Page 150 - 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
Kosovo conflict was low, as indicated by the number of government
documents issued, the blame was more even or neutral. As attention
increased, however, the level of Serb blame rose. Not surprisingly,
most of these increases were ignited by the three massacres outlined
earlier.
Graph 6.7 and table 6.7 reveals some important subtleties in the
nature of blame assigned to the Serbs by the West, by differentiating
accounts that put the majority of blame on the Serbs from those that
placed all the blame on them. Accounts that place the majority of
blame on the Serbs attempted to mention that the other side had
some fault in the overall problem. Those that solely blamed the Serbs,
however, seem much more biased. Of course, there could always be
some degree of blame placed on the KLA, since they were always
engaged in violence over this period and never renounced violence as
a legitimate means of political struggle. If one side had completely
given up violence and was still under attack, then complete blame on
the other could be an objective argument. However, this was never
the case over the 15 months preceding NATO intervention. Thus,
when the West placed all the blame on the Serbs, they increasingly
took the position of a subjective player and, ultimately, a potential
combatant. In periods preceding military engagement, it is rare for
combatants to place any blame for problems in a crisis on themselves
or the party they support, and this was the case in the week before
March 24 when the West had decided to go to war in Kosovo on
the Kosovo Albanian side.
The other periods when such a strong bias was recorded were the
weeks immediately after the Gornje Obrinje and Racak massacres. The
similarity in the bias after these massacres and during a period when
conflict had become inevitable seems to suggest that the passions
that are present in war can also emerge in the aftermath of graphic
massacres. Most interesting for the CNN effect is the intensity of the
reactions in terms of blame.
In graph 6.1, seven incidents were identified as being responsible
for spikes in Western government attention toward Kosovo. Three
of these occurred after events that met the media criteria for the
CNN effect in Drenica, Gornje Obrinje, and Racak. The remaining
four had no direct relationship to media coverage. Significantly,
the West was much more aggressive in its blame of the Serbs, placing
full blame on them more than majority blame more often during
CNN effect–related incidents, while placing majority blame over
full blame more often during the incidents not related to the
CNN effect.