Taking sides? Popular news-media during the Boulangist episode

I suggest that popular news-media have incentives to avoid informative political topics during populist waves. This is because their readership is polarized which could lead a substantial number of readers to stop buying the journal if it covers topics that require to take sides (e.g. discussing programs). Then, I mobilize the Boulangist episode during the French Third Republic to illustrate such a possibility. The two most read daily - Le Petit Journal and Le Petit Parisien - avoided discussing the (lack of) program of Boulanger once he entered in politics. I also discuss the limits of the neutrality obtained via such an issue bias. I suggest that the two dailies were semantically closer to the Boulangist L'Intransigeant than to anti-Boulangist journals (La Justice or Le Radical).