International Relations Scholars, the Media, and the Dilemma of Consensus

Over the last 15 years, scholars, universities, and foundations have promoted numerous efforts to link the scholarly and policy communities of international relations. Increasing evidence suggests that scholars are succeeding in getting their ideas and findings in the press, and their success bodes well for their ability to influence public and elite opinion. Despite these strides, we know little about when journalists may pick up on academic ideas and evidence or how they will report it in their stories. We seek to fill this gap. To explore the role of media as a conduit for academic knowledge, we surveyed more than 1,000 foreign policy journalists about their views on IR experts and expertise. We asked when, how, and how often respondents seek out IR scholars and scholarship in the course of their reporting. We also asked about the barriers to consuming peer-reviewed, scholarly research, if and how journalists interact with IR scholars on social media, and how IR scholars’ influence compares to that of scholars in other disciplines. Finally, we asked whether respondents cover a story differently if there is consensus among experts than if there is little agreement. In addition to providing empirical answers to these questions, we used our first-of-its-kind survey of foreign policy journalists to test several arguments from literature on the media and experts, including that journalists rely heavily on experts and expertise in developing and writing their stories, they rely more heavily on social science experts than other specialists, and they tend to inaccurately portray the level of consensus among the relevant experts. Our findings largely support these claims. First, foreign policy journalists often seek out IR experts and expertise for use in their stories, suggesting that the media acts as an important conveyor belt for academic knowledge. These journalists use academic expertise at several key stages, especially when researching background information. Second, foreign policy journalists, like journalists more generally, favor social science experts and expertise over experts from other disciplines. Finally, foreign policy journalists are no different than journalists overall in their tendency to create “false balance;” they underrepresent the degree of consensus among experts and oversample dissenters when scholars overwhelmingly favor a particular policy or interpretation of events.