Chris Riddell, The Guardian
Donald Trump apparently based his decision to bomb Iran on Fox News broadcasts showing successful Israeli attacks as well as the network’s interviews with Republican senators who called on Trump to commit American forces.
Media scholars have long debated the impact the media have on foreign policy and the so-called “CNN effect,” the idea that U.S. foreign policy is at times merely a reflection of news content. In the current administration, it has been replaced by the “Fox News effect.”
Just as the media can shape government decisions, the government can shape media coverage, as it did in the lead up to the war in Iraq. Steven Livingston, a media scholar at George Washington University, told Columbia Journalism Review that media coverage since the Vietnam war has tended to privilege official sources, especially from the White House. “News coverage of war and foreign policy is indexed to the limited range of elite opinions,” he said, “at least in the short run.”
A 2013 study by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland found that mainstream media coverage of Iran’s nuclear program “emphasized official narratives of the dispute and a relatively narrow range of policy choices available to officials…and reinforce[d] negative sentiments about Iran that are broadly shared by U.S., European and Israeli publics.…This makes it likely that the policies enacted and under consideration by policy makers—coercive diplomacy and war—remain the most likely outcome of the dispute.”
The study analyzed newspaper coverage from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Independent. It found that:
Newspaper coverage focused on the “he said/she said” aspects of the policy debate, without adequately explaining the fundamental issues that should have been informing assessments—such as Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions, the influence of U.S., European, Iranian, and Israeli security strategies, and the impact of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
When newspaper coverage did address Iranian nuclear intentions and capabilities, it did so in a manner that lacked precision, was inconsistent over time, and failed to provide adequate sourcing and context for claims. This led to an inaccurate picture of the choices facing policy makers.
Government officials, particularly U.S. government officials, were the most frequently quoted or relied-on sources in coverage of Iran’s nuclear program. This tendency focused attention on a narrow set of policy options and deemphasized other potential approaches to the dispute.
Newspaper coverage generally adopted the tendency of U.S., European, and Israeli officials to place on Iran the burden to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program, failing to acknowledge the roles of these other countries in the dispute.
A plurality of newspaper articles took the approach of examining the domestic political and international diplomatic angles of the larger story, contributing to the heavy reliance on official sources and a focus on official policy proscriptions. Commentary and opinion articles relating to Iran’s nuclear program made up a larger than typical share of the coverage, demonstrating the intense interest focused on the topic and opening the public debate to a range of viewpoints.
Newspaper coverage paid insufficient attention to the broader context—particularly, the security concerns of the United States, Iran, Israel, and European states, and the effect of domestic politics within these same countries—that influences what specific actors say or do about Iran’s nuclear program at different times. This obscured the substantial confusion about national motivations and made it difficult to conceive of and debate consensual solutions to the dispute.
Coverage of Iran’s nuclear program reflected and reinforced the negative sentiments about Iran that are broadly shared by U.S., European, and Israeli publics. This contributed to misunderstandings about the interests involved and narrowed the range of acceptable outcomes.
Fox News, for the most part, is an echo chamber for Trump. His administration is filled with former Fox hosts and “experts.” The network shapes Trump’s worldview and his views shape the network. But these views have no basis in knowledge or truth. They are a self-fulfilling reality, a doom loop for, among other things, health, science, immigration, economics, foreign relations and the rule of law.
Sources:
“Media coverage of Iran’s nuclear program,” Jonas Siegel & Saranaz Barforoush, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, April 2013
“Why ISIS Coverage Sounds Familiar,” Damaris Colhoun, Columbia Journalism Review, November 14, 2014