The Local News Crisis and Political Scandal

The local news crisis in the United States has raised concerns about accountability in state and local government. But existing research has provided only indirect evidence that the decline of local news reporting has made it harder for voters to punish poor-performing elected officials. In this paper, I examine local newspaper coverage of state and congressional political scandals from 1990 through 2022. I first show that scandals now receive about 25% of the coverage they once did, a development that is directly related to the decline in newsroom reporting resources. I then show that the volume of scandal reporting is associated with whether officials face sanction for their behavior. When newspapers devote less coverage to a scandal, incumbents are less likely to leave office or receive a lower vote share when they run for reelection. Because scandals get significantly less coverage than they did even a decade ago, it may now be easier for politicians to ride them out and avoid punishment for bad behavior.