Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters Are about Political News

Author(s)
Angelucci, Charles; Prat, Andrea
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Abstract
To investigate general patterns in news information in the United States, we combine a protocol for identifying major political news stories, 11 monthly surveys with 15,000 participants, and a model of news discernment. When confronted with a true and a fake news story, 47 percent of subjects confidently choose the true story, 3 percent confidently choose the fake story, and the remaining half are uncertain. Socioeconomic differences are associated with large variations in the probability of selecting the true news story. Partisan congruence between an individual and a news story matters, but its impact is up to an order of magnitude smaller. (JEL D72, D83, L82).
Date issued
2024-04
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/165272
Department
Sloan School of Management
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Angelucci, Charles, and Andrea Prat. 2024. "Is Journalistic Truth Dead? Measuring How Informed Voters Are about Political News." American Economic Review 114 (4): 887–925.
Version: Final published version
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