by David Phinney
Saturday September 27th 2025

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Stop the press…. This just in. Jack Shafer’s curtain raiser for the April issue of the Journal of Political Economy::

If a media outlet cares about its reputation for accuracy, it will be reluctant to report anything that counters the audiences’ existing beliefs because such stories will tend to erode the company’s standing. Newspapers and news programs have a visible incentive to “distort information to make it conform with consumers’ prior beliefs.”

It gets a little more complicated than that. Details appear in Slate.

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