That market forces drive the news is not news. Whether a story appears
in print, on television, or on the Internet depends on who is
interested, its value to advertisers, the costs of assembling the
details, and competitors' products. But in All the News That's Fit to
Sell, economist James Hamilton shows just how this happens.
Furthermore, many complaints about journalism--media bias, soft news,
and pundits as celebrities--arise from the impact of this economic logic
on news judgments.
This is the first book to develop an economic theory of news, analyze
evidence across a wide range of media markets on how incentives affect
news content, and offer policy conclusions. Media bias, for instance,
was long a staple of the news. Hamilton's analysis of newspapers from
1870 to 1900 reveals how nonpartisan reporting became the norm. A
hundred years later, some partisan elements reemerged as, for example,
evening news broadcasts tried to retain young female viewers with
stories aimed at their (Democratic) political interests. Examination of
story selection on the network evening news programs from 1969 to 1998
shows how cable competition, deregulation, and ownership changes
encouraged a shift from hard news about politics toward more soft news
about entertainers.
Hamilton concludes by calling for lower costs of access to government
information, a greater role for nonprofits in funding journalism, the
development of norms that stress hard news reporting, and the defining
of digital and Internet property rights to encourage the flow of news.
Ultimately, this book shows that by more fully understanding the
economics behind the news, we will be better positioned to ensure that
the news serves the public good.
