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Ownership Ties, Conflicts of Interest and the Tone of News

In this paper we investigate the tone used by newspapers in reporting information on a company, which is in a conflict of interest regarding ownership ties with the publishing firm. We investigate this issue using Italy as empirical setting, a country characterized by a newspaper industry highly owned by nationally-dominant industrial groups. Based on a sample of about 123,000 articles we document that newspapers produce larger coverage and a significantly smaller number of negative and uncertain words for firms with a conflict of interest. We also document that the slant is increasing with the incentive to favorable distort news (magnitude of the ownership stake) and decreasing with the newspaper’s reputation.