A Comparative Study of Journalists' Perceptions of the Political Opinion Climate

Claims about journalists' left-leaning bias are widespread and appear on a regular basis. However, the mechanism through which such bias in reporting should come about are much less clear. We live in time where news outlets across countries and media systems are under enormous economic pressure and technological changes provide constant feedback about which stories "work" and which do not. In such a context, it seems only logical that journalists' views of the opinion climate in their country and not their own personal opinions would influence what and how they report the news. While many studies document journalists' audience orientation, we know much less about how politicians actually form their opinion about their audience and public opinion more generally. This paper aims to fill this gap by making use of data from surveys with political journalists from Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland. In the survey, journalists are asked to estimate what percentage of the country's population is in favor of a number of very specific policy proposals. Pairing this information with results from a public opinion survey held in parallel allows to identify the accuracy of journalists' estimations. This allows to address three key aspects related to how journalists form their perceptions of public opinion. First and foremost, whether journalists' perceptions of public opinion are in fact accurate. We take estimations by the general public as a benchmark and then look whether some journalists are better than others. The expectation is that journalistic experience, the type of media they work for, or their own political leaning affect their accuracy. Building on these insights, the paper then takes a next step and looks at the direction in which journalists over-or underestimate public opinion. Put differently, do they have a left-or right-leaning bias? To address this, we take into account both journalists' perception of the political leaning of their audience as well as their own. It is expected that journalists have a confirmation bias, which makes them think more people agree with their own position than in fact do. Finally, making use of the fact that there is information from journalists from four different political systems, we look at how actual political developments might affect their perceptions of the opinion climate. It is plausible that in countries where right-wing parties have gained an exceptional amount of electoral support over the past years, journalists will estimate public opinion more to the right than in a political system where the rise of right-wing parties has been more moderate. Taken together, the results of the study provide important insights into how those tasked with making sure the flow of information between politics and the public works actually form their own perceptions of public opinion. This is even more relevant in times where the economic pressure on media outlets is exceptionally high.