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Influence from Abroad
Foreign Voices, the Media, and U.S. Public Opinion

In Influence from Abroad, Danny Hayes and Matt Guardino show

that United States public opinion about American foreign policy can
be shaped by foreign leaders and representatives of international
organizations. By studying news coverage, elite debate, and public
opinion prior to the Iraq War, the authors demonstrate that U.S.
media outlets aired and published a significant amount of opposi-
tion to the invasion from official sources abroad, including British,
French, and United Nations representatives. In turn, these foreign
voices – to which millions of Americans were exposed – drove many
Democrats and independents to signal opposition to the war, even as
domestic elites supported it. Contrary to the conventional wisdom
that Americans care little about the views of foreigners, this book
shows that international officials can alter domestic public opinion,
but only when the media deem them newsworthy. The authors’ con-
clusions raise significant questions about the democratic quality of
U.S. foreign policy debates.

Danny Hayes is Assistant Professor of Political Science at George

Washington University. Professor Hayes is a former journalist whose
research focuses on how information from the media and other
political actors influences citizens’ attitudes during public policy
debates and election campaigns. His work has been supported by
the National Science Foundation and has appeared in the American
Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political
Behavior, Political Communication, Politics & Gender, American
Politics Research, and Presidential Studies Quarterly.

Matt Guardino is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Prov-

idence College. Professor Guardino is a former journalist whose
research focuses on the political-economic forces that shape news
coverage of public policy debates, how media coverage affects pub-
lic opinion, and how these dynamics impact the health of democracy.
His work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science,
Political Communication, and New Political Science.
Influence from Abroad
Foreign Voices, the Media, and U.S.
Public Opinion

DANNY HAYES
George Washington University

MATT GUARDINO
Providence College
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107691025

© Danny Hayes and Matt Guardino 2013

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2013

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hayes, Danny.
Influence from abroad : foreign voices, the media, and U.S. public opinion / Danny
Hayes, George Washington University, Matt Guardino, Providence College.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-107-03552-2 (hardback) – isbn 978-1-107-69102-5 (pbk.)
1. United States – Foreign relations – Public opinion. 2. United States – Military
policy – Public opinion. 3. United States – Foreign public opinion.
4. Foreign news – United States – Public opinion. 5. Mass media and public
opinion – United States. 6. Public opinion – United States. 7. Iraq War,
2003–2011 – Public opinion. 8. Iraq War, 2003–2011 – Foreign public opinion.
I. Guardino, Matt. II. Title.
e840.h385 2013
327.73–dc23 2012047923

isbn 978-1-107-03552-2 Hardback

isbn 978-1-107-69102-5 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of

urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and
does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or
appropriate.
To our parents:
Dan and Charlotte Hayes, the best a kid could luck into
Francis and Estelle Guardino: for your love, patience, and
support
Contents

List of Tables page viii

List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi

1 The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion: Elite Discourse,

Mass Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy Attitudes 1
2 Us versus Them: Domestic Support and Foreign
Opposition in Media Coverage of the Iraq War
Debate 17
3 Byrd Gets No Word: Journalistic Norms and the
Replacement of Domestic Dissent with Foreign
Opposition 51
4 When Foreign Voices Persuade: Predispositions,
Partisanship, and International Influence on U.S.
Public Opinion 85
5 Conclusion: Foreign Voices, New Media, and
Democratic Accountability in U.S. Foreign Policy 129

Appendix A: Variable Information 151

Appendix B: Statistical Models 159
Works Cited 169
Index 179

vii
List of Tables

4.1 Views of Use of Military Force, by Partisanship page 96

4.2 Multilateralism, by Partisanship 100
4.3 Views of the United Nations and European Union,
by Partisanship 103

viii
List of Figures

2.1 The Increasing Amount of Prewar Network News

Coverage page 32
2.2 Focus of Prewar Network News Stories 34
2.3 The Changing Focus of Prewar Network News
Coverage 35
2.4 Distribution and Direction of Source Quotes in
Prewar Network News Stories 39
2.5 Specific Sources of Non-Iraqi Foreign Opposition 42
2.6 Sources of Quotes Opposed to Bush Policy in
Prewar Network News Stories 45
3.1 Congressional Floor Statements and Network
News Stories Aired about Iraq, by Month 63
3.2 Overall Comparison of Congressional Record
Statements and Media Statements about Iraq, by
Source Category 66
3.3 Republican Critics of the Iraq War in Congress 67
3.4 Republican Critics of the Iraq War in the News 69
3.5 Comparison of Congressional Record Statements
and Media Statements on Iraq, by Policy-Making
Phase 74
3.6 Republican and Democratic Floor Statements on
Iraq, by Policy-Making Phase 76
3.7 Democratic Critics of the Iraq War in Congress 77
3.8 Democratic Critics of the Iraq War in the News 78
3.9 News Attention to Non-Iraqi Foreign Sources, by
Policy-Making Phase 80
ix
x List of Figures

4.1 Public Support for Military Action in Iraq, by

Party Identification, August 2002–March 2003 105
4.2 Support for Military Action in Iraq and Reported
Opposition on Network Television, by
Partisanship, September 2002–March 2003 112
4.3 The Effect of Support and Opposition in the News
on Public Support for Military Action in Iraq 115
4.4 The Effect of Foreign Opposition in the News on
Public Support for Military Action in Iraq, by
Party Identification and Education Level 120
Acknowledgments

