TY - JOUR A1 - Kayser, Mark A. A1 - Peress, Michael T1 - Does the Media Cover the Economy Accurately? Evidence from Sixteen Developed Democracies. JF - Quarterly Journal of Political Science N2 - Can voters learn what they need to learn to hold governments accountable for theeconomy through news coverage? Employing the first large-scale cross-nationaldataset of media coverage of the economy—over 2 million machine-coded articlesrelated to three economic indicators in 32 mainstream newspapers, one left-wingand one right-wing, in 16 developed countries and six languages—we investigatemedia coverage of the economy that bears implications for electoral accountabilityand partisan advantage. We find that the tone of most mainstream newspaperstracks the economy faithfully, although the frequency of coverage increases withnegative outcomes. While we find some evidence for partisan bias in tone forgrowth headlines and in frequency of coverage for unemployment articles, itssubstantive magnitude is diminutive. Mainstream newspaper coverage providesvoters with largely accurate information. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3531 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00019098 VL - 16 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 33 ER -