ABSTRACT
The news media occupies a critical key role in the American foreign policy process. As Powlick and Katz have explained, media coverage is the vehicle through which foreign policy issues become known to the public, and the nature of that coverage largely determines whether public opinion becomes activated and can thus in turn influence policy. The media, they note, can define both the public’s interests in, and opinions about, foreign policy.1 As will be shown below, there was a remarkable consistency in terms of the manner in which American newspapers, both national papers and others across the country with regional circulation bases, covered events in Panama and in the generally positive tone of that reporting. Given that consistency in coverage it should come as little surprise that the American people, in public opinion surveys following the invasion, expressed strong support for the US military operation.2 If media coverage can have such a profound effect on public opinion, it becomes imperative that we seek to understand the factors that influence what the media decides to report and how it does that reporting. Generally speaking, prior research on these critical questions has pointed toward several different possible answers.
