Analysis Of The Relationship Between U.s. Media And Government Foreign Policy Decisions

The American diplomatic decision-making process is very complicated. There are a lot of participation factors in it, including those within and outside the government, one of which is the media. This thesis is expected to reveal the relation between the media and the foreign policy through the analysis of American media' s world affair reports tentatively. The study is beneficial to understand the domestic politics process of sino-China policy, especially to understand the relation between the democracy of American type and foreign policy, the public opinion environment that China face and some realistic problem of the relation between China and America and sino-China policy.The whole thesis includes four parts. Part One focuses on the media, government and foreign policy. The media can influence the foreign policy of the government. The ways are as follows: Offering the international information for government; Influencing foreign policy of the government through public opinions; Supervising the diplomatic behavior of the government; Setting up the diplomatic agenda of the government. But to a certain extent, the government can control and handle the media too. They interdepend with each other, and they have the same ideology, values and interests substantially.Part Two describes the relation between the media and the public opinion. The media is the bridge between public opinions of masses and the government, and it is an important social organ of public opinion which can reflect and induct the public opinion. Propagating through the media has become some countries' important weapons to protect themselves and to damage others' images. Though the media report is not as same as the public opinions of masses, and what the media offer is mostly the news of coming from the Congress, embassy and officials, the media can influence the public opinions of masses through one' s own report, and then influence the foreign policy.Part Three discusses the reasons why the media reports the world affairs negatively. Though the media brags about " just" and" objective", the report of the world affairs is mostly negative and compatible with foreign policy of the government, Why? First of all, the government can control and fabricate public opinion to serve its foreign policy. There is a kind of relation between the government organs and news media. Secondly, what occupied a leading position is" sense of superiority of the race" and" sense of mission endowed by nature" in American foreign ideology. It is capitalism to recommend, and communism, socialism are regarded as dreadful monsters, which runs through the news judgement. At last, the media' s own characteristic and the commercial profit lead to the fact that there is one-sidedness at going in world affair report. Most of the medias are private and they emphasize the conflict in order to attract the audiences and readers. They pursue a large profit more than the contribution to the society.Part Four is the analysis of the media' s report of china, the report of China proves the above judgement very well. Through the analysis of the reportsof the handover of Hong Kong, human rights and Tibet issue in the New York Times from1993 to 1998, We can find out that the report in the media and sino-China policy at that time echoed each other. The American media demonized China. Though the function of the media is great, it is not decisive, and we can' t overemphasize or neglect it. The China' s image in the American media can' t be changed overnight. But we should strive for more positive reports and establish a better international image.