Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0

Author-Name: Marco Le Moglie
Author-X-Name-First: Marco
Author-X-Name-Last: Le Moglie

Author-Name: Gilberto Turati
Author-X-Name-First: Gilberto
Author-X-Name-Last: Turati
Author-Email: gilberto.turati@unicatt.it
Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore



Title: Electoral Cycle Bias in the Media Coverage of Corruption News.


Abstract: We investigate the existence of an `electoral cycle bias' in the timing of media coverage
of news with high political value. In particular, we analyze how the electoral cycles
at the regional level in
uence the coverage of news about corruption scandals in the
Italian Regional Health Systems by two important national newspapers having opposite
ideology, La Repubblica (left-wing oriented) and Il Giornale (right-wing oriented).
Our findings show that Il Giornale produces more articles about corruption scandals
involving left-wing politicians in the days right before the elections, while it reduces
the number of those about right episodes of corruption and without any political connection.
Instead, for La Repubblica we do not find any evidence of the existence of
neither an electoral cycle, nor an ideological bias in the coverage of corruption. These
results are robust to different model specifications, the potential endogeneity of some
elections, and different measures of the time to the elections.
Length: 43
Creation-Date: 2018-04
File-URL: http://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/economia-finanza-def069.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function: First version, 2018
Number: def069
Classification-JEL: D72, D73, H51, H75, K42, L82. 
Keywords: media, media bias, electoral cycle, ideology, corruption scandals, health system, Italian regions.
Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie1:def069