news story and category mat ch and therefore the story is remembered. In this case the newspaper no longer has the incent ive to spin the story to increase memorability These two proposit ions emphasize that underlying the not ion of media bias there are really two dist inct phenomena. One is driven by the political ideology of the newspaper and arises from an attempt to convince the public of a particular view- point. The ot her bias is driven by an at tempt to appeal to the reader in our case by a memorable story. This kind of"spin"is merely an at tempt by the newspape to the reader's psy chological make-up 3.2 Com petitio In this sect ion, we consider whet her compet ition delivers accuracy in media. Specifi cally, we ask whet her the reader who want s to get to the bottom of a story by reading and listening to all the media out lets covering it in the end obt ains unbiased infor mation. An economist might reason that compet ition between media out lets should eliminate media bias and lead to such revelat ion of t he trut h To invest igate this issue, we consider the case where multiple newspapers instead of just one report the news. Suppose there are N of them. Each newspaper releases news in a sequent ial manner with newspaper indexed I releasing first, followed by the one indexed 2 and so on. Each newspaper receives an independent signal about the trut h and reports on this signal. Moreover, for simplicity, assume all newspapers are identical in that they have the same cost functions and receive signals of the same precision; at most they differ in their ideologies The reader reads all the newspapers and aggregates the stories sequent ially. He forms a category after each news story by combining what he reads with the stories he remembers and his priors. After the new category is formed, the reader remembers the news story if it is consistent wit h his new category and does not if it is inconsistent. If t he story is remembered (or forgotten) it is remembered (or forgotten) permanent ly The a t ion that the reader reads all stories is intended to describe a reade who is exposed to mult iple media out lets eit her because he generally uses multiple sources or because he searches them out to underst and a particular story. Assumi 12news story and category match and therefore the story is remembered. In this case the newspaper no longer has the incentive to spin the story to increase memorability. These two propositions emphasize that underlying the notion of media bias there are really two distinct phenomena. One is driven by the political ideology of the newspaper and arises from an attempt to convince the public of a particular view￾point. The other bias is driven by an attempt to appeal to the reader in our case by creating a memorable story. This kind of \spin" is merely an attempt by the newspaper to cater to the reader's psychological make-up. 3.2 Competition In this section, we consider whether competition delivers accuracy in media. Speci- cally, we ask whether the reader who wants to get to the bottom of a story by reading and listening to all the media outlets covering it in the end obtains unbiased infor￾mation. An economist might reason that competition between media outlets should eliminate media bias and lead to such revelation of the truth. To investigate this issue, we consider the case where multiple newspapers instead of just one report the news. Suppose there are N of them. Each newspaper releases news in a sequential manner with newspaper indexed 1 releasing rst, followed by the one indexed 2 and so on. Each newspaper receives an independent signal about the truth and reports on this signal. Moreover, for simplicity, assume all newspapers are identical in that they have the same cost functions and receive signals of the same precision; at most they dier in their ideologies. The reader reads all the newspapers and aggregates the stories sequentially. He forms a category after each news story by combining what he reads with the stories he remembers and his priors. After the new category is formed, the reader remembers the news story if it is consistent with his new category and does not if it is inconsistent. If the story is remembered (or forgotten) it is remembered (or forgotten) permanently. The assumption that the reader reads all stories is intended to describe a reader who is exposed to multiple media outlets either because he generally uses multiple sources or because he searches them out to understand a particular story. Assuming 12