What a cliché. Like so many professional endeavors these days, this

book began at Starbucks.
It was August 2006. Danny had just been hired as an assistant
professor at Syracuse University, where Matt was working on his PhD.
Over a cup of coffee on a late summer afternoon, we hatched a vague
plan for a research project that would examine media coverage of the
Iraq War. Neither of us had any inkling that we’d still be at it six years
later, much less that our collaboration would result in a book. And
absent the generous professional and personal support we’ve received
over the years, it never would have. The audience for our ideas might
have remained but a barista.
At Syracuse University, we were fortunate to receive significant sup-
port from the Department of Political Science and the Maxwell School
of Citizenship and Public Affairs, which gave both of us time, in the
form of fellowships and research leave, to work on the project. In
addition, the Campbell Public Affairs Institute provided funding that
allowed us to finish the painstaking content analysis of network tele-
vision news coverage without which this book would not exist. We
also benefited from fellowships from the Institute for the Study of
the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media. At American University, where
Danny taught while much of the book was being written, Fei Han,
John Quinn, and Jon Weakley provided valuable research assistance.
More generally, we have been blessed to study and work amid groups
of wonderfully supportive colleagues at Syracuse, American, George
Washington University, and Providence College.

xi
xii Acknowledgments

We also owe a deep debt of gratitude to the many people who have
given us feedback, helped us refine our ideas, set us straight when
we erred, and assisted us in various capacities along the way. Scott
Althaus has been an uncommonly thoughtful, thorough, and incisive
critic. The book owes much to his important research and generous
feedback. Jen Lawless enthusiastically read the entire manuscript in
an early incarnation, helping us sharpen and shape the argument and
analysis. The final product has her fingerprints – and copious margin
notes – all over it.
We are also grateful to the many others who have given us valu-
able commentary: Brandon Bartels, Matt Cleary (who suggested we
write a book in the first place), Hanneke Derksen, Jamie Druckman,
Shana Gadarian, Jason Gainous, Jon Hanson, Seth Jolly, Jon Ladd,
Suzanne Mettler, Mike Miller, Heather Pincock, Laurie Rhodebeck,
Mark Rupert, Hans Peter Schmitz, Daron Shaw, John Sides, Dean
Snyder, Bat Sparrow, Jeff Stonecash, Brian Taylor, Trevor Thrall, Joe
Ucinski, Chris Way, and John Zaller. Seminar participants at Ameri-
can (in both the Department of Government and the School of Com-
munication), Cornell University, George Washington, Syracuse, the
University of Louisville, and the University of Texas at Austin also
provided helpful comments and criticism. The same is true of audi-
ences at various American Political Science Association and Midwest
Political Science Association meetings.
Thanks are due to two anonymous reviewers for Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, who read the entire book and helped us significantly
improve the final manuscript. Portions of the book were previously
published in the American Journal of Political Science and Political
Communication, and we benefited enormously from feedback from
the anonymous referees and editors, Rick Wilson and Shanto Iyengar.
As always, any shortcomings are ours alone.
The team at Cambridge, especially our editor Robert Dreesen and
senior editorial assistant Abby Zorbaugh, expertly helped us navigate
the book-publishing process, a first-time endeavor for us both. We
appreciate their support for the project. My-Lien Le, at American
University, taught us how to create an index – and then mercifully did
it for us, with characteristic expertise.
Aside from the professional, we have also been fortunate to have
constant support from friends and family. Danny’s sisters, Janie Hayes
and Cindy Hayes, and brother-in-law Jimmy Bisese have been well-
springs of enthusiasm and encouragement over the years. Somehow,
Acknowledgments xiii

some way, they never complain when the talk turns to political
science.
True to Italian-American form, Matt’s family members are too
numerous to name, but suffice it to say that their generosity, inspi-
ration, and home-cooked food did much to ease the lonely hours of
research and writing. In addition, Lisa Tenasco deserves thanks for
her many varieties of support and encouragement. Lisa helped com-
pensate for our considerable artistic deficiencies by suggesting a great
concept for the cover design, and she has been there over the years to
offer insightful perspectives on politics and the media from outside the
proverbial academic bubble.
Finally, to our parents: words are insufficient to express our appre-
ciation for everything you have done for us. In what is an admittedly
inadequate gesture, we dedicate this book to you.
1

The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion

Elite Discourse, Mass Media, and U.S. Foreign
Policy Attitudes

It was March 20, 2003. The United States was at war. Three nights
earlier, in a prime-time address to the nation, President George
W. Bush had issued Saddam Hussein an ultimatum: leave Iraq within
forty-eight hours or face the prospect of an invasion “commenced at
the time of our choosing.” Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, had refused to
flee.
And then, at 10:15 pm on the East Coast, Bush made good on the
threat. He announced that he had ordered an attack on Baghdad. The
U.S. military machine’s “shock and awe” campaign had begun, the first
salvo in a conflict that would prove bloodier and costlier than most
Americans had anticipated, and whose political and economic conse-
quences likely would be felt generations down the line.
Despite the inherent dangers and uncertainty that attend any mili-
tary conflict, mainstream media coverage in the days surrounding the
invasion highlighted the aura of national solidarity. With polls show-
ing roughly seven in ten citizens endorsing military action, “Americans
have rallied strongly around President Bush and accepted his call for
war as the only practical way to remove Saddam Hussein and end the
threat posed by his weapons of mass destruction,” led a Chattanooga
Times Free Press story. The president has “strong support for waging
a war with Iraq,” asserted the Deseret News of Salt Lake City. Even
in the face of concerns about casualties and costs, the public was will-
ing to “hang tough,” an Associated Press wire report concluded. In a
CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, Americans “applauded” Bush’s ultima-
tum, according to the New York Daily News. “Broad” and “strong”

