The War of Ideas: Institutions and Global Media Bias

Abstract

We present the first systematic analysis of how countries cover each other in the news, using a newly constructed dataset of 1.4 billion news articles issued by 55,240 distinct media sources from 176 countries between 2015 and 2022. Our findings reveal a pattern of global media bias, where countries with greater differences in democracy levels systematically cover each other in a more negative light, shaping both the sentiment and the topic of the news articles. This bias is particularly pronounced when authoritarian countries report on democracies, when state-controlled media is involved, or when the reporting country faces economic downturn or inflation. Our findings are confirmed by a natural experiment of regime shifts among the reporting countries. Additional analysis suggests that these ideological conflicts may have economic consequences, as reflected in the impact of cross-country media coverage on equity and loan markets.

Keywords: Institutions, Media Bias, Ideology, Geopolitics

JEL Classification: P00, F51, D74, L82