Media Bias in Autocracies: Evidence from China
What is the political value of media control for government in an autocracy? To address this question, this paper studies the content of 110 mainstream newspapers in mainland China from 1998 to 2010. Using principal factor analysis, we construct a novel measure of media bias, which positively predicts the probability of a newspaper being a party mouthpiece and negatively predicts a newspaper's advertising revenue. We .nd that more biased newspapers 1) more intensively cover political leaders and cite oC/ cial articles to facilitate top down communication within governments; and 2) more actively report on corruptions and disasters to implement the function of monitoring bureaucrats. Our .ndings show that newspapers in regions with larger advertising markets and those that were historically more exposed to Western culture are less biased, while newspapers in regions at higher administrative levels and thoses that were historically more exposed to the Communist ideology are more biased. Moreover, we .nd that the growth of advertising