Jonathan McDonald Ladd

War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War, by Matthew A. Baum and Tim J. Groeling

This is an excellent book. Its biggest virtues are its scope and integrative ambition. It contributes to multiple literatures, employing large amounts of new data to test many different theoretically derived hypotheses. Yet it does not add to these literatures in isolation, but rather integrates previously disparate research traditions to move toward a more comprehensive understanding of political communication in American foreign affairs. Several active literatures are relevant to understanding the relationship between political events, media coverage, and public opinion. These include studies of the effects of “real-world” events, the effects of elite rhetoric, the role of source credibility in persuasion in both the social psychological and game theoretic traditions, the role of selective media exposure, and the importance of goal-oriented behavior by journalists. In War Stories, Matthew Baum and Tim Groeling incorporate insights from all of these areas of study into their account. The authors explain their theory and predictions in Chapter 2. This is too well developed to describe in detail here, but the essence is the following. Journalists do not cover a representative sample of political news. Rather, they are more likely to cover political rhetoric that is negative, important, or novel. Thus, congressional rhetoric about presidential military initiatives will receive more coverage when it is negative, the congressperson is in the majority party, or the congressperson is speaking against his or her partisan interest. The importance of novelty is heightened by source credibility effects in persuasion. Not only are statements made against one’s party more likely to be covered, they are more persuasive because they are more credible. An important implication of this is that we should expect more credible praise of presidential initiatives under divided than united government. The authors also consider the changing media landscape, especially the increasing prominence of partisan news sources. In this environment, people will be more likely to use and believe news outlets that share their partisanship. Yet in addition, partisan outlets will be subject to similar source credibility dynamics as politicians. Outlets sending messages contrary to their partisanship will be more persuasive. The final theoretical contribution is their most original and thought-provoking: what they label the “elasticity of reality.” They define this as “elites’ capacity to frame events