Circling the Wagons: Soft News and Isolationism in American Public Opinion

In prior research (Baum 2002), I presented evidence that the soft news media provides substantial coverage of U.S foreign policy crises, when they arise, and that a principal effect of this coverage is that segments of the American public that have traditionally tuned out politics entirely are increasingly exposed to information about select high profile political issues, most prominently foreign policy crises, when they arise. This study extends that research, first, by systematically investigating the differences between foreign policy coverage in the soft and hard news medias. I find that, relative to traditional news outlets, the soft news media places far greater emphasis on dramatic, human-interest themes and episodic frames and far less emphasis on knowledgeable information sources or thematic frames, while, at the same time, having a far greater propensity to emphasize the potential for failure of the U.S. policy. I then investigate the implications of these differences for the foreign policy attitudes of the primary consumers of soft news: the least politically engaged segments of the public. I argue that the style of coverage of soft news outlets tends to induce suspicion and distrust of a proactive, activist approach to U.S. foreign policy. I test this and several related hypotheses through a series of statistical investigations into the effects of soft news coverage on attitudes towards isolationism in general, and U.S. policy regarding the Bosnian Civil War in particular. I find that among least educated or politically informed members of the public, but not their better educated or informed counterparts, increased soft news exposure – but not increased exposure to traditional news sources-- is indeed associated with greater isolationism and opposition to U.S. policy towards Bosnia.