Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
什么是值得报道的新闻？理论与证据
What is Newsworthy? Theory and Evidence
摘要
We introduce a model in which a benevolent news outlet decides whether to report the realization of a state to a consumer, who pays a cost to receive it. A simple statistical rule, called a proper scoring rule, describes when the outlet should be more likely to report the realization. Using data from the US television news, we show that a particular scoring rule successfully predicts many salient features of news reporting. We show how to use this rule as a control variable to discipline tests of reporting bias, and we show that controlling for it matters in our applications.
中文摘要
我们构建了一个模型，其中一家秉持善意的新闻机构决定是否向消费者报告某一状态的实现情况，而消费者需为此支付接收成本。一种被称为"恰当评分规则"的简单统计准则，描述了新闻机构在何种情况下更可能报告该实现结果。基于美国电视新闻数据，我们证明该特定评分规则能够成功预测新闻报道的诸多显著特征。我们展示了如何将该规则作为控制变量来约束报道偏误检验，并证实了在应用场景中控制该变量的重要性。