Media bias, news customization and competition

Abstract

The media bias literature has focused its attention on single-ideology media firms. We analyze the incentives for media firms to adopt a multi-ideology strategy. A multi-ideology strategy occurs when a media firm adapts news to consumers’ political preferences. In this sense, news customization can reduce media bias, since media firms can cover a larger variety of political opinions. We show that although the incentives to customize are larger under duopoly than under monopoly, a monopolist might also end up offering customized news to consumers. In this sense, we argue that the competition policy for the media sector should take into consideration not only media concentration issues, but also the plurality of political opinions embraced inside a media firm.