Page 64 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

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DEMONSTRATING THE CNN EFFECT
journalists who challenged the dominant framework were dismissed
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from their posts.
While there is no ideal way to identify when official policy is at odds
with political culture, public opinion polling and rising elite dissensus
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Public opinion polling, despite
are good indicators of such fissures.
its limitations, has become increasingly accurate in this regard since the
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end of the cold war. Public opinion polling is particularly useful as an
indicator of majority preferences when poll results are accumulated
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over significant periods of time. While incongruence between political
culture and official policy is an essential step toward a CNN effect, it by
no means guarantees one. The political context, cost, and commitment
to existing policy also act to temper such a potential outcome.
Political Context
Another important limitation on the CNN effect relates to the politi-
cal context, as determined by the perceived geopolitical security
threats of the time. In general, the more likely that a nation’s survival
is believed to be at risk, the less likely it will be for the CNN effect to
emerge. A useful model, in this regard, is put forward by William
Perry and Ashton Carter, who suggest that there are primarily three
types of security risk environments that determine the levels of strate-
gic interest—A, B, and C list threats. 85 “A list” security threats are
those that relate to state survival. World Wars I and II and the Soviet
challenge during the cold war represented such threats to the West.
Under such conditions, the CNN effect is highly improbable, as con-
cern for state survival will take precedence over concern for others.
When survival is believed to be at stake, all foreign policy thinking is
organized, and all issues are associated with this dominant paradigm,
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leaving little room for alternative interpretations to emerge. “B list”
security threats do not impact survival but are imminent threats to
Western interests and could have dire consequences for the accus-
tomed way of life, such as the standard of living. The 1991 Gulf War
and the threat to affordable Middle East energy supplies represented
such a threat. The last type of threat comes from the “C list” which
are challenges that do not directly affect Western interest, but are
nonetheless important contingencies that have indirect consequences.
In this list, human rights and their violation often play an important
role. According to Joseph Nye, the “C list” dominated U.S. for-
eign policy engagement for most of the 1990s largely due to the
perceived absence of “A list” threats. 87 It is in such a context, often
involving intervention in “other people’s wars” or humanitarian
crises, that the CNN effect is most likely to emerge. For Entman, the