Inequality and Bias in the Demand for and Supply of News Ann L. Owen, Hamilton College Andrew Wei, Hamilton College Objectives. We examine how the supply and demand for news stories that reference an individualistic concept change in response to changes in inequality and the prevailing ideology. Methods. We use Google Trends data to construct an index of demand for individualistic news and a database of newspaper articles to construct an index of supply. We estimate fixed effects models on state and DMA-level data from 1993 to 2017. Results. Demand for individualistic news is higher in more conservative areas and it is even stronger when inequality rises. Supply of individualistic news is higher when the share of income to the top 1 percent is higher. The supply effect is strongest in more liberal areas. Conclusion. These results provide evidence of both confirmation bias influencing demand and media capture influencing supply. Confirmation bias and media capture are distinct phenomenon, but provide reinforcing explanations for why consumption of individualistic news increases with inequality. The news media plays an important role in interpreting economic conditions for the public. In this article, we explore the way in which the demand for and supply of news changes in response to increases in inequality. Using U.S. data at both state and designated market area (DMA) levels that span the years 1993–2017, we estimate fixed effects mod- els and find evidence of both confirmation bias and media capture. Specifically, we find evidence that demand for news that has an individualistic bias increases when inequality increases and is higher in areas that have a more conservative ideology. This result is consis- tent with confirmation bias. Complementary to that finding, we also present evidence that more inequality is associated with an increase in the supply of news with an individualistic bias. We interpret that result as being consistent with media capture by the elite who may seek to manipulate public sentiment to justify their increasing share of income. An impor- tant aspect of our work is that our approach allows us to separate the demand for news from the supply of news so that we can disentangle hypotheses about supply and demand and investigate separately factors affecting each. Confirmation bias and media capture are distinct, but reinforcing, phenomenon that explain why consumption of individualistic news increases when inequality increases. The demand for news can be affected by confirmation bias: consumers of news seek out stories that confirm their beliefs about the causes of inequality. Stories of individualism typically appeal to the belief that hard work leads to success, which could cause people to think that the poor simply need to work harder and do not deserve welfare (Gilens, 2000). Both rich and poor may have reason to adopt individualistic beliefs, but our findings suggest Direct correspondence to Ann L. Owen, Department of Economics, Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323 〈aowen@hamilton.edu〉. We are grateful for helpful comments from Greg Casey, Lewis Davis, Jaemin Woo, seminar participants at the College of William and Mary, and two anonymous referees. SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY C  2019 by the Southwestern Social Science Association DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12734