  It is believed that interventions that change the media's costs of
misreporting can increase the information provided by media outlets. This paper
analyzes the validity of this claim and the welfare implications of those types
of interventions that affect misreporting costs. I study a model of
communication between an uninformed voter and a media outlet that knows the
quality of two competing candidates. The alternatives available to the voter
are endogenously championed by the two candidates. I show that higher costs may
lead to more misreporting and persuasion, whereas low costs result in full
revelation; interventions that increase misreporting costs never harm the
voter, but those that do so slightly may be wasteful of public resources. I
conclude that intuitions derived from the interaction between the media and
voters, without incorporating the candidates' strategic responses to the media
environment, do not capture properly the effects of these types of
interventions.
