@article{f3058877f16942beb4c329be3d4b6b4d,
title = "The Role of Public Broadcasting in Media Bias: Do People React Differently to Pro-government Bias in Public and Private Media?",
abstract = "People often reject new information, especially when it does not fit their prior beliefs. But do publics in advanced democracies reject information from public and private media outlets in the same way? We examine this question in the form of the media{\textquoteright}s pro-government bias in the under-examined case of Japan. By combining unique textual data with an original survey experiment, we document that (1) people generally tend to reject pro-government biased information that overly praises government actions; but (2) the reasons why people reject the same biased information vary—based on their expectations of neutrality for public media, and on expectations derived from political ideology for private media. Our study suggests that the basis of people{\textquoteright}s motivated reasoning differs when they evaluate content from public and private media.",
keywords = "Biased information, Experiments, Motivated reasoning, Public broadcasting",
author = "Asano, {Taka aki} and Atsushi Tago and Seiki Tanaka",
note = "Funding Information: Funding was provided by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JP) (Grant Nos. 17H00973 and 17H02628). Funding Information: We would like to thank Kazunori Inamasu, Steve Pickering, Eike Rinke, Masaki Taniguchi, Shoko Omori, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and feedback. Meindert Boersma offered excellent research assistance for the project. The project is funded by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant No. 17H00973 and 17H02628) of Japan{\textquoteright}s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The human subject protocol of the research was evaluated and approved by ethics committees at Waseda University. We also registered our survey experiment design at Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP, ID: 20190815AA). Full replication materials are available at the Harvard Dataverse ( https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/R57MJ4 ). The authors are listed in alphabetical order, implying equal authorship. Funding Information: We would like to thank Kazunori Inamasu, Steve Pickering, Eike Rinke, Masaki Taniguchi, Shoko Omori, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and feedback. Meindert Boersma offered excellent research assistance for the project. The project is funded by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Grant No. 17H00973 and 17H02628) of Japan{\textquoteright}s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The human subject protocol of the research was evaluated and approved by ethics committees at Waseda University. We also registered our survey experiment design at Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP, ID: 20190815AA). Full replication materials are available at the Harvard Dataverse (https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/R57MJ4 ). The authors are listed in alphabetical order, implying equal authorship. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, The Author(s).",
year = "2023",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1007/s11109-021-09756-0",
language = "English",
volume = "45",
pages = "1219--1240",
journal = "Political Behavior",
issn = "0190-9320",
publisher = "Springer New York",
number = "3",
}