1
2 Influence from Abroad

were among the words frequently used to describe the public majorities
that expressed support for the president’s actions.
These news media depictions, however, typically failed to note the
most telling feature of public opinion during this period: that the views
of Republicans and Democrats were more polarized about the launch
of the Iraq War than at the outset of any major conflict in mod-
ern U.S. history. Bush’s backing among Republican identifiers was
overwhelming – monolithic even – with upward of 90 percent of his
fellow partisans favoring the assault on Baghdad. Democratic sup-
port, however, fell below 50 percent in many polls, creating a level of
partisan polarization more typically associated with hot-button social
issues than with matters of national security. More independents indi-
cated that they were with the president than against him, but sig-
nificant numbers expressed reservations about the preemptive military
strike. By contrast, partisan divisions before the first Gulf War typically
hovered around twenty points, and very little polarization character-
ized the early years of the Korean, Vietnam, Kosovo, or Afghanistan
conflicts.1
Such opinion polarization in itself is hardly remarkable. The two
decades of U.S. politics spanning the turn of the twenty-first century
have been marked by wide partisan divisions on a myriad of issues,
from health care policy to global warming to same-sex marriage. But
the rift on the Iraq War is striking because it stands starkly at odds
with what most analysts of public opinion would have predicted.
The dominant academic theory of attitude formation predicts that
mass polarization – Democrats and Republicans in the public at-
large diverging substantially on a political issue – will occur only
when domestic elite polarization occurs first. When Republicans and
Democrats in Washington spar publicly, their co-partisans in the pub-
lic, hearing these disagreements, tend to coalesce behind their respec-
tive party leaders’ positions. But when the official representatives of
the two major parties stand together, or when one party does not pub-
licly challenge the other, mass polarization hardly ever occurs. In such
instances, few differences should emerge in the attitudes of Republi-
cans and Democrats in the public – especially in the realm of foreign
policy, in which strong nationalistic tides tend to discourage dissent
from official stances.

1 See Pew Research Center survey (http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/175.pdf) and

other national polls, and Jacobson (2007, 133–138).
The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion 3

To be sure, some leading Democrats, such as the late West Virginia

Senator Robert Byrd, made impassioned arguments against going to
war with Iraq. But for reasons both ideological and strategic, the
party as a whole failed to wage a loud, consistent, unified, and vis-
ible fight against the push for an invasion. In fact, many congressional
Democrats – including a majority of senators, among them the party’s
2004 electoral standard bearers John Kerry and John Edwards, and
the near-nominee in 2008, Hillary Clinton – voted for the October
2002 resolution authorizing Bush to use military force. As a result,
mainstream U.S. news media reported very little Democratic dissent
in the six months before the 2003 invasion. And neither did the mass
media pay much attention to widespread antiwar protests or other
nongovernmental efforts to express domestic opposition. In this, main-
stream news was following its familiar script of downplaying and dele-
gitimizing political demonstrations and social movements, but the con-
tinuing concerns over terrorism less than two years after the September
11 attacks probably added to the marginalization of domestic dissent.
Therefore, in the main, the public was exposed through the mass
media to a one-sided discussion among the nations’ leaders in 2002 and
early 2003, a conversation that both explicitly and implicitly endorsed
an invasion of Iraq. Under these conditions, the views of all – or nearly
all – Americans should have converged, not diverged. What, then,
explains the polarization of U.S. public opinion over the war?
In this book, we argue that the answer lies not within the United
States, but abroad. Despite the conventional wisdom that Americans
will not heed international critics of U.S. foreign policy, we contend
that in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, public
opinion was powerfully shaped by opposition to the war from official
foreign voices. Because U.S. mass media outlets frequently reported the
perspectives of international opponents of the Bush administration –
especially leaders of traditionally allied countries, such as France,
numerous politicians in the United Kingdom, and officials at the
United Nations, most of whom preferred a diplomatic solution to the
standoff – Americans were consistently exposed to substantial criti-
cism emanating from overseas. Those voices, in turn, drove signifi-
cant numbers of Democrats and independents in the United States to
express opposition to the invasion. Although the nation’s news pages
and airwaves were largely devoid of domestic opposition to the Bush
administration’s plans, foreign elite criticism helped create significant
domestic partisan polarization over the Iraq War. As a consequence,
4 Influence from Abroad

President Bush and his advisors took the country to war in the face
of a polity that was far more divided than it would have been had
such overseas opposition not been broadcast by the news media. This
left the president with a considerably weaker base of political sup-
port from which to draw as the war grinded on and the situation
in Iraq deteriorated, hastening the slide in his approval ratings and
accelerating public dissatisfaction with the conduct of the military
operation.
In providing a solution to the puzzle of prewar public opinion, we
contend that theoretical models of foreign policy opinion formation
can no longer ignore the potential role played by elite discourse from
abroad. Foreign voices have traditionally been set aside as irrelevant for
domestic public opinion because observers have assumed that the U.S.
media pay them little attention. And even when those sources make
their way into the news, it is assumed they will not influence mass atti-
tudes because Americans do not see the views of foreigners as credible.
As one prominent scholar notes, foreign sources are “people whom
Americans might well discount, mistrust, or ignore entirely. . . . The
political culture encourages Americans to disregard foreign criticism
of the United States,” (Entman 2004, 55).
We argue, however, that under certain conditions, international
actors can significantly affect Americans’ attitudes about military con-
flict. Drawing on decades of research in communication, psychology,
and political science, we show that individuals will be receptive to
foreign opposition when international officials’ arguments resonate
with their basic values and beliefs, and when domestic elites fail to
make similar, widely publicized arguments. This means that foreign
voices will not always play a role in shaping domestic public opin-
ion, and that they will have no effect on the attitudes of Americans
whose predispositions lead them to resist foreign policy messages from
abroad. But in certain cases, the influence of these elite sources can be
profound and consequential. And the run-up to the Iraq War is clearly
one such case.
Our theoretical framework has three principle components. First,
Americans’ exposure to elite discourse is significantly determined by
the news media’s decisions about how to cover foreign policy debates
and which political actors’ perspectives are worthy of attention. In
contrast to much previous research, we contend that foreign policy
attitudes rarely stem from people’s independent assessments of “real-
ity” or from unmediated events, such as rising casualties or key votes
The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion 5

