Incentive

Linguistics

Philosophy

Opinion leadership

Microeconomics

Social psychology

Public relations

Audience measurement

Narrative

Economics

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Psychology

Politics

Political science

Ideology

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Mass media

Sociology

Medicine

Positive economics

Popular opinion

Public opinion

Disease

Media studies

Pathology

The Review of Economic Studies

The rise of opinion programs has transformed television news. Because they present anchors’ subjective commentary and analysis, opinion programs often convey conflicting narratives about reality. We experimentally document that people across the ideological spectrum turn to opinion programs over “straight news”, even when provided large incentives to learn objective facts. We then examine the consequences of diverging narratives between opinion programs in a high-stakes setting: the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. We find stark differences in the adoption of preventative behaviours among viewers of the two most popular opinion programs, both on the same network, which adopted opposing narratives about the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We then show that areas with greater relative viewership of the program downplaying the threat experienced a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our evidence suggests that opinion programs may distort important beliefs and behaviours.

Opinions as Facts