Page 123 - 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 96
96
THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
those in the Drenica area in early March; those of Gornje Obrinje in
early October were greater than June’s; and the post-Racak events
generated more attention than the October events. In other words,
while Kosovo registered on the Western media radar screen as soon as
events turned bloody, its designated level of importance increased as
events accumulated.
In percentage terms, as outlined in table 5.8, the week of March 8,
the first full week after the Drenica massacre, 19 percent of Kosovo
coverage was the leading story. This figure increased to 47 percent
during the week of October 4 after Gornje Obrinje, and 70 percent
during the week of January 17 following Racak. While the Kosovo cri-
sis was relatively unfamiliar to the West in March 1998 when initial
postmassacre images surfaced, subsequent coverage over the next 13
months made Kosovo increasingly familiar. Each televised massacre, it
seemed, exposed the shortcomings of Western policy that had failed
to prevent the bloodshed. If images of human suffering were to influ-
ence policy, then the impact seemed to grow stronger with each pass-
ing incident.
This chapter has demonstrated that the massacres of Drenica,
Gornje Obrinje, and Racak garnered disproportionate media coverage
in the West, outstripping their weight in terms of death and destruc-
tion in the actual conflict. It also showed an accumulating effect in
play, as each incident built on the previous, bringing greater attention
to the issue. Each of these incidents also met the media criteria for the
CNN effect. The following two chapters assess whether these inci-
dents shifted government policy in response, using the four tests of
the challenging CNN effect model as outlined in the second chapter.