in Congress or in the United Nations Security Council. Instead, news

coverage plays a dominant role in determining how citizens interpret
foreign affairs and, subsequently, in shaping their attitudes about spe-
cific foreign policy ventures, such as the invasion of Iraq.
Second, the extent to which official international voices appear in
the U.S. media during foreign policy debates is strongly influenced by
the deeply embedded journalistic norms that structure how reporters
go about their daily business. In cases of domestic elite consensus,
news outlets may turn to foreign elite opposition in an effort to create
stories that are characterized by a measure of balance and conflict,
two key ingredients in contemporary journalistic value frameworks.
During the Iraq debate, U.S. reporters’ largely implicit sense of news
caused them to be unsatisfied with the developing consensus within the
U.S. government about the desirability – and the virtual inevitability –
of a military confrontation with Iraq. As a result, journalists sought
out differing opinions in official international discourse. Moreover,
when non-U.S. voices are viewed as important to the development or
the resolution of a foreign policy debate – that is, when journalists
perceive foreign actors or institutions as possessing power to affect
events – these voices will receive significant media attention. There-
fore, the extent to which foreign sources are deemed relevant to a U.S.
policy debate depends on journalists’ professionally socialized deter-
minations of whether they are “newsworthy,” where newsworthiness
is largely defined by the institutionally sanctioned authority to affect
the prospects for or the conduct of war.
Third, when such voices are made available to the U.S. public
through the news media, and when domestic sources of opposition
are virtually absent in the mass communication environment, citizens’
attitudes can be affected by those foreign perspectives. Not all Amer-
icans, of course, will be influenced by discourse from international
elites. But people whose general predispositions make them amenable
to the arguments emanating from overseas and who are consistently
attentive to political news have a high probability of responding to
those voices. This means that most Americans’ foreign policy atti-
tudes are ultimately shaped by mainstream media decisions about
which perspectives are newsworthy, by levels of exposure to media
discourse, and by individual-level predispositions that orient people
toward receptivity to particular kinds of voices in the news.
Our argument explains why mass opinion polarized even as domes-
tic elites did not in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Foreign elite voices,
6 Influence from Abroad

given attention by U.S. journalists, articulated opposition that res-

onated with some Americans’ relatively antiwar predispositions. These
citizens – principally politically aware Democrats and independents –
responded by articulating their own opposition to the proposed inva-
sion, leading to the partisan polarization that was evident in the polls
as the war loomed in 2003.
But even as we train our empirical attention on Iraq, this argu-
ment has broad implications for the study of foreign policy attitudes
and political communication in the twenty-first century. Our research
recommends that scholars devote considerably more attention to the
inclusion of non-U.S. elite voices in U.S. foreign policy news, and to the
potential effects of those voices on citizen attitudes in the post–Cold
War context. The 2011 conflict in Libya and the ongoing debates
over responses to Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions have demonstrated
the increasingly important role that international organizations and
foreign governments play in U.S. foreign policy. In addition, in a
geopolitical environment that lacks the strong unifying thread of anti-
communism, episodes in which consensus elite opinion in the United
States differs considerably from that expressed by leaders of traditional
allies (such as France and Germany), not to mention erstwhile enemies
and now uneasy strategic partners (such as Russia), may become more
frequent (Althaus et al. 1996).
While there is little doubt that the September 11-inspired “war
on terrorism” has to a significant extent filled the U.S.-led strategic-
ideological vacuum once taken up by the Cold War, key aspects of this
vision as articulated by the Bush administration met serious resistance
from officials in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere in 2002 and
2003. In part because of a particularly high level of elite dissensus
between the United States, on the one hand, and other major nations
and international institutions, on the other, the pre–Iraq War debate
is perhaps the paradigm case for examining the possible role of offi-
cial foreign opposition in U.S. media coverage and public opinion in
the context of the new anti-terrorism framework. Our findings sug-
gest that political observers and scholars can no longer assume that
foreign voices are irrelevant to U.S. public opinion, especially in an
increasingly interconnected world marked by the global flow of peo-
ple, information, and commerce. And our argument raises important
normative questions about mainstream media’s role as an arbiter of
foreign policy discourse in a democratic society.
The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion 7

Foreign Elite Voices in U.S. Foreign Policy Debates

The dominant model of public opinion formation, articulated most
thoroughly by Zaller (1992), and updated recently by Berinsky (2009)
and Baum and Groeling (2010), is founded on the fact that most people
pay relatively little attention to politics and know even less (see Delli
Carpini and Keeter 1996; Luskin 2002; Prior and Lupia 2008). As a
result, most people’s policy attitudes are marked by ambivalence and
some measure of malleability (Feldman and Zaller 1992; Zaller and
Feldman 1992), and can be significantly affected by the substance of
news reporting about an issue.
This is especially likely in the realm of foreign and national security
policy, in which government control of information (especially by the
executive branch) and powerful nationalistic pressures tend to generate
deference to presidential prerogatives (Mueller 1973), unless alterna-
tive views from credible sources make their way into media discourse
in sufficient magnitudes. Therefore, when the mass communications
flow about an issue is “one-sided” – reflecting partisan institutional
elite consensus – public opinion tends to coalesce behind the dominant
position (Zaller 1992). When the flow is more balanced, or “two-
sided,” opinion tends to polarize in response to polarized elites. This
uniformity or divergence in mass policy attitudes is typically driven by
the most politically aware citizens – that is, those who habitually attend
to public affairs and therefore possess relatively more factual informa-
tion and have at their cognitive disposal relatively more numerous
considerations (or idea fragments that are useful for connecting their
basic predispositions to the policy-specific discourse they encounter in
the media). It is these people who are most likely to be exposed to –
and to comprehend – political arguments in the news.
In most empirical work in this domain, however, researchers have
focused almost exclusively on the influence of persuasive arguments
made by domestic political elites (e.g., Baum and Groeling 2010; Berin-
sky 2007, 2009; Feldman, Huddy, and Marcus 2007; Zaller 1992).
Scholars typically posit that politically aware Republicans in the elec-
torate take cues from Republican elites, and politically aware Demo-
cratic identifiers respond to signals from Democratic elites. Although
the information sources potentially available to citizens are myriad,
on most major issues – especially in the realm of foreign policy –
this seems to be a reasonable theoretical simplification. Mainstream
8 Influence from Abroad

