We Are Watching: Explaining the US Media’s Selective Attention on World Leaders

• In Event: Lightning Round: Research in Five: Graduate Students III

Abstract

The U.S. media frequently report on leaders of foreign countries, yet their coverage varies across time and leaders. This study explores two possible (competing) explanations that may account for such variation, with a particular focus on the role that human rights violations play. First, the U.S. media devote greater amounts of attention to leaders who commit more human rights violations because readers have stronger interests in more “shocking” news – mass killings, politicide, etc. (demand- driven variation). Second, the U.S. media, captured by the U.S. government, target human rights abusers who can offer greater policy concessions to coerce them into making the concessions, since leaders care about their international reputation and want to avoid being publicly “named and shamed” (supply-driven variation). Using data scraped from five major U.S. newspapers covering more than 1,500 foreign leaders, we find strong support for the latter. Moreover, consistent with the theory, it is found that an increase in U.S.-bases news coverage of a leader in the wake of human rights violations benefits the U.S. both politically and economically in the subsequent years. The results have implications for understanding of the media’s role in helping the government to achieve its policy goals in democratic societies.

Author

• Ruilin Lai, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology