Page 134 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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THE KOSOVO CRISIS—THE MACRO REVIEW
CNN effect incident, however, involved almost simultaneous media
coverage and government activity. This was because of the unique cir-
cumstances of this incident, in which government officials [OSCE
(Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) monitors
including head monitor William Walker] and the media arrived on the
scene at the same time on the day following the massacre. By this time,
many Western government institutions were heavily involved in the
Kosovo civil war, compared to the earlier massacres, and had moved
much closer to supporting the Albanian position on the conflict, which
allowed them to make judgments regarding the conflict more quickly
and with less inhibitions than in earlier phases of the conflict.
Diplomacy versus Policy Actions
When Western diplomatic and policy-related actions are differentiated,
as in graph 6.3 and table 6.3, important subtle differences in the pat-
tern of activity emerge. In the first two incidents relating to the
Drenica massacre and the Serb offensive in late May, which led to
NATO’s Operation Determined Falcon, diplomacy and policy-related
activities were similar in terms of timing and frequency. During the
four later incidents, however, there are many more policy-related
actions than diplomatic ones. This could be due to two factors: the
practical limitations of diplomacy and the increasing number of
Western government institutions that became involved in Kosovo as
the crisis evolved. In terms of the practical limits inherent in diplomacy,
there are only so many high-level meetings amongst Western leaders
that can be held and only so many foreign dignitaries that Yugoslav
leaders can accommodate in short periods. This is one reason why
diplomatic acts were never more than four in any given week during
the one-year prelude to the intervention. In terms of the increase in
policy-related activities that followed the last two media incidents, it is
important to point out that the West found itself more entrenched in
the conflict over time. This was evident in the range of institutions that
became involved in the crisis. Initially, after the Drenica massacre, gov-
ernment involvement was only at the diplomatic level. In the United
States, the conflict was largely within the domain of the State
Department, which acted on its own and, through the Contact Group,
with European allies. It was only in the summer of 1998 that Western
interest began to take on a greater military dimension with the
involvement of the U.S. Department of Defense and NATO. As the
possibilities of war became more likely, the U.S. executive branch
began to get more involved through the White House. In Europe,
while the EU did not act collectively on Kosovo except on a few