Page 110 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
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where relatives had last seen him alive a few days before.
In another
example, a mother with her children were chased into a local forest and
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gunned down at close range where they were hiding. Besides focusing
on damaged property and dead victims, much of the footage focused
on images of mourning relatives and interviews with surviving family
members, who described how and where they had found their fallen
relatives. As Gornje Obrinje was a relatively small village with several
large extended families, many of the survivors lost multiple family mem-
bers. The interviews made the tragedy even more powerful to Western
audiences, who could identify more closely with the victims as a result.
Framing from the Gornje Obrinje Massacre
To the Kosovo Albanians, the Gornje Obrinje massacre was another
example of Serbian attempts to intimidate the Albanian population
into submission. Their accounts of the Gornje Obrinje massacre were
similar to versions presented by a Western media that rarely ques-
tioned allegations of Serb brutality. To the Serbs, however, the deaths
were a result of earlier fighting with the KLA that had also killed a
number of Serb police. Furthermore, the entire massacre frame was
biased and part of an anti-Serb media campaign that had been present
in previous Yugoslav wars. 27 Initially calling media reports unverified
and in need of an official investigation, Serb officials later referred to
them as fabrications created by Albanian terrorists and Western media
to manipulate public opinion and find an excuse for NATO to inter-
vene militarily against the FRY. 28 They also criticized what they
referred to as a double standard by the international community, in
which KLA “terrorist crimes” against civilians were ignored, while
their anti-insurgency actions were magnified. 29 After Gornje Obrinje
media reports surfaced, the Serbian side pointed to an alleged KLA
massacre of 34 Serbs and Albanians that was discovered by Yugoslav
police on September 9, 1998, yet was not covered by Western media.
To the FRY, this was clear evidence of an anti-Serb bias.
In the week after images from the Gornje Obrinje massacre
reached the West, 22 stories were aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, and
CNN, collectively. Each of these stories was reviewed and coded,
based on the selection of four options previously outlined. 30
Table 5.3 reviews media framing from the aftermath of the Gornje
Obrinje massacre during the week after reports of the incident first
reached the West.
By the beginning of the autumn 1998, Western framing had clearly
become much more sympathetic toward the Kosovo Albanian