A SIMPLE MODEL OF LEGISLATOR AND NEWS MEDIA INTERACTION

This article examines the effect of a strategic news media on legislators ’ inter-actions with their constituencies. Specifically, legislators can only be con-strained by constituency preferences over policies when voters have the information to hold legislators accountable for their actions. A strategic news media can provide such information in a constant and continuous manner unlike, say, challengers. This article addresses this scenario with several mod-els. First, a signaling model is introduced with constituency preferences and a journalist’s investigating and reporting strategies serving as constraints on a legislator’s voting preferences. Results of the baseline model include a pooling equilibrium where legislators vote with the district and are always re-elected. Second, a basic ultimatum bargaining model is introduced to allow for collu-sion between journalists and legislators in the output of the news product. This extension highlights a pure strategy-separating equilibrium where an out-of-step legislator is able to secure silence from the journalist and win re-election. Finally, the role of multiple journalists covering a legislator is considered. Results illustrate that as the number of media outlets increases within a district, the quality of representation also increases