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THE KOSOVO CRISIS—THE MACRO REVIEW
In other periods throughout the Kosovo civil war, and especially in
periods when the West tried to implement a solution, framing became
more neutral as the West attempted to appear as a neutral player.
More neutral framing was recorded after the passage of UN
Resolution 1160 in late March, the Holbrooke-Milosevic Agreement,
and during the negotiations at Rambouillet and Paris in February and
March 1999. A review of the framing in government press releases
and statements related to the Kosovo civil war over the 15-month
period under review is presented in graph 6.5 and table 6.5. Due to
the overwhelming representation of pro-Albanian framing over this
timeline, the graph focuses on pro-Albanian framing in relation to all
other options, as set out by the coding schedule in this study.
Blame
Related to framing is the assignment of blame. While framing relates
to the context in which the crisis is based, blame is more immediate
and deals with who is at fault for a particular situation or problem and
who are the victims. Blame is simpler to determine than the frame
because it often requires no previous knowledge of the context. As the
degree of violence in a conflict increases, the media will be more likely
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to assign blame and identify aggressors. The issue of blame is impor-
tant because if the West is to enter other people’s wars on a particular
side, it will need to justify such an action by showing that the side it is
defending is blameless, 11 and the side it is fighting is at fault for exist-
ing problems. In relation to the impact of the CNN effect, blame is
potentially a stronger indicator of shifting attitude because before a
shift in framing can occur, it would seem necessary for one side to be
at fault for a number of incidents. For the purposes of this study, the
following coding system is applied to each document: 12
1. Blame with the Kosovo Albanians
2. Blame with the Serbians (or FRY)
3. No blame assigned or both sides are to blame
During the 15-month period before the intervention, 92 docu-
ments (57 percent of all Western policy-related documents) fully
blamed the Serbian side, with majority blame in 54 documents
(34 percent of total) and full blame in the remaining 38 (24 percent
of total). In contrast, 2 documents (just over 1 percent) placed blame
on the Kosovo Albanians. The remaining 67 documents (42 percent) of