Page 171 - 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
where there was a lot of talk and no action and that history would
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judge us very, very severely.” Disturbed by the images from Drenica,
Albright made several references to them during high-level meetings
after the massacre. For example, several days before the Contact
Group meeting, while on a trip to discuss the Kosovo crisis with
European leaders, Albright commented, “We are not going to stand
by and watch Serb authorities do in Kosovo what they can no longer
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get away with doing in Bosnia.”
After the Contact Group meeting,
Albright again seemed to acknowledge the importance of media
images by stating, “History is watching us . . . In this very room our
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Albright was not alone
predecessors delayed as Bosnia burned . . .”
in making this linkage. President Bill Clinton made perhaps the clear-
est link amongst the images from Drenica, the failure in Bosnia, and
the new Western tactical policy B stance when he stated, “We do not
want the Balkans to have more pictures like we’ve seen in the last few
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days so reminiscent of what Bosnia endured.”
The media images from Kosovo also played a galvanizing role in the
legislatures in the U.S. Congress, which would eventually support U.S.
participation in the NATO intervention. On March 10, 1998, in the
immediate aftermath of the Drenica massacre, Congressman Steny H.
Hoyer from the House or Representatives brought up the Kosovo
issue and expressed support for actions taken by the Contact Group.
Sighting the picture on the front page of The Washington Post as evi-
dence of Kosovar suffering and a basis for doing something, the
Maryland representative stated, “The front page of the Washington
Post shows an Albanian mother and her small child, victims of this
Serbian onslaught ...Mr. Speaker, this House, the Senate and
this Nation must speak out for the safety of those in Kosovo.” 21 The
scenes of violence and suffering continued to have an impact over sev-
eral weeks in March. On March 17, in a debate in the House of
Representatives, Congressman Ben Gilman from New York described
what he had seen, stating,
. . . in recent weeks the world has witnessed the horrifying spectacle of
violence again sweeping a part of the Balkans. Serbian paramilitary
police forces brutally assaulted the long-suffering people of the
province of Kosova . . . Whole villages were attacked and their inhabi-
tants were forced to flee into the hills. Entire families were massacred as
Serbian forces fired indiscriminately into their homes. 22
Similar sentiments were expressed by fellow New York congressman
Eliot Engel, who argued, “We saw the extent of tyranny ...a couple of