Abstract
Several studies have documented that there is often little connection between reality and press attention—for example, a “crime wave” is as likely to reflect press attention as actual crime. Using information from a large government-gathered database, and cross-lagged partial correlations, this study finds some evidence that letters to the newspaper do influence some editors to write about certain issues and also some newspapers to emphasize particular topics in the news. This was true of six of the 10 papers for which data could be used. But there was little evidence that editorials influenced news topics, or vice versa.
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