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The National News Media’s Effect on Congress:How Fox News Affected Elites in Congress

Joshua D. Clinton Vanderbilt UniversityTed Enamorado Princeton University

Despite the prominence of the national news media, it is unclear whether elected officials are affected by thenational news media in policy-consequential ways because of the difficulty of disentangling the influence of themedia on Congress from Congress’s influence on the media. We use a unique opportunity to determine whetherposition-taking behavior in Congress and the likelihood of reelection is affected by the national news media. Usingthe fact that the Fox News Channel spread gradually across the United States after being launched in October of1996 in ways unrelated to the ideology of congressional districts and the incumbent representatives, we show thatrepresentatives become less supportive of President Clinton in districts where Fox News begins broadcasting thansimilar representatives in similar districts where Fox News was not broadcast. Moreover, the effects took a few yearsto be realized, and the entry of Fox News in a district did not appear to affect which representatives were reelected.Consistent with theories emphasizing the anticipatory actions taken by elected officials to maximize their electoralsecurity in the face of changing electoral conditions, our results suggest that the national media may slightly affectthe prospects for policy change by altering representatives’ expectations and the positions that they take.

Does the broadcast media affect either theideological positions that elected officialstake or the likelihood that they are replaced?1

To be sure, the contemporary media environment isideologically fragmented (e.g., Baum and Groeling2008; Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Sinkinson 2011), andmany have argued that the media’s messages andendorsements affect mass attitudes and voting behavior(e.g., Arceneaux, Johnson, and Murphy 2012; Chiangand Knight 2011; DellaVigna and Kaplan 2007;Druckman and Parkin 2005; Gentzkow 2006; Gerber,Karlan, and Bergan 2009; Groeling and Baum 2008;Kinder and Iyengar 1989; Ladd and Lenz 2009; Lenz2009), but it is unclear whether the national news mediaalso affects the positions taken by elected officials orthe type of representatives that are elected (but seeCampante and Hojman 2013; Snyder and Strömberg2010).

Analyzing whether the national news media affectselected officials is important because it is the electedofficials who are responsible for creating and amendingthe laws governing our society; an important reason

why we care about the media’s effect on voters isbecause of how those changes might affect electedofficials’ incentives. Examining the relationshipbetween political elites and the news media istherefore important for better understanding notonly how elected officials respond to potentialchanges in their district, but also because of whatit implies about the media’s influence on policy(Prat and Strömberg 2012).

Our interest lies in how the national news mediaaffects the actions and incentives of political elites, butwe focus on the Fox News Channel because it presentsa unique opportunity to explore this relationship.Because Fox News was, at the time, the only ideo-logical distinctive national television news channel,and we can track its spread across cable systems inthe United States over time, it presents a one-timeopportunity to observe media influence in a contextwhere it is possible to hypothesize about the pre-dicted effects. Scholars have previously used the entryand exit of media outlets to assess the media’s effecton voters (e.g., Gentzkow 2006; Gentzkow, Shapiro,

The Journal of Politics, Vol. 76, No. 4, October 2014, Pp. 928–943 doi:10.1017/S0022381614000425

� Southern Political Science Association, 2014 ISSN 0022-3816

1An online appendix with supplementary material for this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022381614000425. Data andsupporting materials necessary to reproduce the numerical results will be made available upon publication on the authors’ web site.

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and Sinkinson 2011; Hopkins and Ladd 2013), but weextend DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007) to examine howthe spread of Fox News across congressional districtsaffects the behavior of elected officials who are respon-sible for actual policymaking. Put differently, we ask:given the effects that have been found on voters, isthere any evidence of a similar impact on electedofficials?

While many scholars argue that reelection-mindedrepresentatives often ‘‘run scared’’ and attempt toanticipate and preempt possible electoral challenges(e.g., Jacobson 1987; Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson1995), it is unclear whether a change in the broadcastmedia environment that, at the time, had unclearconsequences on voters would cause representativesto change the positions they take on issues consideredin Congress. Theoretically, we may suspect thatreelection-focused representations anticipate andmitigate the electoral consequences produced bya new information source in their district, butempirically, the nature and extent of such a changeis unclear.

We show that representatives change their publicpositions in Congress in ways that are consistent withthe interpretation that they take actions to preemptpossible conservative shifts in district opinion due tothe introduction of Fox News. In particular, we showthat representatives in districts where Fox News beginsbroadcasting become slightly more likely to oppose thepositions of President Clinton than similar repre-sentatives from similar districts that lack Fox News.Moreover, the conservative shift does not happenimmediately—the effect is only detectable two yearsafter Fox News has been in existence—and thetiming coincides with the Fox News-induced conser-vative shift among voters others have documented(DellaVigna and Kaplan 2007; Hopkins and Ladd2013). These results are consistent with prior claimsregarding the proclivity of reelection-minded rep-resentatives to anticipate and preempt electoralchallenges (Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson 1995),but we also document clear limits to the effectof the national media on individual members.For example, newly elected members from dis-tricts receiving Fox News are no more conserva-tive than newly elected members from districts thatdid not.

We establish these results in several steps. The firstsection justifies our focus on Fox News and presentsseveral hypotheses regarding how the spread of thenational news media may affect representatives’behavior. We then describe the data we use to measurethe spread of Fox News across congressional districts

between 1996 and 2000.2 The third section describesthe difference-in-differences identification strategy weemploy, and it conducts several investigations to validatetreating the spread of Fox News as being randomlyassigned (conditional on included covariates). Thefourth section estimates the apparent anticipation effectof Fox News on representatives who are successfullyreelected following the emergence of Fox News in theirdistrict, and the following section explores whetherthe emergence of Fox News affects who is elected fromthe district. We conclude by discussing the implicationsfor understanding the relationship between the nationalnews media and elected representatives.

Does the News Media AffectRepresentatives?

Many have argued that news media coverage affectsthe behaviors and opinions of the mass public.In addition to exposing citizens to diverse perspectives(e.g., Mutz and Martin 2001), scholars argue thatmedia coverage can affect citizens’ opinions and theirlikelihood of participating in the political process(e.g., Arceneaux, Johnson, andMurphy 2012; Druckmanand Parkin 2005; Gerber, Karlan, and Bergan 2009;Groeling and Baum 2008; Kinder and Iyengar 1989;Ladd and Lenz 2009; Lenz 2009). We know less aboutwhether the news media affects the political elitesresponsible for policymaking.3

2We examine the effect between 1996 and 2000 for several reasons.First, the political context is relatively constant for this period. From1994 until 2000, the United States experienced a period of dividedgovernment with the Republicans controlling the U.S. House (andSenate) and with the Democrats controlling the presidency. Themany changes instituted by the Republicans when they took controlof the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years in 1994 makescomparisons with earlier time periods more difficult. Following2000, the political context also changed with the election ofa Republican president. Second, insofar as concerns about redis-tricting may affect the behavior of elected officials (e.g., Stratmann2000) prior to the midterm elections in 2002, for the period of 1996until 2000 redistricting concerns are largely absent.

