Party Advertising in Newspapers: A source of media bias?

Journalists increasingly fear that their work may be influenced by advertisers’ interests. While studies have found that commercial advertisers exert pressure on news producers, equivalent research on political advertising is scarce. Using a rigorous methodological approach, we investigate whether party advertising led to three different forms of media bias in newspaper coverage of the Austrian general election in 2013. We combine data on party newspaper advertising (N≈1300), party press releases (N≈1900) and coverage in seven newspapers (N≈4200). There are no statistically significant effects of party advertising on media bias, though there is indicative evidence of differences between media genres. Our findings advance the study of advertiser pressure in the field of political journalism and political communication and clarify a heated public debate.