses the market-based explanations this design leaves open.

Backlinks