3Bartels (1996), for example, looks at the whether the national policyagenda leads or follows press coverage and finds some evidence ofeach. Arnold (2004) nicely explores the various ways that localnewspapers cover their representatives, but he can only hint at theeffects. Prior (2007) argues that local media coverage may haveincreased the electoral safety of incumbents, and Karpowitz (2009)uses evidence of President Nixon’s media consumption to showhow media coverage may have affected his conduct in the WhiteHouse. Noel (2012) argues that the opinions of ‘‘coalition mer-chants’’ reported by media outlets help define the ideologicaldivisions between politicians, but it is unclear whether the effectsare because of personal connections and interactions or the media’spublication of the opinions. More recently, Campante and Hojman(2013) argue that broadcast television decreased elite polarization byaffecting the voters’ ideology and motivation.

national news media’s effect on congress 929

Our interest lies in exploring the effect of thenational television news media on political elites,but we focus on the Fox News Channel because itpresents a unique opportunity to identify mediaeffects in the contemporaneous political system.First, because the programming on Fox News isideologically distinctive, it is possible to formexpectations about its effects—if there is an effect,the introduction of Fox News in congressionaldistricts should cause members to adjust theirpositions in a more conservative direction.4 A sec-ond reason for focusing on Fox News relates to themanner by which it spread across the UnitedStates. Fox News was launched in October of1996, and by the end of 2000, it was presentin nearly 20% of towns in the United States.We can therefore identify the year in which FoxNews begins broadcasting on a cable system ineach congressional district, and we can determinewhich districts are receiving Fox News prior toeach election. Because we can show that the out-come of negotiations that Fox News was havingwith the local cable stations in an attempt to becarried by the cable system were not obviouslydriven by a desire to target particular representa-tives in Congress, we can treat the emergence ofFox News as plausibly exogenous. Assuming cer-tain assumptions are satisfied, we compare thechanges in behavior between similar representa-tives from similar districts whose districts are and

are not exposed to Fox News to estimate the effectof Fox News on congressional behavior.5

Scholars often theorize about how elected offi-cials take actions to maximize their electoral security(e.g., Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson 1995), but it isunclear how a changing media environment affectsthe incentives individual members have for taking par-ticular positions. A priori, several types of responsesseem plausible.

One reasonable expectation is that the introduc-tion of a national cable news channel in a congressionaldistrict has no effect on the representatives’ behavior.Representatives may be unconcerned about a newentrant in an already crowded media environmentthat had yet to demonstrate an ability to attract asizable audience—perhaps especially given that thosewho choose to consume news programs self-select(Prior 2007) and consume sources with views that aresimilar to their own (Stroud 2008). Incumbents maybe reluctant to change from electorally successful posi-tions of the past to react to the entry of a new mediaoutlet with an unknown reach and influence—particularly when the national news is unlikely tocover the actions of individual legislators (barringexceptional circumstances) and focus on nationalrather than local issues.

Alternatively, reelection-centered representativesmay respond to changes in the media environment ifthey think their electoral environment is appreciablychanged. Many argue that incumbents are best thoughtof as ‘‘running scared’’ because they actively anticipateand preempt possible electoral surprises (e.g., Jacobson1987; Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson 1995).6 If so,representatives may react to changes in the mediaenvironment even if there is no evidence of an impacton voters—as Kingdon notes ‘‘By virtue of his electoralvictory, an officeholder believes that the eyes of thepublic are on him, that voters cast their ballots accord-ing to his actions and characteristics, and that they

4Scholars measure the ideological content of media coveragein many ways (e.g., Gentzkow and Shapiro 2006; Groeling2008; Groseclose and Milyo 2005), but the various measuresagree that: (1) there are comparatively fewer televisionmedia outlets that are conservative than liberal, and (2)programs on the Fox News Channel are more conservativethan the average broadcast news program. For example,Groseclose and Milyo (2005) attempt to locate the ideologyof media outlets on the same 0 to 100 scale used by the(liberal) interest group Americans for Democratic Actionbased on the ideology of quoted commentators, and they findthat Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume had an averageADA score of 39.7 between June 1998 and July 2003. Only theWashington Times between January and May 2002 is esti-mated to be more conservative, and no other media outletthey examine has an estimated ADA score of less than 55.Gasper (2011) shows that allowing Groseclose and Milyo’s(2005) measure of media bias to change over time does notnotably change this characterization; Fox’s Special Report withBrit Hume does becomes more conservative between 1996 and2002, but it also starts out more conservative than any of theother television newscasts.

5CNN launched much earlier than Fox News—June 1,1980—and it had the largest share of cable news viewers duringthis period, but by 1998 only 4% of the congressional districtsfailed to contain a cable company broadcasting CNN. Moreover,because programs on CNN are relatively nonideological, andsimilar to programs on the broadcast networks, it is unclear whythere would be any incentive for elites to change their behavior.MSNBC was launched on July 15, 1996 and was also graduallyextended across the country, but its viewership was dwarfed byCNN and Fox News until the network began to adopt programsthat adopted a more liberal perspective (a move that began whenPhil Griffin took over as President of the company in 2008).

6See also Stratmann (2000), Kousser, Lewis, and Masket (2007),and Bullock and Clinton (2011) who find that representativesadapt to changes in the electoral environment.

930 joshua d. clinton and ted enamorado

are comparatively we’ll informed about the issues ofan election. If an incumbent thinks the electorate iswatching him, whether they are or not in fact, he willattempt to anticipate their reactions to his decision’’(1968, 40). However, in the case of Fox News, scholarshave argued that there was a detectable impact onvoters—DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007) argue that theemergence of the Fox News Channel in 9,246 townsbetween 1996 and 2000 increased Republican voteshare in presidential elections between 0.4 and 0.7percentage points, and Hopkins and Ladd (2013)argue that the effect occurs among independents andconservatives.

