Writing on the freedom of the press in the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville commented that “people enjoying that freedom become attached to their opinions as much from pride as from conviction. They love them because they think them correct, but also because they have chosen them; and they stick to them, not only as something true but also as something of their very own.” At the time of Tocqueville’s trip to the United States, the main—if not only—source of these opinions was the flourishing newspaper industry, which amazed the French political writer with its vigor and pervasiveness. One cannot help but wonder what Tocqueville would think of the more recent rise of “soft news” television programs in the United States, which are aimed at entertaining, rather than informing, the public. If US citizens pride themselves on steadfastly holding to their opinions, what happens when these convictions are shaped by the description of dramatic events, chosen more on the basis of their entertainment value than on their ability to provide relevant information? Matthew Baum’s Soft News Goes to War provides a stimulating examination of this question.

Baum’s main argument is that soft news television programs have an important yet insufficiently studied impact on US public opinion of foreign policy issues. Soft news programs, which are part of a larger trend in the proliferation of news sources such as the Internet, are characterized by a focus on human drama, rather than on the larger context or the deeper causes and consequences of events. Their format ranges from talk shows such as Dave Letterman’s “Late Show,” to imitation news programs including “Inside Edition” and “Entertainment Tonight.” The spread of these increasingly tabloid-like programs, along with their growing focus on international events, has heightened public awareness of—or to use Baum’s term for this phenomenon, “attentiveness” to—US foreign policy.

This change in public awareness has happened in two peculiar ways. First, soft news programs have expanded the audience for international affairs to a segment of the population that would otherwise remain unaware of what happens outside of the United States. The typical viewer of soft news is politically unsophisticated and, importantly, not very attentive to foreign policy. However, because international events often provide these programs with breathtaking episodes of human drama, soft news outlets have become a source (often the only source) of information on foreign policy for their viewers. For example, soft news focuses on the heroic rescue of a US fighter pilot downed by enemy forces, the plight of family members of soldiers sent abroad, and the casualties inflicted upon the enemy or suffered by US forces. By concentrating on such dramatic subjects, soft news programs effectively lower the threshold of accessibility to information on foreign policy. They are the “Cliffs Notes” of foreign policy for a large portion of the US public, providing summaries of events that ignore the finer details.

The increasing coverage of foreign policy in soft news has also influenced public opinion in other ways, beyond simply raising the level of awareness. Soft news is generally episodic and lacks a larger political context. The consumers of such programs are therefore aware that something is occurring abroad but are left without a clear understanding of the causes and consequences of the event and of the government’s response to it. In other words, people who watch soft news become more “attentive,” but they do not necessarily have more coherent or in-depth knowledge of foreign policy. To quote an even more pessimistic conclusion, “It is unclear whether more information necessarily makes better citizens, particularly if the quality of that information is suspect.”

Baum argues that the superficial coverage of foreign affairs by soft news, which often focuses on highly violent events, has had two important effects. First, as one may expect, there is a strong “repellent effect particularly among viewers who lack sufficient knowledge about an issue to place such information into a broader context.” This may lead to stronger desires for isolationism among the US population, making foreign interventions politically more costly for sitting presidents.

The second effect may be more counterintuitive. As Baum points out, Democratic presidents generally have a more difficult time than their Republican counterparts when rallying support from their voters for foreign policy initiatives. Given that the primary consumers of soft news are the less politically sophisticated, and constitute a larger part of the Democratic Party than the Republican Party according to Baum, the increase in their attentiveness due to soft news would appear to help Democratic presidents. The data, however, shows otherwise. Baum presents evidence suggesting that “Republican presidents [are] more likely to benefit from rallies among politically unsophisticated members of the public.” A raised level of enthusiasm caused by an increase in foreign policy attentiveness does not bring any additional benefit to a Democrat, but the same phenomenon during a Republican administration may win Democratic support for the incumbent president. In other words, “The rise of soft news media appears likely to disproportionately benefit Republican presidents.”

Baum supports his arguments with an extensive analysis of the relationship between the topics of soft news programs and changes in US public opinion. The methodology adopted relies heavily on statistical analysis, accompanied by a number of relevant, in-depth case studies. The difficulty is that these investigations often lead to only tentative conclusions. But this is not a shortcoming of the author as much as of the nature of the question under examination. The role of soft news in shaping public opinion is a new area of research, in large measure due to the relative novelty of such news programs. As a result, the main weakness of Baum’s book is that the data is very incomplete, and it is often difficult, as Baum himself acknowledges, to detect historical trends from a limited number of case studies. For example, if war is considered a key foreign policy event, the impact of soft news can be traced back only to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, making comparisons with previous US military engagements difficult. However, such limitations are inevitable when the object of study is new and should only serve as incentives for further research.