The Judge, the Politician, and the Press: Newspaper Coverage and Criminal Sentencing across Electoral Systems
研究报纸报道如何影响美国州法院法官的刑事量刑，发现非党派选举产生的法官在暴力犯罪案件中因媒体报道而显著加重刑罚，而党派选举或任命法官则无此效应。
We study how media environments interact with political institutions that structure the accountability of public officials. Specifically, we quantify media influence on the behavior of US state court judges. We analyze around 1.5 million criminal sentencing decisions from 1986 to 2006 and new data on the newspaper coverage of 9,828 trial court judges. Since newspaper coverage is endogenous, we use the match between newspaper markets and judicial districts to identify effects. We find that newspaper coverage significantly increases sentence length by nonpartisan elected judges for violent crimes. For partisan elected and appointed judges, there are no significant effects.