To be clear, the reason for such a shift couldoccur for several reasons: actual voter mobilization(i.e., Fox News mobilizes conservatives in the districtand makes them more likely to participate), actualvoter conversion (i.e, Fox News shifts the opinions ofindependents in a conservative direction), perceivedvoter mobilization (i.e., the representative believesthat Fox News is mobilizing conservative voters), orperceived voter conversion (i.e., the representativebelieves that Fox News is changing the opinions ofvoters in her district). These mechanisms are clearlynonexclusive, and it is impossible for us to disentanglethe extent to which each may be responsible for induc-ing a shift in representative behavior. As a result, wefocus on identifying the net effect of Fox News: dorepresentatives become more conservative once FoxNews enters the district regardless of whether actual orperceived changes in the electoral environment areresponsible.7

Anecdotally, representatives appear to recognizethe importance of nationally televised news (see, forexample, Sellers 2000), and the Speaker of the Houseduring the time period we examine, Rep. NewtGingrich, certainly tried to influence politics whenworking in the Conservative Organizational Society

in the late 1970s and 1980s. As Zelizer (2004) reports,Gingrich believed that ‘‘television is the dominantmedium of our society . . . . the guys and gals inCongress who don’t master it get killed’’ (2004).Regarding the impact of cable news in particular,Zelizer quotes a Press Director for a Republicanmember who noted that through a cable newschannel such as CNN ‘‘you can get in to influencethe news spin much more quickly. You can also getin to influence the way people are interpreting theevents as they happen. By contrast, the networks aremuch later in the debate. They frame events, but theydon’t influence the course of events’’ (225). A recentsurvey of congressional staff members further con-firms a pervasive belief in the importance of thenews media. As summarized by the authors: ‘‘95% ofcongressional staff members believe that political biasin the media influences or shapes decision-making inCongress’’8.

Measuring the Spread ofFox News, 1996–2000

To determine whether Fox News is broadcast by acable system in a congressional district as of the 1998and 2000 elections, we build upon the impressivedata collected by DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007), whoexplore whether the spread of Fox News to townsacross the United States affects the towns’ votes forRepublican candidates in 1998 and 2000. To do so,they use the Television & Cable Factbook to collect thenumber of subscribers per cable company in eachtown with access to Fox News, and they analyze theelectoral results of 9,256 towns in 28 states.

DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007) locate most of thetowns within congressional districts, but there were5,462 towns for which the congressional district wasunknown. We use the Congressional District Atlasfor the 103rd Congress to identify the congressionaldistrict (or districts) containing each of these addi-tional towns which extends the data to districts inFlorida, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, Oregon,and Maryland.9 All told, we have data on whether FoxNews is present in 14,748 towns in 35 states for theyears 1998 and 2000.

7If representatives do adjust their behavior in response to FoxNews being broadcast in their district, the adjustment may varyacross both time and members. One possibility is that the effectmay be larger in latter introductions—perhaps because it takestime for Fox News to develop a reputation and audience orbecause it takes time for Fox News to settle on more a consistentprogramming outlook. There may also be partisan differences;existing studies suggest that Fox News is more likely to affectindependent and Republican voters (Hopkins and Ladd 2013)and that ‘‘the impact of Fox News is (marginally significantly)larger in urban towns and lower in the Republican districts,significantly so with county fixed effects’’ (DellaVigna and Kaplan2007, 1212), or the effect may further vary depend on thecompetitiveness of the district. While it is possible to speculateabout such differential effects, the appendix reveals that the datais unfortunately insufficient to the task of precisely estimatingthese effects due to limited samples.

8See http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/06/survey-of-thehill-staffers-see-media-bias-126268.html.

9For towns in multiple districts, we assume that Fox News accessis uniformly distributed.


We focus on these 35 states because these are thestates that prior scholars have used when estimatingthe effect of Fox News on voters (DellaVigna andKaplan 2007; Hopkins and Ladd 2013); if Fox Newsalso affects elected officials, we should find evidenceof it in these states. The 15 omitted states are absentfor reasons that are unrelated to either the spread ofFox News or the ideology of the representative androbustness checks in the appendix reveal that theinclusion of the omitted states do not affect the results.

Because the cable system data is organized bytowns, we aggregate the town-level data by congressionaldistricts. By way of description, Figure 1 indicates thecongressional districts where Fox News existed in 1998(dark) or not (light). The 15 states with missing infor-mation on cable systems are unshaded.

Figure 1 reveals that Fox News was first launchedin some of the the largest media markets, but notexclusively so (e.g., Idaho). Fox News spread as localcable systems agreed to carry them—an agreementthat depended on negotiations between Fox News andthe local cable systems. Although it is hard to infermuch about the districts where Fox News appearsfrom Figure 1, we conduct this comparison the nextsection. Overall, Fox News was broadcast in 15 of the35 states as of 1998.

As Figure 2 indicates, as of the 2000 election,exposure to Fox News spread to congressional districtsin seven additional states and created varying levelsof exposure—some districts lacked Fox News for theentire period (light), some had Fox News since at least

the 1998 election (dark), and some lacked Fox News in1998 but had it as of the 2000 election (solid).

It is possible to measure the presence of Fox Newsin a district several ways, and all yield similar substantiveresults. Regardless of whether we use a simple indicatorfor whether Fox News is present on any cable system inthe district, whether we use the logged number of cablesubscribers with access to Fox News, or the fraction oftowns in the district with access to Fox News, similarresults obtain.10

Identification Strategy

To determine whether the national news mediaaffects either the positions taken by representativesin Congress or the set of representatives that are electedto the U.S. House, we take advantage of the fact thatthe Fox News Channel spread gradually across con-gressional districts in ways that appear to be unrelatedto the likelihood that a representative would becomemore conservative in the absence of Fox News. Thesefeatures make the entry of Fox News a unique eventthat, if certain assumptions are satisfied, allow us tocompare changes in elite behavior across districtsthat differ only in their exposure to Fox News to

FIGURE 1 The 1998 Fox News ‘‘Treatment’’

10To further explore nonlinear exposure effects, we also usewhether the number of Fox News subscribers is greater than orless than the median number of subscribers in a district.


characterize the impact of the entry of Fox News in thedistrict on elite behavior.

We estimate the effect of Fox News using adifference-in-differences approach. Exposure to FoxNews is the ‘‘treatment’’ (Ti) received by a Housemember from district i at a particular time. To estimatethe effect of Fox News, we examine how the changes inpublic positions taken by House members on votes inCongress who are from districts where Fox News enterscompares to the difference in positions that are takenby similar representatives from similar districts whereFox News had not entered. Others use a similarstrategy to explore the effect of the media on the masspublic, policy, and elite behavior, but none haveexplored the effect on elected officials; the closest relatedwork explores the effect of the entry of Fox News onvoting behavior at the town level (DellaVigna andKaplan 2007), and the effect of the media penetrationand coverage on policy responsiveness (Besley andBurgress 2002; Einsensee and Strömberg 2007; Snyderand Strömberg 2010; Strömberg 2004) or accountabilityand elite behavior (Snyder and Strömberg 2010).

