Page 105 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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THE MEDIA DURING THE KOSOVO CRISIS
Table 5.1 Continued
Week Beginning
Total Coverage
(Minutes)
5
December 20
5 ⁄6
December 27
1
4 ⁄2
January 3, 1999
2
3 ⁄3
January 10
1
9 ⁄2
5
January 17
57 ⁄6
1
January 24
34 ⁄6
January 31
2
42 ⁄3
February 7
21
1
February 14
86 ⁄3
1
February 21
60 ⁄6
February 28
5
17 ⁄6
March 7
5
29 ⁄6
March 14
2
79 ⁄3
mid-June, Rambouillet diplomacy, and the prelude to the military
intervention were not unexpected and were more closely associated to
institutionally initiated news stories outside the realm of the CNN effect.
The following section reviews the background of these three massacre
incidents, their media representation, and their framing in more detail in
order to assess if they meet the media criteria for the CNN effect.
Incident 1:The Drenica Massacre
On February 28, 1998, four Serb policemen were killed in clashes
7
with KLA rebels in the Drenica region of Kosovo. The Drenica
region was a key center of KLA activity and support and had
challenged Serbian rule for many years. By 1998, Serbs were clearly
8
unwelcome in this area. In response to the killing of the policemen
and to the general situation in Drenica, the Serb authorities sought to
resolve what they perceived as a major challenge to their control in a
decisive manner and to set an example for other villages and regions in
Kosovo that might consider challenging them. They did this through
two raids on the Drenica area involving several thousand Serbian
Ministry of Interior (MUP) and Yugoslav Army (VJ) forces. The
offensive reportedly went well beyond normal policing and involved
the use of helicopter gunships, tanks, artillery, and dozens of armored
personnel carriers topped with machine guns. In these attacks,
large extended families bore the brunt of the violence. In the first
raid on the village of Likoshani and nearby towns of Cirez and