36 Pages Posted: 20 Aug 2011

Date Written: August 17, 2011

Abstract

President Obama and his new administration received largely favorable reviews in key international television news reports of the US during the new president’s first 18 months in office. Content-analyzed television newscasts in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Middle East offered far more positive assessments of the president and administration’s foreign and military polices than did reports on those same policies during 2005 and the first half of 2006. Even internationally unpopular policies that Obama continued from the George W. Bush years, like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, received less negative notices in leading international media. The findings suggest the current president enjoyed an international honeymoon in news coverage.