To measure the influence of Fox News using ametric that is easily interpretable and also likelycorresponds to the content covered by Fox News,we use the change in a member’s ‘‘presidential sup-port score’’ as calculated by Edwards (1989) basedon the data collected by Congressional Quarterly.11

Presidential support scores are based on the percentage

of times that a member votes with the president onthose issues on which the president takes a position.The scores are computed annually, and we use thescore for the election year given that representativesmay be especially attentive during this period, butsimilar results obtain if we use the two-year average ofthe scores instead. We use presidential support scoresfor several reasons. First, given the content of FoxNews and the largely critical coverage of PresidentClinton’s presidency, if there is an effect of FoxNews, it should manifest itself in terms of how likelymembers are to support President Clinton once FoxNews begins broadcasting in their district. Whereaswe may not expect Fox News to affect the positionsrepresentatives take on many of the mundane issuesthat come to the House floor, if there is an effect ofFox News, we would expect to find evidence of it onthose issues where the president has decided to stakeout a position. Second, whereas interpreting a changein ideal point space is difficult because the scale is onlymeaningful relative to the identification constraintsthat are imposed, a change in presidential support issimply the change in the percentage of times a membervotes in accordance with the expressed position ofPresident Clinton. Presidential support scores cannotnormally be directly compared over time because ofthe changing agenda, but we are able to avoid thisdifficulty because we are interested in the change inpresidential support scores during the presidency ofBill Clinton—even if support for Clinton decreasesover time for all members (as it does on average), whatmatters is whether the support decreases at different

FIGURE 2 The 2000 Fox News ‘‘Treatment’’

11Substantively similar results occur using ideal point estimates inthe appendix.


rates for members depending on whether Fox News isbeing broadcast in their district.

If t1 denotes the Congress where Fox Newsexists, and t0 is the Congress prior to the emergenceof Fox News (e.g., the 104th Congress), let xi;t0 andxi;t1 denote the presidential support scores beforeand after the introduction of Fox News respectively.When estimating anticipation effects, i refers torepresentatives who serve both before and after theintroduction of Fox News. When estimating replace-ment effects, the index i refers to districts because wecompare the presidential support of the outgoingand incoming representative. Using the notation ofRosenbaum and Rubin (1983), we estimate the averagedifference in the public positions before and after theentry of Fox News using:

Dxi Ti ¼ 1ð Þ ¼ xi;t1 Ti ¼ 1ð Þ � xi;t0 Ti ¼ 1ð Þ; ð1ÞDxi Ti ¼ 0ð Þ ¼ xi;t1 Ti ¼ 0ð Þ � xi;t0 Ti ¼ 0ð Þ: ð2Þ

To obtain the average treatment effect, we subtract (1)from (2) to obtain t 5 E[Dxi(Ti 5 1) 2 Dxi(Ti 5 0)].

Because we examine the differences in positionsthat a representative takes across time, aspects of thedistrict or representative that are unchanged overtime cannot be responsible for a change in behavior.Similarly, comparing the change in behavior betweenrepresentatives that do and do not receive the treat-ment also controls for possible time-varying affects.Even if President Clinton takes more conservative (ormore liberal) positions over time, this will not affectour estimation of t because the choice of issues affectsall representatives—every representative serving in thistime period experiences the same change in presidentialbehavior so the change in the positions of the controlgroup account for the impact of the changing issues.Comparing the change in the treatment group relativeto the change in the control groups will therefore isolatethe effect that is restricted to members of the treatmentgroup (and presumably attributable to the treatmentitself).12 To be clear, we are focused on the effect ofFox News on individual representatives; effects that

affect everyone—if, for example, Fox News affectswhich issues are on the agenda and those agendaeffects are felt equally among those with and withoutFox News in their district—are not detectable usingour identification strategy because of the lack of acontrol group.

To attribute the difference t as the effect of FoxNews on representatives’ position taking requires thatseveral assumptions are satisfied (see, for example,Keele and Minozzi 2013; Sekhon and Titiunik 2012;Robinson et al. 2009). One requirement is that thetreatment must be plausibly exogenous—either uncon-ditionally or conditionally based on included covariates.This requires that Fox News did not enter in districtswhere the representative was more likely to change theirposition even in the absence of Fox News. Thisassumption is not directly testable, but becauserepresentatives are unlikely to change their positions(Poole 2007) absent changes to the electoral environ-ment, this assumption seems plausible. Moreover,our empirical investigations reveal no evidence ofFox News entering districts with more malleablerepresentatives.

First, the spread of Fox News is not obviouslyrelated to observable features such the number ofconservatives in the districts or the ideological posi-tion of the district’s representative. To show this weestimate the probability that the district of represen-

tative i is exposed to Fox News EFOXi;t

� �at time t of

1998 (and again at time t5 2000) to determine if FoxNews begins broadcasting in those districts whererepresentatives are more likely to change their positionsto take more conservative positions in the absence ofFox News using the regression specification:

EFOXi;t ¼ b0 þ b1xi;t0 þ b2VOTEi;t0 þ b3REPi;t0þVXi;t0 þ ei; ð3Þ

where: xi;t0 represents the percentage of times a mem-ber from district i votes in support of the positionstaken by President Clinton during 1996 prior to thecreation of Fox News, VOTEi;t0 is the two-partypresidential vote share for the Republicans at districti (t0 5 1996), REPi;t0 is equal to 1 if the party affiliationof the representative of district i during 1995–96 isRepublican, and Xi;t0 is a set of covariates at the districtlevel in 1996.13

Regardless of whether we include or exclude state-level fixed effects, Table 1 reveals that the presence ofFox News in a district as of 1998 or 2000 is unrelated

12Fox News was also available to satellite television subscribers.However, the number of cable television subscribers dwarfs thenumber of satellite television subscribers, and it is unclearwhether representatives would be as attuned to the expansionof Fox News due to satellite television subscribers given thedifferences in market share. Whereas Fox News channel launchedto 17 million cable subscribers in 1996, there were still only 2.3million subscriptions to DirectTV, one of the two main satelliteproviders. At worse, the effect of satellite subscribers will meanthat the treatment is measured with error which will attenuate thetreatment effects we recover due to the measurement errorattributable to the presence of satellite subscribers with accessto Fox News.

13We use vote share in 1996 rather than 1992 to avoidredistricting effects.


to the current incumbent’s support for PresidentClinton, the party of the incumbent, or the two-partypresidential vote in the district for the Republicanpresidential candidate.14 The entry of Fox News intoa media market in a congressional district is positivelycorrelated with whether the incumbent is a Republicanin three out of four specifications—perhaps reflectingthe prior findings of DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007)—but the effect is indistinguishable from zero.

