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Being the New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper
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the incumbent is weak. Alternatively, it can act as a lapdog: this is the case,if the New York Times, over and above its partisanship, emphasizes issuesover which the incumbent president is perceived as strong.
Besides the issue ownership hypothesis, the key identifying assumptions
I adopt are the following. Firstly, stories about an issue that is owned by agiven party unconditionally give an electoral advantage to that party. In thissense, such assumption (“all publicity is good publicity”) corresponds to theone that the tone of a story about a given issue is generally not so negativeabout the performance -on that issue itself- of the party or the candidateowning it.
Secondly, I assume that the number of newsworthy stories about owned
issues the incumbent president creates during the presidential campaign isat least as large as the amount she is able to create outside of the campaign.
My main result is that the New York Times has a Democratic partisan-
ship, with some watchdog aspects, in that during the presidential campaignit gives more emphasis to Democratic topics, but only so when the incum-bent president is a Republican. This set of Democratic topics comprisesstories about civil rights, health care, labor and employment, and social wel-fare. In fact, controlling for seasonal effects and a deterministic time trend,I find that the New York Times, if the incumbent president is a Republican,increases the frequency of stories about Democratic topics when the pres-idential campaign kicks in. Such effect is quite sizeable in relative terms:when the incumbent president is a Republican, there are 26 percent morestories about Democratic issues during the three months of the campaignthan outside of it. On the contrary, if the incumbent president is a Demo-crat, the partisan effect and the watchdog effect almost cancel each other, sothat there is no discernible change in the count of Democratic stories whenthe presidential campaign kicks in.
Regarding the issue balance of stories out of the presidential campaign, I
find that the New York Times devotes more space to Democratic issues, whenthe incumbent president is a Democrat. It is however unclear whether or notthis finding is due to the fact that Democratic presidents dedicate more timeand effort to the owned issues, as compared with Republican ones, and theNew York Times is simply reflecting this fact through its editorial choices.
These findings are robust to the inclusion of additional controls, as the
political affiliation of the incumbent governor of New York State, of theincumbent New York City mayor, and the changing identity of the publisherin charge of the New York Times.
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| | Authors: Puglisi, Riccardo. |
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the incumbent is weak. Alternatively, it can act as a lapdog: this is the case,
if the New York Times, over and above its partisanship, emphasizes issues
over which the incumbent president is perceived as strong.
Besides the issue ownership hypothesis, the key identifying assumptions
I adopt are the following. Firstly, stories about an issue that is owned by a
given party unconditionally give an electoral advantage to that party. In this
sense, such assumption (“all publicity is good publicity”) corresponds to the
one that the tone of a story about a given issue is generally not so negative
about the performance -on that issue itself- of the party or the candidate
owning it.
Secondly, I assume that the number of newsworthy stories about owned
issues the incumbent president creates during the presidential campaign is
at least as large as the amount she is able to create outside of the campaign.
My main result is that the New York Times has a Democratic partisan-
ship, with some watchdog aspects, in that during the presidential campaign
it gives more emphasis to Democratic topics, but only so when the incum-
bent president is a Republican. This set of Democratic topics comprises
stories about civil rights, health care, labor and employment, and social wel-
fare. In fact, controlling for seasonal effects and a deterministic time trend,
I find that the New York Times, if the incumbent president is a Republican,
increases the frequency of stories about Democratic topics when the pres-
idential campaign kicks in. Such effect is quite sizeable in relative terms:
when the incumbent president is a Republican, there are 26 percent more
stories about Democratic issues during the three months of the campaign
than outside of it. On the contrary, if the incumbent president is a Demo-
crat, the partisan effect and the watchdog effect almost cancel each other, so
that there is no discernible change in the count of Democratic stories when
the presidential campaign kicks in.
Regarding the issue balance of stories out of the presidential campaign, I
find that the New York Times devotes more space to Democratic issues, when
the incumbent president is a Democrat. It is however unclear whether or not
this finding is due to the fact that Democratic presidents dedicate more time
and effort to the owned issues, as compared with Republican ones, and the
New York Times is simply reflecting this fact through its editorial choices.
These findings are robust to the inclusion of additional controls, as the
political affiliation of the incumbent governor of New York State, of the
incumbent New York City mayor, and the changing identity of the publisher
in charge of the New York Times.
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