news reports are generally dominated by voices emanating from the

centers of U.S. government power (Bennett 1990; Bennett, Lawrence,
and Livingston 2007; Lawrence 2000; Mermin 1999). When nonoffi-
cial domestic voices appear in mass media coverage – which remains
the primary source of political information for the vast majority of
Americans (Graber 2009) – it is usually only when their views echo
those expressed by institutional elites or, alternatively, when their per-
spectives are summarily denigrated as outside the bounds of acceptable
opinion (Entman and Rojecki 1993; Gitlin 1980; Hallin 1994; McLeod
and Hertog 1992; Shoemaker 1991; Wittebols 1996).
One implication of this perspective is that foreign elite voices – lead-
ers of other countries or officials from international organizations, for
instance – show up infrequently in mainstream U.S. media coverage of
foreign policy, except when they are depicted as hostile to U.S. inter-
ests. Moreover, most scholars suggest that even if non-U.S. sources
appeared with regularity, they would be irrelevant for explaining mass
opinion because they lack credibility with U.S. audiences (Entman
2004; Mermin 1999). Mermin’s (1999, 13) explanation of his deci-
sion to exclude foreign voices from most of his empirical analyses of
news coverage during eight cases of U.S. military action is broadly
representative of this perspective: “Foreign critics, as a rule, do not
phrase arguments in terms that speak to American interests or con-
cerns and often argue in ways that are bound to strike Americans as
outrageous, irrational, or simply bizarre.” Similarly, Entman (2004)
argues that even in cases in which foreign voices appear with some
frequency, ordinary Americans are unlikely to take them seriously,
except as stock villains destined to provoke negative reactions.
But recent work suggests that, in the context of contemporary post–
Cold War foreign policy, it is unwarranted to assume that foreign elite
discourse reported in U.S. mass media is irrelevant for public opin-
ion formation. The few scholars who have systematically examined
the prevalence of foreign sources in U.S. news content have found
impressive evidence. For example, in his exhaustive study of Gulf War
television coverage, Althaus (2003, 390) showed that foreign officials
and citizens comprised more than one-quarter of the voices quoted in
the news. Similarly, Althaus et al. (1996) and Entman (2004) found
that journalists frequently relied on foreign sources for oppositional
perspectives in covering the U.S.-Libya episode during the 1980s. And
Entman’s (2004, 50–75) analyses of The New York Times and net-
work television coverage of the invasions of Grenada and Panama
The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion 9

demonstrate a heavy reliance on foreign sources for oppositional dis-

course absent significant congressional dissent from administration
policies, even in the context of the late Cold War.2 With the collapse of
the Soviet Union and the demise of a clear bipolar global power struc-
ture, U.S. media outlets – continually in search of the professional holy
grails of elite balance and conflict – may increasingly incorporate the
perspectives of non-U.S. actors into their depictions of foreign policy
debate (Althaus et al. 1996; Livingston and Eachus 1996).
Despite the potential for significant foreign elite influence on Amer-
ican public opinion, however, several decades of empirical research
has found weak or nonexistent effects. Page, Shapiro, and Dempsey’s
(1987; see also Page and Shapiro 1992) landmark study, for example,
examined the influence of news messages from various sources on a
variety of domestic and foreign policy attitudes. Whereas the views
of U.S. actors – including media commentators, policy experts, and
presidents themselves – moved opinion, the perspectives of foreign
officials registered no effect (Page et al. 1987, 32). Similarly, in an
analysis of thirty-two foreign policy cases from the late 1960s to the
early 1980s, Jordan and Page (1992) found no significant direct influ-
ence on aggregate opinion that could be traced to either “friendly” or
“unfriendly” non-U.S. sources on network television news. And in a
study of the lead-up to the 1991 Gulf War, Brody (1994) argued that
rising criticism of administration policy from foreign elites on tele-
vision news – coupled with falling criticism from domestic leaders –
actually led to increased job approval ratings for President George

2 Although Jordan and Page (1992) found no evidence of direct effects on public opin-
ion, they, too, documented a substantial volume of foreign sources on network news,
amounting to nearly 22% of the total number of distinct story segments they coded as
attributable to a source across their thirty-two policy cases. And even as he assumes
their virtual irrelevance for public opinion formation – and therefore chooses not
to include them in most of his empirical analyses – Mermin (1999, 31) found that
foreign sources constituted a substantial presence on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour
during the eight policy cases he examined: foreign sources comprised 11% of the total
guests on this PBS program (ranking behind U.S. government and former government
officials, and journalists themselves). In contrast, Hallin (1994) found that non-U.S.
voices constituted an extremely small portion of political actors who appeared in net-
work television news stories about Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. For example,
South Vietnamese and other allied officials, on the one hand, and North Vietnamese
and Communist guerilla leaders, on the other, each comprised less than 5% of total
sources. Hallin does not elaborate on this finding, but it is plausible that the Cold
War backdrop of the conflict was a significant factor.
10 Influence from Abroad

