Television News and U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract

This study argues that the main approaches used to investigate the impact of television news on U.S. foreign policy making including the “CNN effect” and “news management” have missed several significant effects. This work employs an approach that views the media impact in terms of constraints real-time television coverage imposes on the policy-making process. These include shortening of the time available for policy making and demanding immediate response to crises and events, excluding experts and diplomats, facilitating diplomatic manipulations, creating high expectations, broadcasting deficient reports, and making instant judgments. The work presents a few actual examples to demonstrate each constraint. The constraints have created challenges and dilemmas for political leaders and government officials, and the article suggests several ways policymakers can use to cope with them.