Sex, Lies, and War: How Soft News Brings Foreign Policy to the Inattentive Public

Matthew A. Baum

American Political Science Review, 2002, vol. 96, issue 1, 91-109

Abstract: This study argues that, due to selective political coverage by the entertainment-oriented, soft news media, many otherwise politically inattentive individuals are exposed to information about high-profile political issues, most prominently foreign policy crises, as an incidental by-product of seeking entertainment. I conduct a series of statistical investigations examining the relationship between individual media consumption and attentiveness to several recent high-profile foreign policy crisis issues. For purposes of comparison, I also investigate several non-foreign crisis issues, some of which possess characteristics appealing to soft news programs and others of which lack such characteristics. I find that information about foreign crises, and other issues possessing similar characteristics, presented in a soft news context, has indeed attracted the attention of politically uninvolved Americans. The net effect is a reduced disparity in attentiveness to select high-profile political issues across different segments of the public.

Date: 2002
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