11 December 2025
In the United States, news about foreign policy issues is filtered through fragmented, partisan media outlets. What might look like public support for foreign policy shifts is more likely a reflection of disconnected partisan narratives. These divides mask a broader disengagement from global issues that should be a concern for Europe.
For democracies, the quality and reach of information is a critical input for public discourse and policymaking. In the United States, growing polarization and unregulated new technologies are combining in pernicious ways.
First, there are strong partisan patterns of news consumption. According to Pew Research Center, 57% of Republicans regularly get their news from Fox News, while Democrats report doing so from CNN (48%), NBC (47%), and ABC (46%). Only about a third of US adults regularly watch televised news programs, relying heavily on algorithm-based news feeds instead. In these information silos, Americans lack a shared set of facts. Second, the mixing of news and opinion on news sites means that data is accompanied by analytical framings that align with partisan preferences. Faced with a flood of information and accusations of “fake news,” Americans have become increasingly skeptical about the quality of the information they receive. The annual Edelman Trust Barometer shows declining trust in the media in the United States, with similar trends appearing in Europe as well.
Foreign policy through partisan lenses
The fragmentation of the information ecosystem is visible in news narratives about foreign policy issues. This has been evident, for example, in headlines on the United Nations in the New York Times and Fox News this fall. According to AllSides, a news aggregator that offers media bias ratings, the New York Times is left-leaning while Fox News leans right.
Each news organization has a page indexing stories about the United Nations, but the content and tone of the stories differ substantially. On the recent UN climate change conference, COP30, Fox News claims that California Governor “Gavin Newsom plays president at UN climate conference,” while the New York Times has a video analysis titled “What the US absence at COP30 tells us.” In late October, the UN’s International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on Israel’s approach to aid in Gaza. The New York Times story starts with “World Court Tells Israel to Facilitate Aid to Gaza” and says Israel must work with UN agencies. Fox News writes that “[e]xperts slam UN court ruling on Israel” and warns that the opinion is also “a real danger to the US.”
These examples illustrate how the right and left see the world in disconnected ways. Pew Research Center data is again helpful for putting these news stories into context. There is a clear partisan split in views of the United Nations, with Democratic-leaning respondents more than twice as likely as Republican-leaning respondents to view the UN in a positive light. Combined with wide partisan gaps on climate change and Israel, these sentiments show up in the framing of the news stories above. Over time, these frames create a vicious cycle of ever-widening gaps in public understandings of key global issues.
Lessons for Europe
Many Europeans are baffled by what they see as domestic support for major foreign policy shifts in the United States. Understanding the underlying dynamics of US public opinion – and how the media shapes it – is crucial for drawing lessons about the role of the information environment in democracies.
First, public consumption of news about international affairs is higher in Europe than in the United States, and attention to foreign policy issues is thus higher. What may appear to Europeans as a lack of public resistance to major foreign policy moves may actually reflect a lack of understanding or engagement rather than active support.
Second, the two-party system in the United States exacerbates the vicious cycle created by media fragmentation. Scholars Matthew Baum and Philip Potter highlight that, in many political systems, the lack of moderation or engagement with opposing viewpoints can incline constituents to reflexively back “their” leader and disapprove of the other leader. This dynamic, they argue, is particularly stark in two-party systems where there is a clear “us” and “them.”
Finally, the information bubbles around American foreign policy issues offer a cautionary tale. The partisan press was a problem in the early days of the American Republic, when pamphlets were passed around as mouthpieces for political parties. But the speed and volume at which information is shared today, combined with the lack of regulation of new technologies, is a critical challenge for any democracy concerned about the quality of information. With greater reliance on social media for information and the emergence of right-leaning chatbots on platforms like X, the success of democratic governance may depend on the ability to regulate both the ways in which information is filtered to the public as well as the quality of that information.
Ultimately, the specific foreign policy choices over the past year reflect the substantial autonomy of the US executive branch in conducting foreign affairs rather than the preferences of the US public. In fact, polarization on foreign policy issues may be less marked than on domestic issues. For example, Americans across the political spectrum share unfavorable views of the US’s two major competitors, China and Russia.
Yet Europeans are right to explore public sentiments in the United States toward global issues. While public opinion may play less of a role in individual policy decisions, the longer-term trend away from global engagement should be a key concern for Europeans. Growing economic inequality, the uncertainty of the shifting global distribution of power, an unwillingness to pay the costs of acting as the world’s policeman, and an apparent generational shift are all driving a public turn inward in the US.
The disconnected foreign policy narratives in the American news media are undoubtedly frustrating for analysts and foreign policymakers. What Europeans might find more troubling is that it seems that fewer people care enough about international affairs to try to bridge that divide.
Photo: iStock / Bluebeat76