H. W. Bush. Brody (1994, 219) interpreted this as evidence of a back-

lash dynamic in which the mass public becomes reluctant to express
negative opinions of the U.S. commander-in-chief, when doing so
appears to “symbolically make common cause with our enemies.”
But even though there certainly are policy cases in which we would
not expect Americans to be persuaded by the pronouncements of for-
eign actors, the conventional wisdom that foreign elites are reflexively
viewed by the entire U.S. public as hostile and non-credible stands
on shaky conceptual and methodological ground. All of the existing
work that has examined the possible impact of international voices in
the news media has treated Americans’ opinions as an undifferentiated
mass. Perhaps in part because of data limitations, researchers have typi-
cally analyzed aggregate-level opinion only, rather than breaking down
survey results by demographic characteristics and other individual-
level factors. This is a crucial shortcoming in light of dominant psy-
chological theories of attitude formation and change, which posit that
citizens’ social, ideological, or value predispositions – as well as their
preexisting levels of general public affairs knowledge – play impor-
tant roles in shaping their responsiveness to political arguments car-
ried in the media (e.g., Chong and Druckman 2007; Druckman 2001;
Sniderman and Theriault 2004; Zaller 1992). Most citizens, chroni-
cally uncertain about politics, regularly delegate policy judgments to
elites or other presumed experts (Lau and Redlawsk 2001; Lupia 1994;
Popkin 1994), and they are most responsive to credible voices (Hov-
land and Weiss 1951; Petty, Priester, and Brinol 2002) who send mes-
sages that resonate with their general predispositions.
Whether characterized as partisan attachments, basic ideological
orientations, or general social values, these predispositions mediate
people’s responsiveness to the political information and discourse they
encounter in the news (Zaller 1992, 23–24).3 However, although pre-
dispositional tendencies point citizens in general directions during pub-
lic policy debates, they rarely provide an adequate guide for people to
articulate preferences on specific issues. Unless they encounter infor-
mation and arguments that connect these policy debates to their more
general (and often inchoate) predispositional orientations, most people

3 By predispositions, we mean the basic, relatively enduring orientations toward the

political world that people form over time through socialization experiences involving
family, peers, school, the workplace, longer-term mass media exposure, and other
mechanisms (e.g., Feldman 1988).
The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion 11

are unlikely to express preferences that square with their predisposi-

tions, or even to articulate policy opinions at all. And this topical,
policy-relevant discourse must come from actors – in the U.S. political
communication system, typically institutional elites who communicate
through the mainstream media – that most citizens consider credible.
In short, most people lack the political and public affairs knowledge –
and the exposure to alternative sources of information and analysis –
that could enable them to confidently articulate policy preferences in
the absence of elite cues transmitted through mass media.4 At the very
least, a proper understanding of the role that interactions between
media messages and individual-level predispositions play in opinion
formation suggests that the conclusion that all individuals view all
foreign elites as hostile sources should be based on empirical verifica-
tion, not on purely a priori assumption.

Making the Media Central to the Study of Foreign Policy

Opinion
A model of opinion formation must also address the fact that the vast
majority of people do not experience public issues and events – espe-
cially in the realm of foreign policy – on a first-hand basis. For the
purposes of understanding mass opinion, political phenomena never
stand on their own, but are instead experienced – and interpreted –
through some form of media. This means that the elite messages citi-
zens typically rely on to connect their general predispositions to par-
ticular public policy issues are almost always relayed through news
outlets of one kind or another. For instance, what the great majority
of citizens knew and understood about pre–Iraq War street demonstra-
tions or about Colin Powell’s historic speech to the United Nations in
February 2003 flowed mostly from what they read, heard, or saw in
(generally mainstream) news outlets (or what they gleaned from mem-
bers of their social networks, who most likely were themselves follow-
ing media coverage of these events). In sum, news content constitutes
a crucial link in the chain of contemporary mass opinion formation,

4 To be sure, some people hold weaker and less fully formed predispositions than others,
and are therefore more open to the effects of media messages. In the U.S. political
context, it is those citizens who identify themselves as independents – unaffiliated with
either of the major parties – who are most likely to be ambivalent or confused about
(or simply ignorant of) public policy.
12 Influence from Abroad

especially in the realm of foreign policy: it is neither empirically plausi-

ble nor conceptually cogent to claim that public opinion in this domain
responds directly to unmediated “reality.”
Our move to place the news media at the center of this process
diverges significantly from a large body of research in the field of
international relations, which argues that Americans’ attitudes toward
military conflict – before it begins and while it is ongoing – reflect their
independent assessments of the merits of such action. For instance,
the burgeoning “casualties hypothesis” literature contends that pub-
lic support for war depends on the number of deaths sustained by
the U.S. military (e.g., Gartner 2008; Mueller 1973). As the body
count rises, Americans grow less willing to back continued military
engagement. Other work suggests that opinion reflects factors such as
whether the United States has the support of the international com-
munity (Chapman 2011; Chapman and Reiter 2004; Grieco et al.
2011; Kull and Destler 1999), whether the mission is one of restrain-
ing a potentially aggressive nation rather than so-called nation-building
(Jentleson 1992; Jentleson and Britton 1998; Oneal, Lian, and Joyner
1996), and instrumental views about whether a war is winnable (Gelpi,
Feaver, and Reifler 2009).
While such factors are no doubt important, at their core, these
theoretical models assume that the public, to one degree or another,
independently evaluates the costs and benefits of military conflict
to determine whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Such “event-based” accounts, however, misapprehend the attitude-
formation process, and they are inconsistent with copious research
in political psychology and communication studies that has parsed
message-processing mechanisms to specify the ways in which particu-
lar kinds of communication can affect the opinions expressed by par-
ticular kinds of people under particular contextual conditions (Chong
and Druckman 2007, 2001; Zaller 1992). It is both more theoreti-
cally compelling and more empirically plausible that the media play
a crucial role in shaping attitudes by exposing people to the per-
spectives of different political actors. It is these arguments’ politi-
cal constructions of foreign policy “realities” – rather than indepen-
dent, purely individual-level “rational” assessments of actions and
events – that, conditioned by people’s basic predispositions, influence
mass opinion.
In addition, most citizens are relatively inattentive to politics, pos-
sess low levels of factual knowledge about public affairs, and know
The Puzzle of Polarized Opinion 13

