Page 48 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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DEMONSTRATING THE CNN EFFECT
Although this method provides some interesting anecdotal insights
and opinions, it often struggles for intellectual clarity, as authors reach
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contradictory conclusions in favor of and against the CNN effect.
This may be because different interviewees present conflicting opin-
ions, making it impossible to reach any synthesis. Also, the merits of
this methodology are questionable in themselves on at least two
grounds. First, such studies rely heavily on the opinions of policymakers.
This selection, however, limits the range of perspectives and elimi-
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nates the positions of other potentially valid candidates. Second, it is
questionable whether the opinions of policymakers are reliable. In
some cases, policymakers might not remember the specific events and
the impact of the media on them and their colleagues. In other cases,
policymakers might intentionally present events as they want them to
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be remembered, which may differ from what actually happened.
After all, it would not be surprising for policymakers to downplay the
role of the media as policymakers are supposed to be calm, objective,
and deliberate in their decision-making.
by emotive elements such as media images, they might appear vulner-
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For this
able and incapable of conducting their work professionally.
reason, it would not be surprising if policymakers assigned a
nonessential role to the CNN effect. 14 If they were truly affected
Additionally, it is important to question the central finding of this
approach: that a precondition of policy uncertainty must exist before
the CNN effect can occur. If this proposition were true, then all cases
of the CNN effect must involve unclear policy. But what is unclear
policy? When and how is it determined that one policy is clear and
another unclear? When a politician has trouble explaining a policy, is
it because there is policy uncertainty, or is it because the existing pol-
icy has become inappropriate and unjustifiable under new circum-
stances that have emerged from the images of unexpected events? Is it
really a case of unclear or uncertain policy or simply a policy that has
become out of date in relation to a shifting political landscape? It is
interesting to note that in cases when policy uncertainty is evoked,
such a conclusion was reached in retrospect after unexpected events
surfaced. Before such evidence came to light, these same policymakers
often espoused the official policy very eloquently and clearly. For
Gowing, for example, the massacre at Srebrenica is a clear case of
cause-and-effect between television images, a demand to do some-
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thing, and policy response. But was Bosnia policy unclear before the
story of Srebrenica and the massacre reached the West? Or was it the
case that policy became unsustainable in light of the massacre, which
opened the way for a tougher policy against the Bosnian Serbs to be