In his "Page 53" post, Belmont Club proprietor Wretchard examines why stories of some atrocities are buried while others become front page news. My comments was as follows:

Wretchard, Dymphna, et al: Three members of Yale University's Department of Economics have recently published a working paper that addresses an important gap in our understanding of whether, how, and to what degree media influences public opinion, political attitudes, and voting behavior. One of the most important features of this paper, entitled "Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions" is the question that it does not address, i.e. whether or not media bias exists. The reason why they don't is that this questions is already settled:

There is substantial evidence that media sources have identifiable political slants, but there has been relatively little study of the effects of media bias on the views and behavior of media consumers, or of the effect of mere exposure to news (irrespective of the slant, for example).

A key insight from the paper appears to be that awareness of bias may offset its influence while the assumption of neutrality can allow bias to work with greater effect. My review of the paper can be found in a post entitled "Does Media Matter?"