Local newspapers key to public opinion in war.

• Position: Your Life - Brief Article

When Americans die in international incidents, it is not just the big national newspapers, but also the smaller community media that influence personal attitudes and community politics, insists University of California, Davis, political scientist Scott Gartner, who studies public opinion and its effects during war. Although global news is covered more thoroughly in national newspapers, after one of their own is killed in a foreign conflict, community newspapers allot more space and resources to focus attention on the international news surrounding the conflict, Gartner points out.

In a statistical analysis of the 2000 attack on the American naval destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, Gartner examined the geographic distribution of casualties and compared news about the incident from the corresponding newspapers with those areas where there were fewer deaths. Gartner found that people from communities that...