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Fake News and Propaganda
How Governments Distort News Coverage
There is a thin line between news bias, fake news,
and propaganda. Just look at the current debate
about manipulation of the media in the U.S. While
mass media is believed to play a powerful role in
democracies, the ability of the media to perform
its prescribed role as the “watchdog” has been
questioned.
David Yanagizawa-Drott, Professor at the Univer-
sity of Zurich, provides new insights to this prob-
lem by addressing the question about government
distortion and news coverage bias in several re-
search projects. Two of them focus on government
distortion in the U.S. using data from the cold war.
A third project aims at understanding the mecha-
nisms of propaganda, providing evidence from the
Rwandan genocide.
Government distortion and news bias in the U.S.
The United States have always been very proud of
their media system that mainly consists of indepen-
dently owned media. Accordingly, U.S. citizens
consider free speech and a free press a fundamental
human right that has to be well protected. In a
recently published study, Yanagizawa-Drott and
Nancy Qian (Yale University) put the independently
owned media in the U.S. to the test and revealed
some disturbing insights. Using data from 1946 to
2010, they document that U.S. news coverage of
human rights abuses committed by foreign govern-
ments was associated with membership in the
United Nations Security Council. In fact, the data
shows that news coverage of human rights abuses
increased for those countries in the UN Security
Council that were not politically allied to the U.S.
In contrast, membership reduced news coverage of
bad behavior for strongly allied countries.
The study provides evidence that government dis-
tortion can systematically exist in a highly competi-
tive media market amongst independently owned
media. The fact that this can occur in a democratic
regime known for media independence suggests
that market forces are not always a sufficient guar-
antee against government influence. However, the
findings only apply to the Reagan and Bush Sr.
administrations from 1981 to 1992, a period dur-
ing which the government was known to have
actively influenced the press. This suggests that
Research
Feature
perhaps government distortion would not have been
sustainable over time.
Strategic determinants of U.S. human rights reporting
In a related study, Yanagizawa-Drott – again with
Nancy Qian – analyzes U.S. human rights reporting
during the Cold War, comparing the U.S. State
Department reports to Amnesty International
human rights reporting. They argue that trust and
reliability are important factors when it comes to
choosing between several business partners. An
investor, for instance, has to choose between mul-
tiple countries for his business transactions. Put
yourself in his position. Where would you rather
invest your money, in stable countries that uphold
human rights or in countries where human rights
are being violated? You would probably choose the
former, which is in line with the findings of a study
on private firms in the U.S. Indeed, researchers
found that Foreign Direct Investment decisions
correlate with U.S. State Department reports on the
levels of human rights violations.
One could argue that using human rights as a
determinant of private investment and economic
policy is not an obvious cause for particular con-
cern. However, critics of the U.S. State Department
have complained that it unfairly biases its human
rights reports against countries with opposing
ideologies and favors countries that are strategically
valuable to the U.S. Hence, the image provided of
certain countries may be deliberately distorted.
Depending on the extent to which firms and non-
government organizations depend on the informa-
tion provided by the U.S. State Department,
as Yanagizawa-Drott and Qian point out. The
results show that the U.S. and Amnesty Interna-
tional have similar reports for countries not allied
with the U.S., and they show that these countries
on average do not change over time. In contrast,
the U.S. reports describe allied countries more
favorably during the Cold War. Interestingly, the
distortion ended immediately after the Cold War
for those countries that turned into nonallies after
the Cold War.
this manipulation might
have far-reaching economic
consequences,