Even so, we may still worry that unobservableconfounding variables may be determining both theentry decision of Fox News and the behavior ofrepresentatives. Additionally, perhaps the results inTable 1 are a consequence of offsetting differences‘‘netting out.’’ To explore either possibility, we con-duct a so-called placebo test and examine whether theemergence of Fox News in the year 2000 predictschanges in representatives’ behavior between 1996 and1998 and whether the emergence of Fox News in theyear 1998 predicts changes in representatives behaviorbetween 1994 and 1996.15 By definition, there cannotbe an effect of Fox News in either case because FoxNews does not exist in either period; if we find an

effect, this suggests that there are unobservable featuresthat are related to both the emergence of Fox Newsand the proclivity of a representative to take moreconservative positions.

Table 2 reveals no evidence that there are omittedcharacteristics related to both the entry of Fox Newsand the proclivity of members to change their posi-tions. While there is a shift against President Clintonfollowing the 1994 midterm elections, the effect ofFox News 1998 on the change in presidential supportbetween 1994 and 1996 in the column labelled‘‘1994 vs. 1996’’ is both substantively and statis-tically indistinguishable from zero, and whetherFox News enters in 1998 is unrelated to whetherthe representative is likely to change their behavior inearlier periods. The results reported in the columnlabelled ‘‘2’’ reveals that the emergence of Fox News in2000 is similarly uncorrelated with changes in repre-sentatives’ support for President Clinton between 1996and 1998.

A second critical assumption for causal identifica-tion of t is the assumption of ‘‘parallel paths’’ (Keeleand Minozzi 2013). This untestable assumption requiresthat in the absence of the entry of Fox News, thetreated units would have the same over-time trendas the untreated unit. That is, there is not somethingabout the districts that are treated that would haveproduced a similar effect as Fox News even if FoxNews had not entered. It is difficult to conceive ofhow this assumption is likely to be violated in this

TABLE 1 Examining the ‘‘Random’’ Assignment of Fox News

1998 2000

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Presidential Support (104th) -2.5 3 10-4

(4.7 3 10-4)-2.4 3 10-5

(4.3 3 10-4)Presidential Support (105th) 1.0 3 10-3

(6.8 3 10-4)6.4 3 10-4

(6.7 3 10-4)Republican (104th) 0.001

(0.023)-0.024(0.021)

Republican (105th) 0.030(0.036)

0.018(0.035)

Two party 1996 GOP vote share -0.320(0.945)

-0.064(0.089)

0.185(0.124)

0.264(0.140)

Log(# of Blacks) -0.015(0.007)

-0.013(0.007)

0.007(0.004)

0.022(0.018)

Constant 0.374(0.108)

0.231(0.113)

-0.164(0.056)

-0.333(0.187)

Adjusted R2 0.021 0.308 0.019 0.217Observations 318 318 231 231

Note: Dependent Variable: Share of Towns that received for the first time the Fox News signal.

14The appendix replicates the result using ideal point measuresinstead of presidential support scores.

15Because presidential support scores are annual, we have alsoexamined the effect using two-year averages (e.g.,1993–94,1995–96,1997–98) and other individual years. Theresults are unchanged.


instance as it would require something akin to localstations in the treatment group becoming moreconservative in anticipation of the local populationbecoming more conservative in the absence of theFox News. Not only is it unclear how partisan localnews coverage is, but the fact that Table 2 reveals noevidence that exposure to Fox News is in any wayrelated to prior changes in member position takingsuggests that Fox News was not entering in districtswhere members were already shifting their positionsbecause of other pressures. While it is impossible totest whether this lack of difference would persist hadFox News not entered as the parallel path assumptionrequires, the fact that there is no evidence of a shift inthe past is reassuring.

Together, the null results of Tables 1 and 2 andprior findings regarding the determinants of memberposition-taking behavior suggests that the assumptionsrequired to interpret t as the impact of Fox News onmember behavior are likely reasonable.

An Anticipation Effect?

We first consider whether the legislators serving bothbefore and after the emergence of Fox News are morelikely to take more conservative positions once FoxNews begins broadcasting in their district. To do so,we compare how positions taken prior to the emer-gence of Fox News in 1996 compares to positions

taken in 1998 and 2000. Estimating the effectseparately for the various time periods allows fortime-varying effects within and across districts.This may occur if the audience for Fox News in adistrict grows or if there are changes in either thecontent of Fox News (Gasper 2011) or members’expectations about its effect.

To measure the impact of Fox News on electedofficials’ behavior, we examine the change in thepercentage of times that a member votes with PresidentClinton using both unanimous and nonunanimousvotes. The appendix goes to exhaustive lengths to alsoexplore the effect using a measure of position takingbased on ideal point estimates and reveals qualitativelysimilar findings, and it also shows that substantivelysimilar results emerge from a large number ofrobustness checks (e.g., measuring exposure using anindicator for whether the number of such subscribersin the district is greater than or less than the mediannumber of subscribers; estimating the effect of FoxNews nonparametrically using nearest neighbormatching; omitting those representatives with thelargest position changes; using regional fixed effectsrather than state fixed effects, and omitting fixedeffects entirely).

1996 Compared to 1998

We first compare the effect of Fox News usingrepresentatives who serve both immediately beforeand after the launch of Fox News in 1996. Because thestimuli to which the representative would respondto is theoretically ambiguous, we measure exposureto Fox News using an indicator for whether Fox Newsis broadcast in the district, the logged number ofcable subscribers with access to Fox News, the per-centage of towns in the district with Fox News, andan indicator for whether, conditioned on gettingFox News, the number of subscribers is greater thanthe median number for the reasons noted above.

To eliminate possible differences between thetreatment and control groups and increase the pre-cision of our estimates, we control for aspects of thedistricts that are plausibly related to the positions thatlegislators take (e.g., the party of the representative,the Republican two-party presidential vote in 1996, anda number of demographic characteristics). To controlfor possible omitted characteristics that vary by state(e.g., political environment, structure of the mediamarket), we also include state fixed effects. Standarderrors are clustered at the state level using the wildcluster bootstrap of Cameron, Gelbach, and Miller(2008).

TABLE 2 Does Fox News Exposure in 1998 and2000 Predict Presidential SupportChanges Between 1994 vs. 1996 and1996 vs. 1998?