even fewer specific details about political events and policy debates
(e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Therefore, any argument that
assumes most Americans can independently form and update their
attitudes on the basis of actual political developments – rather than
some highly mediated interpretation of those events – contravenes
what we know empirically about the public’s level of engagement with
politics. As Berinsky (2009) argues in his challenge to the “casualties
hypothesis,” it is highly unlikely that events themselves could affect
public sentiments to the extent that significant changes would register
in opinion polls.
So if we think of the American people as composed of many different
“publics” with different basic predispositions, it stands to reason that
particular segments may deem non-domestic elite voices in the media
worth listening to, at least in certain political contexts. In fact, our
theoretical perspective converges in some respects with recent work
in the international relations literature that has begun to explore the
influence that cues from foreign states and organizations such as the
United Nations may have on U.S. public support for the president,
military action, and other policy proposals (Chapman 2011; Chapman
and Reiter 2004; Grieco et al. 2011; Linos 2011). In foregrounding
the mainstream news media, however, the theoretical and empirical
story we tell about the run-up to the Iraq War provides a much more
persuasive account of the mechanisms by which such international
actors can shape U.S. public opinion, and it suggests a new direction
for research on contemporary foreign policy opinion.

Plan of the Book

In Chapter 2, we begin by empirically exploring the initial link in
our theoretical chain: the shape of mainstream media coverage in the
lead-up to the Iraq War. We first discuss the norms and practices
that determine the ways in which U.S. journalists cover the news,
and use those insights to develop empirical expectations for how they
would have responded to the debate over Iraq in 2002 and early 2003.
We follow by describing our unusually rigorous and comprehensive
content analysis of every evening network news story during the Iraq
episode, which forms the core of the chapter. We then discuss the
nature of that coverage – which sub-topics the media focused on,
which sources received attention, how much support and opposition
appeared on the air, and other precise indicators of news content.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Gondola days
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: Gondola days

Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith

Release date: August 31, 2023 [eBook #71528]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company,

1897

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
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available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GONDOLA

DAYS ***
 FICTION AND
TRAVEL
By F. Hopkinson
Smith.

TOM GROGAN. Illustrated.

