It's Beyond Our Control: Analysis of Business Press Coverage of Industry Price Hikes
Overview
Paper Summary
This study suggests that business news coverage tends to attribute price increases to external factors rather than companies' decisions. The study manually analyzed a subset of 100 articles from a larger dataset, finding that reporters were more likely to cite factors outside of companies’ control. However, limitations exist due to manual coding and subjective interpretation of "fairness."
Explain Like I'm Five
Business reporters mainly blame things outside of companies' control for price increases. This could be true, or it might be that reporters are missing the real story.
Possible Conflicts of Interest
One of the authors is cited in one of the articles analyzed, which represents a minor conflict of interest. Additionally, the limited explanations for manual exclusions raise concerns about potential selection bias.
Identified Limitations
Rating Explanation
This descriptive study analyzes an interesting topic with a reasonable approach but suffers from some methodological limitations. The manual classification of articles, the relatively small sample size, and the lack of ground truth comparison limit the generalizability of the findings. The minor COI slightly reduces the rating.
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