Page 115 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

1403975191ts06.qxd 21-2-07 06:29 PM Page 89
THE MEDIA DURING THE KOSOVO CRISIS
100
90
80
70
60
Percent
50
40
30
20
10
0
Gornje Obrinje
Drenica
Neutral
Both Perspectives
Pro Albanian
Graph 5.2 American Postmassacre Television Framing of the Kosovo
Conflict
over time. Significantly, pro-Albanian framing, which accounted for
41 percent of all framing after the Drenica massacre, increased to
86 percent after the Racak massacre. Pro Serbian Racak 89
Events or Their Media Coverage?
As outlined in chapter 2, in providing evidence in support of a CNN
effect, it is necessary to not only highlight events meeting the media
criteria followed by the government criteria, but also to show that the
media coverage of the event, as opposed to the event itself, was
the critical factor. If the event itself is the significant variable, then
the media coverage of the event is largely irrelevant as an independent
factor. This section reviews the three massacres in order to determine
whether they received proportionate media coverage. This is done over
two parts. The first assesses the percentage of overall media coverage
these incidents attracted in relation to all Kosovo media coverage. The
second calculates the percentage of the total death and destruction in
the overall civil war that these incidents represented. Data on these
findings are presented in tables 5.5 and 5.6, respectively.
The Kosovo conflict of 1998–1999 was covered on American
television news for the first time on March 2, 1998 in 3 minutes and
30 seconds of collective coverage on CNN, ABC, and CBS, although
images of the incident in the Drenica area did not emerge until March 5.
As outlined in table 5.5, from the week that began on March 1, 1998