Air Pollution and Media Slant: Evidence from Chinese Corporate News

This paper examines the impact of air pollution on the media slant of publicly listed firms in China. Using a large panel of air quality and media data at the city level, we find that lower air quality generally leads to a more negative media slant. When the air quality falls from lightly polluted to heavily polluted, the number of negative sentences in a news article increases by about 1%. Our subsample analysis shows that the effect of air pollution on media slant is similar in news articles for large and small firms, SOE and non-SOE firms, official press, and non-official press. Furthermore, the effect of air pollution on media slant is stronger for firms in heavy pollution industries. These results suggest that air pollution affects media slant.