int erests of the public. They test the model using dat a from India and find that st ate government s are more responsive to the public's needs the broader is newspaper readership Besley and Pratt focused on the opportunity for the government to capt ure the media and found that inefficiency and malfeasance can result. In their model the government is a source of informat ion for the media and hence may manipulate that information. In ti model considered here the sources of informat ion are interest groups Stromberg(2002) presented a model in which increasing ret urns to scale and adver- t ising incentives drive the media to provide more information to large and higher income groups than to smaller and lower income groups. These incent ives for media bias can affect public policy. Media bias can also arise from wit hin the news organization. 4 The American AssociationofNewspaperedItors(1999)(www.asne.org/index.cfmd-2632)conducteda survey and concluded, "The public suspect s that the point s of view and biases of jounalists influence what st ories are covered and how they are covered. Alt hough the public broadly views the news media as biased, individuals differ considerably in their percept ion of tI nat ure and direct ion of t hat bias Bovit z, Druckman, and Lupia(2002) used a hierarchical model of a news organization o explain the sources of bias and the forces that act to cont rol it. The sources of bias are the ideological orientations of media elit es, but for those orient ations to influence public nion, editors must eit her accept an ideologically-biased report by a jounalist or bias a report to serve the ideological orient at ion of the owners of the media organization. Bias can be mitigated by the career concerns of edit ors and by the audience. The audience must be willing to read the report, and for it to have influence the media must bias information a direction contrary to the init ial beliefs of the audience ullainat han and Shleifer(2002) provide a model in which bias can arise both from n ideological orient at ion of the news organizat ion and from incentives to tell an interest ing st ory. The ideological bias arises from the preferences of journalist s, and the bias in t heir st ories can be neutralized if there is an ideological balance among competing news organizations. The incentives to tell an int erest ing st ory come from a preference to be wel Attention has also been given to the effect of media compet it ion on programming (Spence and Owen(1977), Owen and Wildman(1992), Noam(1985)(1987)) and to the wel fare analy sis of media compet ition(Anderson and Coate(2001), Hansen and Kyhl(2001) Dukes and GalOr(2001))interests of the public. They test the model using data from India and find that state governments are more responsive to the public’s needs the broader is newspaper readership. Besley and Pratt focused on the opportunity for the government to capture the media and found that inefficiency and malfeasance can result. In their model the government is a source of information for the media and hence may manipulate that information. In the model considered here the sources of information are interest groups. Stromberg (2002) presented a model in which increasing returns to scale and adver￾tising incentives drive the media to provide more information to large and higher income groups than to smaller and lower income groups. These incentives for media bias can affect public policy. Media bias can also arise from within the news organization.4 The American Association of Newspaper Editors (1999) (www.asne.org/index.cfm?d=2632) conducted a survey and concluded, “The public suspects that the points of view and biases of journalists influence what stories are covered and how they are covered.” Although the public broadly views the news media as biased, individuals differ considerably in their perception of the nature and direction of that bias. Bovitz, Druckman, and Lupia (2002) used a hierarchical model of a news organization to explain the sources of bias and the forces that act to control it. The sources of bias are the ideological orientations of media elites, but for those orientations to influence public opinion, editors must either accept an ideologically-biased report by a journalist or bias a report to serve the ideological orientation of the owners of the media organization. Bias can be mitigated by the career concerns of editors and by the audience. The audience must be willing to read the report, and for it to have influence the media must bias information in a direction contrary to the initial beliefs of the audience. Mullainathan and Shleifer (2002) provide a model in which bias can arise both from an ideological orientation of the news organization and from incentives to tell an interest￾ing story. The ideological bias arises from the preferences of journalists, and the bias in their stories can be neutralized if there is an ideological balance among competing news organizations. The incentives to tell an interesting story come from a preference to be well 4 Attention has also been given to the effect of media competition on programming (Spence and Owen (1977), Owen and Wildman (1992), Noam (1985)(1987)) and to the wel￾fare analysis of media competition (Anderson and Coate (2001), Hansen and Kyhl (2001), Dukes and Gal-Or (2001)). 5