Press Coverage And Political Accountability

In this paper the authors estimate the impact of press coverage on citizen knowledge, politicians' actions, and policy. They find that a poor fit between newspaper markets and political districts reduces press coverage of politics. They use variation in this fit due to redistricting to identify the effects of reduced coverage. Exploring the links in the causal chain of media effects - voter information, politicians' actions and policy - they find statistically significant and substantively important effects. Voters living in areas with less coverage of their U.S. House representative are less likely to recall their representative's name, and less able to describe and rate them.