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NOTES
21. Although costs, in terms of Western lives, are the most critical, costs in
terms of collateral damage (Serbs killed as a result of NATO mishaps)
and the actual financial costs are also important. On the latter point, it
was originally anticipated that the intervention might only last for a few
days. Had it been known that it would take 78 days of bombing costing
billions of dollars to achieve the desired outcome before the interven-
tion, there might have been great reluctance to proceed. According to
a joint study by the BBC and Jane’s Defence Weekly, the overall cost of
the intervention was £31.67 billion (about US$50 billion), with the
actual bombing phase costing £2.63 billion. Mark Savage, “78 Days:
An Audit of War,” BBC 2 (October 17, 1999).
22. Assuming that unforeseen circumstances did not change the strategic
significance of the original intervention.
23. Cited in Daalder and O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly, 94.
24. Nye Jr., “Redefining NATO’s Mission,” 12–15.
5
The Media during the Kosovo Crisis
1. While policy will be reviewed from January 1998 in chapters 6 and 7,
media coverage (in terms of American television coverage) of Kosovo
only began in March 1998, as there were no stories on Kosovo in
January and February 1998. Furthermore, as it was not feasible to
assess all Western media coverage, American television news is selected
to represent Western media. This is due to the salience of television as
the central medium in the CNN effect, and the leading role of the
United States in influencing Western policy.
2. The information for this study was gathered from January to April
2002: Vanderbilt University, “Vanderbilt Television News Archive,” via
http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/. Additionally, specific portions of tel-
evision news video were viewed and coded at the Archive during the
last week of May 2002.
3. It should be noted that only 70 percent of this time, on average, is
devoted to news content, while the remaining 30 percent is devoted
to television commercials.
4. In order to qualify for this study, at least 50 percent of the time within
the news story must be on the Kosovo crisis.
5. A notable spike is defined as at least 40 minutes of dedicated Kosovo
coverage in one week.
6. This operation (also informally referred to as the NATO Air Show)
involved 80 NATO warplanes from 13 member states that flew over
the Adriatic Sea, Albania, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia in a clockwise swirl. The exercise lasted five hours and was
conducted as a show of force to the FRY to demonstrate NATO’s
willingness to act militarily if necessary over Kosovo. CNN
News, “NATO Begins Show of Force over Balkans,” CNN.com, June 15,
1998, via http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9806/15/