Page 92 - The CNN Effect in Action - How the News Media Pushed the West toward War ini Kosovo

1403975191ts05.qxd 19-2-07 05:07 PM Page 67
CHAP TE R 4
The Kosovo Crisis
On March 24, 1999, NATO bombs began dropping on the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Seventy-eight days later, Serbian leader
Slobodan Milosevic capitulated to NATO’s demands and the Serbs
lost effective control of Kosovo, which they had held for almost nine
decades. To many observers, the Kosovo conflict did not begin in
March 1999 but in March 1998 in the tiny Kosovo village of Prekaz
in the Drenica region. It was here that a prominent Kosovo rebel
leader named Adem Jashari and over fifty family members were out-
gunned and killed by Yugoslav forces. This massacre was significant on
two grounds. First, it catapulted the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA),
a movement that sought Kosovo independence through armed resist-
ance, from a regional peripheral movement into the mainstream of
Kosovo politics, drawing thousands of recruits and supporters.
Second, and more significant for the purposes of this study, this event
provided the Kosovo Albanians with the television images that might
draw the West into their struggle. The Kosovo conflict has been
considered an example in which the CNN effect moved Western
1
governments. This part of the book delves into this claim over four
chapters to determine the validity, nature, and potential impact of the
CNN effect on Western policy during the prelude to the NATO mili-
tary intervention. Chapter 5 reviews American television coverage of
the Kosovo civil war from March 1, 1998 to March 24, 1999 to deter-
mine if any events from this period met the media criteria for the
CNN effect. It also reviews the severity of these events in relation to
their media coverage to determine if the events themselves might have
been the basis of any potential government policy change or the
media coverage of them. Chapters 6 and 7 then turn to the issue of
Western government actions and policy to assess if any events that
might have met the media criteria for a CNN effect led to a policy
change, based on the four research strategies outlined in the second
chapter. If it can be shown that Western governments changed policy