Page 18 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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FOREWORD
effect in Kosovo was a dress rehearsal for a much grander presenta-
9
tion in the 2003 Iraq war.
But that is not the full extent of Bahador’s contribution. He also
emphasizes the “macro influences” on the CNN effect. One macro
influence was the well-established narratives about villains and victims
in the Balkan wars. “By 1995, villains in Yugoslavia were clearly estab-
lished in Western minds and media frameworks. After the Bosnia con-
flict, notions of good and evil were further reinforced as the full scale
of the devastation that had taken place in Srebrenica unfolded. This
led to a kind of collective guilt and shame in much of the West.”
Furthermore, there was, in a sense, the geopolitical luxury of being
able to debate the Kosovo crisis. After all, part of the CNN effect
argument rests on the fact that the cold war was over. The Eastern
Bloc had collapsed. The Balkans was, for the first time since World
War II, a fully European concern, rather than a quasi-satellite region
of the Soviet Union. Alternatively, had the Kosovo conflict erupted
after 9/11, “Allegations of links between the KLA and Osama Bin
Laden and his network would also have been much more detrimental
to the Albanian cause in this new period.” Context is everything.
Another contribution made by The CNN Effect in Action is
Bahador’s painstaking reconstruction and analysis of media coverage
of key events in the Kosovo crisis. In particular, he offers a convincing
argument concerning the role played by media coverage of the
Drenica massacre of late February and early March 1998; the Gornje
Obrinje massacre of September 26, 1998; and the Racak massacre of
January 15, 1999. These are the events that pushed the Clinton
administration over the edge and set a new course for policy, putting
aside the cautious policy of nonintervention that had, for the most
part, ruled in U.S. policy regarding the Balkans. In reconstructing
this history and putting it in a sound theoretical context, Babak
Bahador has made an important contribution to the CNN effect
literature.
Steven Livingston
Notes
1. The verb “beetles,” indicates a cliff’s summit that “juts out promi-
nently,” that “projects” beyond its wave-worn base, like the head
of a wooden “beetle” or mallet.
2. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4.
3. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020322-
10.html. March 22, 2002.