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THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
The end of the cold war also had a significant impact on Western
media. Sharing the same culture as their governments and people,
Western media coverage and framing during the cold war, with some
exceptions, largely reflected the perspective of their governments.
When coverage had pitted human rights against strategic interests,
framing often either ignored violations or justified them for the
greater good. The rising relative importance of human rights in for-
eign policy through “C list” threats and the absence of a dominating
framework such as the cold war made it more common and politically
justifiable to frame events on the basis of human rights without resort-
ing to greater justifications. Furthermore, dramatic images of human
suffering fit the media’s growing appetite for shock and sensationalism.
The news, which had traditionally been viewed by media networks as
a public service and more as a source of prestige than income, had
increasingly become a commercial domain. This trend was having an
impact on what was covered and how it was covered. This confluence
of interests encouraged coverage of events that may have been
ignored in previous decades. It also allowed for media framing that
was more independent from the government, as constraints inherent
in “A list” security environments were now largely absent.
Finally, the Kosovo conflict occurred in a period of relative quiet in
international affairs. Had the Kosovo civil war taken place after the ter-
rorist attack of September 11, 2001, when the Western world was
caught up in the grips of the “War on Terror,” it may have not been
noticed or given much attention. Allegations of links between the KLA
and Osama Bin Laden and his network would also have been much
more detrimental to the Albanian cause in this new period. Certainly,
news of Russian human rights violations in Chechnya have not been
getting nearly the attention in the West that they once commanded.
The next three chapters now turn to the book’s case study and
assess the degree to which cases of the CNN effect, as defined by the
challenging CNN effect model, played a role in shifting Western
policy toward war during the prelude to the Kosovo intervention.