Since objective news coverage is vital to democracy, captured media can seriously distort collective decisions. The current paper develops a voting model where citizens are uncertain about the welfare eÞects induced by alternative policy options and derive information about those eÞects from...

Journalism is widely believed to be crucial for holding elected officials accountable. At the same time economic theory has a hard time providing an instrumental explanation for the existence of "accountability journalism". According to the common Downsian reasoning, rational voters should not...

This article sheds light on the interaction of media, economic actors, and economic experts. Based on a unique data set of 86,000 news items rated by professional analysts of Media Tenor International and survey data, we first analyze the overall tone of the media, consumers’, firms’, and...