Reporting after removal: the effects of journalist expulsion on foreign news coverage

Abstract

What happens to international media reporting when governments expel foreign journalists? Countries around the world expel foreign reporters, yet there is no consensus about the effects of such expulsions. We argue there are three possible outcomes of expulsion: a chilling effect, resilience, and backlash. Using China as a case study, we evaluate these competing theories by collecting a novel dataset of foreign news stories about China and applying time-series causal inference methods to measure the effects of expulsion on information origination, composition, and reach after March 2020, when the Chinese government expelled a large number of foreign correspondents. Results show that expelled media organizations did not experience a chilling effect or backlash on reporting and may have changed their production processes to account for expulsion. These findings suggest that news organizations can remain resilient to the impact of extraordinary events which target the organization and disrupt internal production processes.