Resumen de More news, good news? Bias in media coverage of competition policy
Juan Luis Jiménez González, Inmaculada Gutiérrez Carrizo, Jordi Perdiguero
One of the reasons why antitrust decisions are made public is to reinforce the deterrence effect by affecting firms’ reputations. We study this relationship by using a self-elaborated database containing 1,305 items of news published in Spain. Our analysis produced three key conclusions about how the media deals with positive and negative news on the reputation of listed and non-listed companies. On average, the difference in size between positive and negative news for listed firms is greater than the difference present in the cases referring to non-listed firms. Secondly, positive news about listed companies are more widely disseminated in the specialised economic press. Finally, newspapers concede greater visibility to them by positioning more favourably. These results suggest that the deterrence effect that competition authorities seek by making their decisions public may be weakened by the presence of bias in media
