Handbook of Media Economics, vol 1B

17.1. INTRODUCTION

Mass media are an important source of information about politics in most countries.

Media reports have a potential to affect public opinion and to generate public support

of particular politicians and policies. As a result, politicians have incentives to control

the media whenever they see the opportunity to do so. The goal of this chapter is to

see whether media capture indeed occurs, and, if it does, how it changes the way media

and politics interact with each other.

One of the most detailed forensic examples of media capture is described in

McMillan

and Zoido (2004)

. Their paper studies Fujimori’s Peru, where the head of secret police,

Vladimir Montesinos, kept records of bribes paid by the government to different actors.

The