1994 vs. 1996 1996 vs. 1998

(1) (2)

Fox News 1998 8.154(10.426)

No Fox News 1998 -Fox News 2000

6.005(8.513)

Republican -7.903(2.489)

-14.841(4.733)

Two-party 1996 GOPvote share

-21.561(14.391)

-17.792(4.230)

Log(# of blacks) -0.313(1.722)

-0.7534(1.759)

Constant 7.166(6.924)

22.872(18.519)

R2 0.254 0.69Observations 254 191

Note: Dependent Variable: Change in Nonunanimous PresidentialSupport.


Examining the influence of Fox News in the firstCongress in which it is broadcasting is a strong test ofmedia effects for several reasons. First, DellaVignaand Kaplan (2007) and Hopkins and Ladd (2013)document a Fox News effect on voters in the 2000election, but it is unclear whether an effect alsoexisted in 1998. Consequently, there is no evidenceof any impact of Fox News on voters during thisperiod. Second, for change to occur during this period,representatives must have immediately reacted to achange of unknown magnitude and significance in theelectoral environment. It is unclear whether represen-tatives would so hastily shift away from the positionstaken in advance of their last successful election.

Table 3 compares the change in members’ supportfor President Clinton between 1996 and 1998 usingseveral measures of Fox News exposure, and it revealsthat while members from districts where Fox Newshad been broadcasting prior to the 1998 midtermelection became slightly more opposed to PresidentClinton than similar representatives from similar dis-tricts where Fox News did not enter, the effect is indis-tinguishable from zero, and the substantive effect sizesare small. Models 1 and 4 use an indicator variable tocharacterize whether Fox News is being broadcast ona cable system in the district, and they reveal that theintroduction of Fox News in a district is correlatedwith less than a 1% drop in the support for President

Clinton using presidential support scores that excludeor include unanimous votes. Moreover, the null effectis estimated relatively precisely; the 95% confidenceintervals suggest that, at most, the magnitude of theeffect of Fox News ranges between decreasing presi-dential support by 4.24% and increasing it 3.43%using nonunanimous votes. Measuring exposure usingthe logged number of subscribers with access to FoxNews suggests a similarly-sized average effect—a 1%increase in the number of subscribers results in anestimated average decrease in presidential support of3.66% (or 5.37%)—but the effect is more impreciselyestimated. Finally, measuring exposure using an in-dicator for whether the number of subscribers is aboveor below the median number of subscribers in a districtwith Fox News (Models 3 and 6) reveals that the effectis concentrated among districts with more subscribersthan the median number, but the effects are impre-cisely estimated.16

TABLE 3 Representative’s Change in Presidential Support: 1996–1998

Nonunanimous Overall

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Indicator Treatment: Fox News 1998 -0.400(1.959)

-0.736(2.076)

Continuous Treatment: Fox News 1998 -3.658(11.628)

-5.365(9.431)

High Treatment: Fox News 1998 -2.706(4.069)

-2.785(4.074)

Low Treatment: Fox News 1998 1.313(1.774)

1.168(1.763)


-17.757(5.582)

-17.682(5.558)

-8.738(2.747)

-8.850(2.782)

-8.738(2.747)

Two party 1996 GOP vote share 1.776(14.864)

1.655(21.368)

1.190(17.771)

0.834(14.239)

0.640(16.112)

0.242(38.646)

Log(# of Blacks) -1.606(1.057)

-1.615(0.949)

-1.560(1.031)

-1.329(0.722)

-1.335(0.678)

-1.272(0.678)

Constant 21.993(10.912)

22.222(10.479)

21.776(10.454)

9.675(5.653)

9.915(5.447)

9.317(5.614)

R2 0.381 0.382 0.387 0.200 0.203 0.210Observations 272 272 272 272 272 272

Dependent Variable: Change in Presidential Support.

16The appendix shows that conservative shifts are distinguishablefrom zero when ideal point estimates rather than presidentialsupport scores are used to assess change, but the magnitude ofthe shift remains small. The fact that shift is detectable in idealpoints but not in presidential support scores suggests that theeffect of Fox News when it first launched was very modest, andthe relative coarseness of presidential support scores are unable todetect the subtle shifts.



Perhaps a more compelling test of media influenceoccurs when Fox News enters in later Congressesafter it has more of an opportunity to develop anaudience and develop a reputation. Repeating theprior analyses for representatives serving in both 1998(105th House) and 2000 (106th House) explores thispossibility. This comparison also allows us to comparethe actions of three groups of representatives: thosewhose districts lack Fox News, those whose districts donot have Fox News as of the 1998 election but which dohave it as of the 2000 election, and those from districtswhere Fox News had been broadcasting for the entireperiod. This allows us to determine whether the con-servative shifts documented above persist and whethermembers from district in which Fox News enters only asof the 2000 election behave similarly to the representa-tives who first experienced Fox News in 1998.

Several conclusions emerge from Table 4.Comparing members’ behavior in 1998 to 2000reveals that Fox News being broadcast in a district isrelated to a decrease in support for President Clinton’spositions regardless of whether we measure exposureto Fox News using an indicator (Models 1 and 3) orthe logged number of subscribers (Models 2 and 4)and whether we exclude or include unanimous votes.In terms of the effect’s magnitude, if we look at change

in support for President Clinton on nonunanimousvotes that occurs once Fox News begins broadcasting,the introduction of Fox News as of 1998 is related to anaverage decrease of 3.75% in the support of PresidentClinton’s positions in the 1999–2000 Congress relative tosimilar members where Fox News does not enter. Theintroduction of Fox News in a district as of 2000 but after1998 is correlated with an average decrease of similarmagnitude (4.09%). Measuring Fox News penetration ina district using the log of the number of subscribers withaccess to Fox News as the number of subscribers in adistrict with access to Fox News increases by 1% increase,the member is 11% less likely to support the positionstaken by President Clinton in 2000 (Model 2).17

The fact that the average shift away from PresidentClinton is similarly sized regardless of whether membersare from districts that are newly exposed to FoxNews as of the 2000 election (i.e., No Fox News1998 – Fox News 2000) or whether their district hashad Fox News since the 1998 elections (i.e., FoxNews 1998 – Fox News 2000) suggests two possibleinterpretations: (1) the effect of Fox News is largelydue to the effects occurring in 1999–2000 time



(1) (2) (3) (4)

Indicator Treatment: No Fox News1998 - Fox News 2000

-4.090(1.287)

-2.325(0.731)

Indicator Treatment: Fox News1998 - Fox News 2000

-3.755(1.645)

-2.718(1.597)

Continuous Treatment: No Fox News1998 - Fox News 2000

-11.480(3.612)

-6.594(2.540)

Continuous Treatment: Fox News1998 - Fox News 2000

-9.282(4.678)

-7.531(2.541)

Republican 14.363(14.202)

14.335(15.638)

2.676(1.556)

2.659(1.642)


16.185(9.460)

4.812(8.107)

4.764(8.674)

Log(# of Blacks) 1.945(1.369)

2.238(1.280)

1.652(1.059)

1.837(1.016)

Constant -40.173(17.815)

-43.885(17.272)

-26.762(15.224)

-29.075(15.184)

R2 0.520 0.519 0.236 0.237Observations 289 289 289 289

Note: Dependent Variable: Change in Presidential Support.

