Media freedom and the role of ideology

Media freedom is crucial for good governance but what leads to free media? Does the ideology of media outlets tend to make media outlets independent from the influence of the incumbent party? In the political economy of media literature, the ideology of media outlets are usually seen as a negative factor for media freedom. Using a formal model, this paper demonstrates that the ideology of media outlets can rather promote media freedom by acting as a safeguard against media capture by the government. In the model, I label media outlets as adversarial and non-adversarial ones, and demonstrate that the media capture becomes harder as the proportion of adversarial media outlets in a country increase. I also show that the media capture becomes less likely as the level of opposition by the adversarial media outlets increases. Case studies from Turkey and Peru support the implications of the model