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THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
images became the propaganda instruments for selling the policy to
the American public and skeptics in Congress. On March 19, 1999,
several months after Racak, for example, Clinton referred to the mas-
sacres in powerful rhetoric, stating,
We should remember what happened in the village of Racak back in
January—innocent men, women and children taken from their homes
to a gully, forced to kneel in the dirt, sprayed with gunfire—not because
of anything they had done, but because of who they were . . . Our firm-
ness is the only thing standing between them and countless more
villages like Racak . . . Make no mistake, if we and our allies do not have
8
the will to act, there will be more massacres.
Finally, this book demonstrated the CNN effect’s influence on for-
eign policy to be multifaceted, often having a greater impact on the
tactical aspects of policy than the strategic, in the context of third-
party military interventions. In chapter 3, policy was segmented into
three aspects—strategic, tactical A, and tactical B. Strategic policy
could be determined by answering the question: What end(s) is the
policy trying to accomplish? Tactical policy A could be established by
answering the question: What must the parties on the ground do to
reach the end(s) of the strategic policy? Tactical policy B related to the
actions of the external parties and could be identified by answering the
question: What must we (the external third parties) do to push the par-
ties on the ground to implement tactical policy A? In chapter 7,
the West’s policy was reviewed based on these classifications over the
15-month period before the launch of NATO air operations against
the FRY. Over this period, which was segmented into seven distinct
phases, tactical policy A and B each changed during four of the phases,
while strategic policy changed in two. In relation to the three periods
immediately following events that met the media criteria for the CNN
effect, both tactical policy A and B changed each time, while strategic
policy changed only once after the Racak massacre. Based on this case
study, there is evidence to suggest that the CNN effect’s influence on
foreign policy most often impacts tactical aspects, with strategic
aspects, which tend to be more entrenched, only changing with
repeated exposed episodes of policy implementation failure.
Throughout the 1990s right up to the Racak massacre, the West’s
strategic Kosovo policy had always been to reestablish Kosovo
autonomy, in line with the autonomy that Milosevic took away in
1989. To attain this end, the West encouraged the parties on the
ground to negotiate in order to reach a settlement. Throughout the