Whose News? Class-Biased Economic Reporting in the United States

There is substantial evidence that voters’ choices are shaped by assessments of the state economy and these assessments, in turn, influenced news. But how does economic news track welfare different income groups an era rising inequality? Whose cover? Drawing on a large new dataset US content, we demonstrate tone strongly disproportionately tracks fortunes richest households, with little sensitivity to changes among non-rich. Further, present this pro-rich bias emerges not from journalistic preferences but, rather, interaction media’s focus aggregates structural features relationship between growth distribution. The findings yield novel explanation distributionally perverse electoral patterns distributional biases condition accountability.