12mo, gilt top, $1.50.
A GENTLEMAN
VAGABOND, AND SOME
OTHERS. 16mo, $1.25.
COLONEL CARTER OF
CARTERSVILLE. With 20
illustrations by the author
and E. W. Kemble. 16mo,
$1.25.
A DAY AT LAGUERRE’S,
AND OTHER DAYS.
Printed in a new style.
16mo, $1.25.
A WHITE UMBRELLA IN
MEXICO. Illustrated by the
author. 16mo, gilt top,
$1.50.
GONDOLA DAYS.
Illustrated, 12mo, $1.50.
WELL-WORN ROADS OF
SPAIN, HOLLAND, AND
ITALY, traveled by a
Painter in search of the
 Picturesque. With 16 full-
page phototype
reproductions of water-
color drawings, and text by
F. Hopkinson Smith,
profusely illustrated with
pen-and-ink sketches. A
Holiday volume. Folio, gilt
top, $15.00.
THE SAME. Popular Edition.
Including some of the
illustrations of the above.
16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &
CO.
Boston and New York.
GONDOLA DAYS
BACK OF THE RIALTO (PAGE 87)
 GONDOLA DAYS
BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND
COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE
PRESS CAMBRIDGE 1897
COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
NOTE
THE text of this volume is the same as that of “Venice of To-Day,”
recently published by the Henry T. Thomas Company, of New York,
as a subscription book, in large quarto and folio form, with over two
hundred illustrations by the Author, in color and in black and white.
PREFATORY
I HAVE made no attempt in these pages to review the
splendors of the past, or to probe the many vital questions
which concern the present, of this wondrous City of the
Sea. Neither have I ventured to discuss the marvels of her
architecture, the wealth of her literature and art, nor the growing
importance of her commerce and manufactures.
I have contented myself rather with the Venice that you see in the
sunlight of a summer’s day—the Venice that bewilders with her glory
when you land at her water-gate; that delights with her color when
you idle along the Riva; that intoxicates with her music as you lie in
your gondola adrift on the bosom of some breathless lagoon—the
Venice of mould-stained palace, quaint caffè and arching bridge; of
fragrant incense, cool, dim-lighted church, and noiseless priest; of
strong-armed men and graceful women—the Venice of light and life,
of sea and sky and melody.
No pen alone can tell this story. The pencil and the palette must lend
their touch when one would picture the wide sweep of her piazzas,
the abandon of her gardens, the charm of her canal and street life,
the happy indolence of her people, the faded sumptuousness of her
homes.
If I have given to Venice a prominent place among the cities of the
earth it is because in this selfish, materialistic, money-getting age, it
is a joy to live, if only for a day, where a song is more prized than a
soldo; where the poorest pauper laughingly shares his scanty crust;
where to be kind to a child is a habit, to be neglectful of old age a
shame; a city the relics of whose past are the lessons of our future;
whose every canvas, stone, and bronze bear witness to a grandeur,
luxury, and taste that took a thousand years of energy to perfect, and
will take a thousand years of neglect to destroy.
To every one of my art-loving countrymen this city should be a
Mecca; to know her thoroughly is to know all the beauty and
romance of five centuries.
F. H. S.
CONTENTS
An Arrival 1
Gondola Days 8
Along the Riva 28
The Piazza of San Marco 42
In an Old Garden 58
Among the Fishermen 85
A Gondola Race 101
Some Venetian Caffès 116
On the Hotel Steps 126
Open-Air Markets 136
On Rainy Days 145
Legacies of the Past 155
Life in the Streets 176
Night in Venice 197
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Back of the Rialto (see page 87) Frontispiece
The Gateless Posts of the Piazzetta 14
The One Whistler etched 26
Beyond San Rosario 58
The Catch of the Morning 90
A Little Hole in the Wall on the Via Garibaldi 116
Ponte Paglia ... next the Bridge of Sighs 136
The Fruit Market above the Rialto 140
Wide Palatial Staircases 160
Narrow Slits of Canals 186
San Giorgio stands on Tip-toe 198
AN ARRIVAL
OU really begin to arrive in Venice when you leave Milan.
Your train is hardly out of the station before you have
conjured up all the visions and traditions of your childhood:
great rows of white palaces running sheer into the water;
picture-book galleys reflected upside down in red lagoons; domes
and minarets, kiosks, towers, and steeples, queer-arched temples,
and the like.
As you speed on in the dusty train, your memory-fed imagination
takes new flights. You expect gold-encrusted barges, hung with
Persian carpets, rowed by slaves double-banked, and trailing rare
brocades in a sea of China-blue, to meet you at the water landing.
By the time you reach Verona your mental panorama makes another
turn. The very name suggests the gay lover of the bal masque, the
poisoned vial, and the calcium moonlight illuminating the wooden
tomb of the stage-set graveyard. You instinctively look around for the
fair Juliet and her nurse. There are half a dozen as pretty Veronese,
attended by their watchful duennas, going down by train to the City
by the Sea; but they do not satisfy you. You want one in a tight-fitting
white satin gown with flowing train, a diamond-studded girdle, and an
ostrich-plume fan. The nurse, too, must be stouter, and have a high-
keyed voice; be bent a little in the back, and shake her finger in a
threatening way, as in the old mezzotints you have seen of Mrs.
Siddons or Peg Woffington. This pair of Dulcineas on the seat in
front, in silk dusters, with a lunch-basket and a box of sweets, are
too modern and commonplace for you, and will not do.
When you roll into Padua, and neither doge nor inquisitor in ermine
or black gown boards the train, you grow restless. A deadening
suspicion enters your mind. What if, after all, there should be no
Venice? Just as there is no Robinson Crusoe nor man Friday; no
stockade, nor little garden; no Shahrazad telling her stories far into
the Arabian night; no Santa Claus with reindeer; no Rip Van Winkle
haunted by queer little gnomes in fur caps. As this suspicion
deepens, the blood clogs in your veins, and a thousand shivers go
down your spine. You begin to fear that all these traditions of your
childhood, all these dreams and fancies, are like the thousand and
one other lies that have been told to and believed by you since the
days when you spelled out words in two syllables.
Upon leaving Mestre—the last station—you smell the salt air of the
Adriatic through the open car window. Instantly your hopes revive.
Craning your head far out, you catch a glimpse of a long, low,
monotonous bridge, and away off in the purple haze, the dreary
outline of a distant city. You sink back into your seat exhausted. Yes,
you knew it all the time. The whole thing is a swindle and a sham!
“All out for Venice,” says the guard, in French.
Half a dozen porters—well-dressed, civil-spoken porters, flat-capped
and numbered—seize your traps and help you from the train. You
look up. It is like all the rest of the depots since you left Paris—high,
dingy, besmoked, beraftered, beglazed, and be——! No, you are
past all that. You are not angry. You are merely broken-hearted.
Another idol of your childhood shattered; another coin that your soul
coveted, nailed to the wall of your experience—a counterfeit!
“This door to the gondolas,” says the porter. He is very polite. If he
were less so, you might make excuse to brain him on the way out.
The depot ends in a narrow passageway. It is the same old fraud—
custom-house officers on each side; man with a punch mutilating
tickets; rows of other men with brass medals on their arms the size
of apothecaries’ scales—hackmen, you think, with their whips
outside—licensed runners for the gondoliers, you learn afterward.
They are all shouting—all intent on carrying you off bodily. The
vulgar modern horde!
Soon you begin to breathe more easily. There is another door ahead,
framing a bit of blue sky. “At least, the sun shines here,” you say to
yourself. “Thank God for that much!”
“This way, Signore.”
One step, and you stand in the light. Now look! Below, at your very
feet, a great flight of marble steps drops down to the water’s edge.
Crowding these steps is a throng of gondoliers, porters, women with
fans and gay-colored gowns, priests, fruit-sellers, water-carriers, and
peddlers. At the edge, and away over as far as the beautiful marble
church, a flock of gondolas like black swans curve in and out.
Beyond stretches the double line of church and palace, bordering the
glistening highway. Over all is the soft golden haze, the shimmer, the
translucence of the Venetian summer sunset.
With your head in a whirl,—so intense is the surprise, so foreign to
your traditions and dreams the actuality,—you throw yourself on the
yielding cushions of a waiting gondola. A turn of the gondolier’s
wrist, and you dart into a narrow canal. Now the smells greet you—
damp, cool, low-tide smells. The palaces and warehouses shut out
the sky. On you go—under low bridges of marble, fringed with
people leaning listlessly over; around sharp corners, their red and
yellow bricks worn into ridges by thousands of rounding boats; past
open plazas crowded with the teeming life of the city. The shadows
deepen; the waters glint like flakes of broken gold-leaf. High up in an
opening you catch a glimpse of a tower, rose-pink in the fading light;
it is the Campanile. Farther on, you slip beneath an arch caught
between two palaces and held in mid-air. You look up, shuddering as
you trace the outlines of the fatal Bridge of Sighs. For a moment all
is dark. Then you glide into a sea of opal, of amethyst and sapphire.
The gondola stops near a small flight of stone steps protected by
huge poles striped with blue and red. Other gondolas are debarking.
A stout porter in gold lace steadies yours as you alight.
“Monsieur’s rooms are quite ready. They are over the garden; the
one with the balcony overhanging the water.”
The hall is full of people (it is the Britannia, the best hotel in Venice),
grouped about the tables, chatting or reading, sipping coffee or
eating ices. Beyond, from an open door, comes the perfume of
flowers. You pass out, cross a garden, cool and fresh in the
darkening shadows, and enter a small room opening on a staircase.