17The difference in the magnitudes reflect the fact that Models 1and 3 are averaging across districts of varying numbers ofsubscribers whereas Models 2 and 4 assume the effect is relatedto the size of the subscriber base.


period, or (2) members shift by about the sameamount when Fox News initially enters their districtand the shift persists (i.e., those that shift in 1998remain so during 2000). Together, the results of Tables3 and 4 suggests that the former interpretation is morelikely true. Because the members in the treatmentgroup ‘‘Fox News 1998 – Fox News 2000’’ in Table 4are also members of the treatment group Fox News1998 in Table 3, the difference in the two effectssuggests that the shift in behavior occurred after theperiod examined in Table 3.18 There are many reasonswhy the effect may have taken time to emerge, and it isimpossible for us to determine which possibility is mostresponsible, but our results suggest that the effect ofFox News on member behavior was not immediate.19


Comparing how a member’s support for PresidentClinton in 1996 compares to the member’s supportin 2000 among members serving in both the 104thand 106th U.S. House estimates the net effect of FoxNews over the entire time period. It also providesanother opportunity to assess whether more exposureis related to a larger shift in behavior. As before, weexamine three different levels of exposure to Fox Newsin the district: some districts were never exposed toFox News during this period, some had Fox Newsbroadcasting at least since the 1998 midterm elections,and some districts had Fox News only as of the 2000presidential election. Because representatives must takepositions in both 1996 and in 2000 to be included inthis analysis, the sample of representatives is slightlysmaller (N 5 242) than earlier analyses.

Table 5 reveals that regardless of how we measureexposure to Fox News, and regardless of whether wemeasure support for President Clinton using unan-imous votes or not, the effect of Fox News beingbroadcast in the district is similar. On average,members from districts where Fox News is present are3% less likely to support the positions of PresidentClinton (Models 1 and 3). Using the log of the numberof subscribers and allowing the effect to vary on thenumber of possibly affected voters reveals that a 1%increase in subscribers with access to Fox News is



(1) (2) (3) (4)

Indicator Treatment: No Fox News 1998 - Fox News 2000 -3.761(2.109)

-2.212(2.273)

Indicator Treatment: Fox News 1998 - Fox News 2000 -3.447(2.066)

-3.339(1.887)

Continuous Treatment: No Fox News 1998 - Fox News 2000 -7.995(4.227)

-3.826(2.221)

Continuous Treatment: Fox News 1998 - Fox News 2000 -7.527(5.295)

-8.100(4.878)


-1.506(1.664)

-4.913(1.889)

-4.926(1.973)


4.428(7.039)

-1.094(18.029)

-1.836(13.062)

Log(# of Blacks) 1.497(1.367)

1.691(1.330)

1.492(1.275)

1.612(1.254)

Constant -27.841(18.154)

-29.786(19.422)

-29.268(17.625)

-30.279(18.143)

R2 0.272 0.265 0.382 0.379Observations 242 242 242 242

Note: Dependent Variable: Change in Presidential Support.

18While the appendix reveals that more nuanced measures ofposition-taking behavior are able to detect a slight conservativeshift between 1996 and 1998, evidence of a change in thelikelihood of supporting the positions of President Bill Clintonis only readily evident during the 1999–2000 period. Putdifferently, the effects of Fox News on members’ behavior in1998 is much less than the effects of Fox News on members’behavior in 2000.

19For example, maybe it took time for members to appreciate theimpact of the changing media environment on the voters’opinions? Perhaps the increased availability of the internet waspartially responsible as exposure to Fox News drove viewers toonline media outlets as well? Maybe it took time for Fox toestablish its audience and perspective? Given the available data, itis impossible for us to determine the extent to which any of thesewas responsible for the delayed effect.


related to a roughly 8% decrease in average presiden-tial support (Models 2 and 4). The similarity of theresults of Tables 4 and 5 suggest that regardless ofwhether we take the initial position to be the supportfor President Clinton in 1996 (104th Congress) or1998 (105th Congress), members are less likely tosupport President Clinton during the year 2000 (106thCongress) if the signal of Fox News is being broadcastin their district relative to similar members fromdistricts where Fox News is not being broadcast.We also find that the magnitude of the effect is indis-tinguishable for the two treatment groups which againsuggests that the effect of Fox News occurs only once ithas been broadcasting for two years.

Overall, the results of Tables 3, 4, and 5 suggestthat members do indeed take different positions onceFox News begins broadcasting in their district;relative to the positions taken before the entry ofFox News in their district, after Fox News enterstheir district, representatives are less likely to takepositions that are in agreement with President BillClinton. Moreover, the effect is especially evidentduring 1999–2000. The effects we document amongelected officials are reassuringly consistent with theresults that others have obtained when looking atvoters (DellaVigna and Kaplan 2007; Hopkins andLadd 2013).

A Replacement Effect?

Having shown that the introduction of Fox News intheir district appears to cause members to take posi-

tions that are slightly more opposed to those takenby President Clinton, we also explore whether FoxNews being broadcast in a district also influences whothe district elects to the U.S. House. That is, does theintroduction of Fox News in a district also increasethe probability of replacing the incumbent witha more conservative member?

Table 6 estimates the change in presidentialsupport for outgoing and incoming members in adistrict. To do so we compare the presidential supportof a retiring or defeated incumbent who was electedprior to the introduction of Fox News to the presi-dential support of the representative elected followingthe national introduction of Fox News for districtswith and without Fox News. Our sample is obviouslylimited due to the widespread ability of representativesto get reelected—there are only 51 replacements inour sample of districts between 1995 and 1996 andbetween 1997 and 1998 and only 33 replacementsbetween 1997 and 1998 and between 1999 and2000—but the effects are statistically indistinguishablefrom zero for both comparisons.

As Table 6 reveals, comparing the differences inthe support for President Bill Clinton of incomingand outgoing representatives between 1996 and 1998in model (1) reveals no statistically distinguishableeffect of the emergence of Fox News in 1998 for the50 instances where replacement occurs. There is alsono clear effect when comparing the 33 changesbetween 1998 and 2000 using the emergence of FoxNews in 2000 controlling for whether Fox Newsexisted in 1998. The imprecision of the estimatedeffects mean that large positive and large negativeeffects cannot be ruled out—for example, the 95%confidence interval for the shift between 1996 and1998 in Model 1 ranges between -9.11% and 16.58%and the range is even larger for period estimated inModel 2.

