"Soft News"

The creation of 'soft news' is fairly recent being entertainment driven, apolitical (covers some political issues occasionally) and focused on gossip, crime, disaster, and human interests. When dealing with politics soft news will typically cover foreign policy crises although it does it the same way as it covers celebrites. This means the coverage is sensationalized and based in human interest rather then being focused on policy (known as 'cheap framing'). The issue is that those who watch soft news tend to be less educated in the political realm but now "know" more about foreign policy issues. The reason I state the "know" in quotations is because due to the cheap framing is it makes really complicated issues seem simple. The issue with this is there a new group of citizens who think they are informed when they are getting the kindergarden version of a serious foreign policy issue. I agree it is good for democracy that the citizens can now engage in dialogue over foreign policy but at the same time it may not be productive to democracy if US citizens hold ourselves to this elementary level of thinking.