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posted by martyb on Friday May 29 2020, @05:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-one-who-pays-the-piper-calls-the-tunes dept.

Media Corruption? Car Safety Recalls Reported Less When Manufacturers Advertise More:

A new study looked at the relationship between advertising by car manufacturers in U.S. newspapers and news coverage of car safety recalls in the early 2000s. The study found that newspapers provided less coverage of recalls issued by manufacturers that advertised more regularly in their publications than of recalls issued by other manufacturers that did not advertise, and this occurred more frequently when the recalls involved more severe defects.

[...] "Because media coverage affects a variety of outcomes, it's vital that news outlets provide unbiased and accurate information to consumers so they can make well-informed decisions," says Ananya Sen, assistant professor of information systems and economics at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, who coauthored the study. "Our findings demonstrate a robust supply-side bias due to advertising revenue, one that may be quite dangerous."

Advertising accounts for nearly 80 percent of newspapers' total revenue in the United States, with total ad spending by the automotive sector surpassing $20 billion in 2006. The study's authors contend that newspapers' reliance on advertising raises concerns that editorial decisions may be vulnerable to the influence of advertisers, especially large ones.

[...] The study concluded that newspapers provided less coverage of recalls from manufacturers that bought more advertising in the previous two years. Specifically, higher spending on advertising was associated with a lower probability that the newspaper published any article on the recalls, and for those newspapers that did publish information about recalls, fewer articles were published. The bias was strongest when small newspapers published ads from local car dealers. The effect was stronger for recalls that involved a large number of vehicles and that involved more severe defects.

[...] "The vulnerability of newspapers to be influenced by advertisers and the role of market structure have implications for policymakers," explains Graham Beattie, assistant professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, who coauthored the study. "Regulators should formulate rules that limit such conflicts of interest through policies such as limiting concentration of media ownership and encouraging competition between media outlets."

Journal Reference:
Advertising Spending and Media Bias: Evidence from News Coverage of Car Safety Recalls [$], Management Science (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3567)

Interesting study but it's looking at data that's at least 10 years old. It would be interesting to see the same study using more recent data.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 29 2020, @11:56AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 29 2020, @11:56AM (#1000491)

    Of course chief executives of media companies "have no knowledge" of such deals between their advertising sales departments, programming departments, and advertising customers. The real question is: can regulation force them to be aware of and responsible for such connections? Not in today's political environment, I'm sure.

    Yet again, transparency is the answer. If a media company is shaping the opinions of our public, does the public have a right to know how the decisions of what to report (promote) and what to ignore (suppress) are made?

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @03:29PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @03:29PM (#1000566)

    Possibly related? About 20 years ago the Ford-Firestone tread separation problem on Ford Explorers was big news. Covered almost daily on the business pages of our local paper and occasionally even making the front page, for example when Ford and Firestone both decided that DOT/NHTSA should be the "judge" of fault between the two companies.

    Then the attacks of 9/11 happened. News about tread separation nearly disappeared, perhaps a small article once a week.

    How many people even remember this? The only reason I remember is that we were involved in part of the investigation. Afaik, Ford came out on top, the final result (heavily edited by lawyers) indicated that tread separation was not acceptable and that the Firestone design/manufacturing was faulty. Firestone's position had been that the Explorer should have had enough built in stability to still be safe once one of the rear tires lost tread (including the outer of two steel belts). There are more technical details involved but that's my quick summary from memory.

    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday May 29 2020, @05:31PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Friday May 29 2020, @05:31PM (#1000633)

      IIRC there have been several large-scale tire problems over the years. In at least one case the tire manufacturer blamed the car manufacturer for underinflation. I didn't follow it enough to know who won out, and what the true facts are. I just know to buy tires with 41 or 44 PSI max ratings- they're much better built than 35 PSI max tires, and run them close to that spec, depending on wear patterns of course, but never much lower.

      My best tires ever were rayon belted- no steel. Once on a plane I happened to sit next to a major tire company executive, and he intimated that steel belts are horrible, that steel and rubber don't adhere well, flex differently, and generally don't get along well, but that advertising causes the public to believe that steel belting is so much better. For all I know he might have been involved in one of the major cases / lawsuits.

      I've had a couple of tires separate rubber from steel. The exposed steel belts were shiny- no rubber on them. Probably had been rubbing away for many miles before the whole thing failed.

      All that said, steel belts are probably a good thing when everything works well.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:19PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:19PM (#1000811)

      My memory was that the tire problems really only occurred on that one Ford model, which suggested it a vehicle thing, or an incompatibility thing. It was really big news for quite a while, and Ford was taking the worst of it and they were pretty quick to throw Firestone under the bus and severed an almost 100 year old partnership. I recall thinking that Ford really never made the case that it was the tire's fault, but I didn't follow it too closely after a while because it became more about drama than facts after a while (and I didn't own either brands).

      One difference these days is that the auto companies are pretty quick to contact you directly about recalls. I get stuff in the mail from Toyota telling me about this or that recall that should be taken care of on my next servicing. I even got several airbag warnings telling me to get them replaced ASAP (it was for a car that I no longer owned).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @03:51AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 30 2020, @03:51AM (#1000906)

        OP here.

        A small fraction of Explorers were fitted with an equivalent tire from Goodyear as typical backup/second-source (Firestone had the major supplier contract). From memory Goodyear may have had 5% of the supply, spread fairly evenly across two Ford assembly plants.

        The Firestone tires suffered tread separation, hundreds of cases, often from "just driving along" (high speed, high temp, possibly underinflated like most tires). A fairly small fraction of the millions of these tires in service, but enough to become a big deal in an otherwise slow news year. Eventually the tires that hadn't already been replaced were recalled.
        The Goodyear tires suffered one documented tread separation, over a number of years and iirc this was traced to mis-use, something like hitting an enormous pothole that directly damaged the tire?

        A quick scan of this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy [wikipedia.org] seems to line up pretty well with what we heard as (partial) insiders. A search turned up many other pages written by trial lawyers, these discuss litigation, which often sidesteps or mis-states engineering test results and detailed accident analysis.

  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday June 02 2020, @11:10AM

    by driverless (4770) on Tuesday June 02 2020, @11:10AM (#1002129)

    It was published in Management Science, they'd publish a paper showing the earth was flat as long as you include fifteen pages of meaningless statistical wankery. I've seen papers in there where varying a single term in a 50-element equation by a factor of 0.1 produces a completely different outcome for the whole paper.

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