Although speculative, the lack of a replacementeffect in Table 6 may reflect the relatively modesteffects that the national news media has on theelectoral fortunes on individual members or it maybe a consequence of the apparent anticipation effectwe find in the prior section. If members correctlyanticipated and preempted the potential electoralconsequences of Fox News by becoming less sup-portive of President Clinton, perhaps that providedthem with additional electoral security. While wecannot reach a firm conclusion on this, we can con-clude that to the extent that Fox News affects thebehavior of elected officials, it does not appear to bebecause of who is and is not elected to the U.S.House.

TABLE 6 Replacement Effect of Fox News

1996 to 1998 1998 to 2000

(1) (2)

Fox News 1998 15.766(11.974)

No Fox News 1998 -Fox News 2000

26.914(26.010)

Fox News 1998 -Fox News 2000

-19.001(12.405)

Two party 1996 GOPvote share

-90.751(38.659)

-22.823(25.667)

Constant 43.678(17.712)

19.070(13.070)

R2 0.15 0.20Observations 50 28

Note: Dependent Variable: Change in Nonunanimous PresidentialSupport.


Conclusion and Implications

Thomas Jefferson famously opined that ‘‘the basis ofour governments being the opinion of the people,the very first object should be to keep that right; andwere it left to me to decide whether we should havea government without newspapers or newspapers with-out a government, I should not hesitate a moment toprefer the latter.’’ While Jefferson was writing in a verydifferent time, understanding how the news mediamight affect the actions of elected officials is importantfor what it reveals about the possible influences on thebehavior of reelection-minded representatives and forwhat it suggests about the potential for the news mediaitself to shape the policy process.

Most studies of the news media in politicalscience focus on the impact on the mass public.While important, we presumably care about themedia’s effect on the mass public because of howsuch changes affect public policy. We focus directly onthe relationship between the media and elected officialsto examine whether the national news media affects thebehavior of elected officials in ways that are consistentwith officials reacting to the possible media-inducedchanges in the electorate.

To determine the effect of the national newsmedia on policy, we examine whether which repre-sentatives are elected and whether the positions takenby elected representatives while in office depends onthe media environment in their district. We focusexclusively on elite behavior because it is possiblefor elites to respond to a change even before there isevidence of an effect among voters. As Erikson,Mackuen, and Stimson suggest, ‘‘rather than simplypursue their ideological agendas and await passivelyfor the electoral verdict, politicians can anticipatethe electoral effects of public opinion and adjusttheir policymaking behavior in advance’’ (2002,284). Although others have shown an effect onvoters in the particular case we examine, it wasunknown whether elites were similarly affected.

We use the unique circumstances surroundingthe creation and spread of the Fox News Channelbetween 1996 and 2000 to examine whether mem-bers’ actions are plausibly due to anticipatory pre-emption as a result of Fox News entering theirdistricts. We find no evidence that Fox News in-creased the probability that an incumbent would bereplaced by a more conservative representative, butwe do find consistent evidence that elected officialsbecome slightly less likely to publicly support Pres-ident Clinton once Fox News enters their district.

However, members do not shift their public supportfor President Clinton immediately; consistent withthe timing of effects among voters, changes in members’support for President Clinton are most readily evidentduring 1999–2000.20

To be clear, the unique circumstances surroundingFox News provide the cleanest opportunity to identifythe effect of the national news media on congressionalaction, but the uniqueness of the situation also makesit difficult to generalize the effect. Nonetheless, giventhe fact that Fox News is measured by scholars to beideologically distinctive, and perhaps also because itwas launched during a political context in which theDemocrats controlled the presidency, the Republicanswere in control of the U.S. House and the Presidentwas being tried for impeachment, it may be pos-sible to interpret our effects as a plausible upperboundary on the effect that the media may have onelected officials. If Fox News Channel was ideologicalsimilar to existing television outlets such as CNN andMSNBC (at the time), for example, it is doubtful thatthere would be much of an effect because of the lack ofa distinctive perspective. As a result, while our resultssuggest that there is almost certainly an effect of themedia on the positions taken by elected officials, theoverall magnitude of the effects are likely modest ingeneral.

Understanding the role of the ‘‘fourth estate’’ isimportant, but it is also an exceptionally difficult roleto disentangle. Following the lead of DellaVigna andKaplan (2007), and using the emergence and spreadof the national television news channel Fox News, weprovide evidence that suggests that the national newsmedia may indeed slightly affect the prospects for

20If Fox News makes elected representatives slightly more conser-vative as our results consistently show, why do measures ofpolitical polarization show that the Democratic Party continueto move left once Fox News spread across the entire country? Onepossibility is that whereas elected officials initially slightly changedtheir positions in anticipation of a possible effect, over time theybecame less concerned about the possible effects once the noveltywore off. That is, perhaps they realized the electoral effects of FoxNews were relatively minimal and that there was therefore noreason to react to change their positions in anticipation ofa possible effect of Fox News. Second, other media—e.g., blogs,internet—or other channels—e.g., MSNBC—may have emergedand provided a counterweight. If voters are being push in bothdirections by various media outlets, it is no longer clear howa member would react if they wanted to preempt a possible effect.Finally, there are obviously many factors that affect the positionstaken by representatives. While we attempt to isolate the effect thatis attributable to Fox News, the many other pressures that existmay push representatives in directions that make it difficult toassess what the net effect of the various influences on theirvoting behavior. Finally, because we are employing a difference-in-differences design, our analysis largely focuses on the behavior ofcontinuing members rather than the effects of replacement.


policy change—members appear to change their publicposition based on the media environment in theirdistrict, but the size of the effect is rather modest(roughly 3% less supportive of the president). Theunique circumstances associated with the launch andspread of Fox News arguably allows us to identify thenature of media effects on elected officials, but anobvious downside is that it is unclear how generaliz-able our results are to other media outlets and othertime periods. Even so, our findings suggest that ifrepresentatives are aware of a new media outlet intheir district that is sufficiently ideologically distinc-tive, the new entrant may modestly impact the publicpositions taken by members even if it does not affectthe composition of Congress. The national news mediaappears to be able to affect congressional behavior, butthere appear to be important limits to the effects thatare possible.

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Joshua D. Clinton is a Professor in PoliticalScience and Co-Director of the Center for the Studyof Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University,Nashville, TN, 37203.

Ted Enamorado is a Graduate Student in Politics,Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540.


the national news media’s effect on congress: fox news ... › joshclinton › files › 2015 ›...

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