The role of cable news hosts in public support for Supreme Court decisions

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Scott Simon Boddery,Damon Cann,Laura Moyer,Jeff Yates
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12367

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The role of cable news hosts in public support for Supreme

Court decisions

Scott Simon Boddery

1

| Damon Cann

2

| Laura Moyer

3

|

Jeff Yates

4

1

Department of Political Science, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA

2

Department of Political Science, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA

3

Department of Political Science, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

4

Department of Political Science, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York, USA

Correspondence

Scott Simon Boddery, Department of Political Science, Gettysburg College, 300 N. Washington St., Gettysburg,

PA 17325, USA.

Email: sboddery@gettysburg.edu

Abstract

In the current media environment, Americans increasingly tune into cable news

programs with distinct ideological brands. This paper extends existing work on

media source cues to coverage of the US Supreme Court, an institution which

depends entirely on media outlets to communicate its rulings to the American pub-

lic. We argue that the source cues associated with celebrity media personalities serve

as a heuristic that helps individuals form their opinions about public policy. Using

a nationwide survey experiment with over 2000 respondents, we find that commen-

tary on Supreme Court decisions from cable news hosts affects public agreement

with the Court’s rulings, with key differences between how liberal and conservative

respondents respond under certain conditions. While unexpected positions espoused

by in-group messengers shift the views of liberals and conservatives alike, signals

from out-group messengers yield more of an effect for conservatives than for lib-

erals. Our results show that counter-stereotypical (unexpected) position taking has

a powerful impact on public perceptions of policy outcomes and suggest that well-

known media figures may have an important role in mitigating ideological polariza-

tion in America.

KEYWORDS

media influence, policy agreement, source cues, US Supreme Court

DOI: 10.1111/jels.12367

©2023 Cornell Law School and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

J Empir Leg Stud. 2023;20:1045–1069. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jels 1045

INTRODUCTION

In 2006, then-senator Barack Obama commented on a celebrity-backed cause,

noting “[w]hether we like it or not, we are a celebrity-obsessed culture. When we

get a movie star involved, people pay more attention”(Puzzanghera, 2006).

Celebrities’opinions on a multitude of topics are so ubiquitous that they are dif-

ficult to avoid if one meaningfully engages with any form of media, news, or

social network. But people do not simply pay more attention when a celebrity

speaks; celebrity endorsements of products, political candidates, and policies

have also been found to shift public perceptions (Austin et al., 2008;

DeWitt, 2018; Jackson & Darrow, 2005; Min et al., 2019).

1

Of course, celebri-

ties come in many forms: athletes, actors, politicians, billionaires, and—in the

post-World War II era—journalists and media commentators. The ascension of

journalists to celebrity status in the post-Watergate era is well documented

(Fallows, 1996), and today is aided by economic incentives for news organiza-

tions, journalists, and political commentators to promote particular individual

“brands”through social media platforms (Jerslev & Mortensen, 2016;

Olausson, 2018).

Decades of studies have debated the relative influence of news media on

public and elite sentiment (Bartels, 1993; DellaVigna & Kaplan, 2007;

Iyengar, 1991; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). However, it is unclear whether celebrity

journalists and cable news hosts can use their notoriety and relationship with

the public to influence how people think on policy issues. This distinction is

important because news media celebrities, as opposed to the news media more

broadly, wield a unique hold on audiences; complex and detailed policy discus-

sions can be brought into simpler focus via the attachment of a familiar and

well-liked face through positive transfer effect from celebrity to policy stance

(e.g., Nownes, 2021; Stallen et al., 2010). Thus, celebrity journalists and media

personalities have the potential to employ a particularly strong source cue

(Ladd & Lenz, 2009; Nicholson, 2011). This heuristic may be especially valuable

when the public is presented with relatively brief, summary information like that

found in reporting of Supreme Court decisions (Slotnick & Segal, 1998). We

focus on the Supreme Court because, as Davis (1994, p. 16) observed, “the role

of the press is even more salient here than in the relationship between the public

and other national political institutions due to the absence of any alternative

methods of direct communication.”The public typically does not read the

Court’s decisions, which are “lengthy tomes”(Davis 1994, p. 1) filled with tech-

nical legal jargon, and the Court itself is famously secretive about its process

1

For instance, several studies have shown the impact of celebrity presidential endorsements on public support for

Barack Obama in 2008 (Garthwaite & Moore, 2013; Pease & Brewer, 2008) and Hillary Clinton in 2016

(Nownes, 2017). See Street (2012) for an overview.

1046 ROLE OF CABLE NEWS HOSTS