Media, Wars and Politics

Comparing the Incomparable in Western and Eastern Europe

Ekaterina Balabanova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138358409
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351153140
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The interaction between media and foreign policy is a critical dimension of the so-called age of 'new military humanitarianism'. The media is now more effective in gathering and distributing information all over the world and media coverage of humanitarian wars allows for information and images to reach a wide audience with great immediacy and realism. For policy making, the 24/7 news cycle means high levels of exposure to fast-breaking international stories receiving global attention and producing a powerful 'do something!' effect. This topical book widens the debate beyond US media and policy making by considering the case of Western and Eastern European media and policy processes. It tests the wider application of existing theoretical approaches and provides useful comparisons, allowing the reader to draw conclusions on the media-policy relationship. It is an excellent resource for all those interested in political communication, European politics and media studies.

Chapter 1
Media and War

Introduction

The twentieth century was marked by war. As the historian, Eric Hobsbawm, insists '[the century] lived and thought in terms of world war, even when the guns were silent and the bombs were not exploding' (cited in Carruthers, 2000: 1). The end of the Cold War established an international system which is frequently described as being even more 'chaotic' than that which existed during the Cold War (see Kaldor, 1997; Carruthers, 2000; Duffield, 2001; Gleditsch et al., 2002). The nature of international crises post-Cold War has changed with the majority of the conflicts now being intrastate rather than interstate. They are fought with extreme brutality, with civilians as particularly prominent victims and they can, and have been, frequently captured on television and beamed instantaneously around the world. Arguably the reason why these wars within states have become conflicts of international concern is in some form related to the media. What follows from this is a picture of the world in which contemporary wars and modern news media attract each other. In this process, the media become a constitutive part of wars. They play a complex role in the conduct and prosecution of wars, which cannot be simply limited to being an observer of events. They have turned into participants and even catalysts in international crises. If so, how do they become such? The key aspect of media involvement in wars is the relationship between media coverage of wars and crisis foreign policy-making. It is frequently asserted that media coverage of violent intrastate conflicts produces a 'do something' reaction amongst the global television audiences. The so called 'CNN effect' invests news media with a power to influence audiences and thereby politicians. Do the news media act as a force that drives foreign policy decisions? Or do the media follow the line of 'their' government? Does the media-foreign policy relationship operate in a one-way direction, with either the government or the media solely dictating foreign policy? Isn't this interaction much more complex and based on 'interdependent mutual exploitation" (O'Heffernan, 1994)? Is the term influence an accurate reflection of the essence of the relationship? Assuming that this influence exists, under what conditions can media act as catalysts to international intervention? In exploring these sets of issues this chapter highlights the problematic and/or uncovered areas in the current research on the topic. It raises a number of questions that will be considered in the study while examining the role of the media in crisis foreign policy-making.

In particular, the chapter concentrates on the media coverage of conflict. It links contemporary wars with the nature of the news media. It consecutively examines the interpretation of the relationship between news media and foreign policy-making offered by the approaches felling within the 'manufacturing consent' thesis that emphasise the role of governments to set news media agendas and then those within the 'CNN effect' thesis that put the stress on media power. The chapter looks into the various definitions of the 'CNN effect'. It also explores different methodologies and models that are used to measure the media/foreign policy relationship. In doing the above, the chapter critically presents the main findings of the research conducted to date on the interaction between news media and foreign policy and identifies the vacuum that the current book aims to fill.

Media of Conflict

Contemporary wars are defined by the greater involvement of civilians, whether as spectators, victims or active participants (Carruthers, 2000: 5). Those who do not experience the conflicts directly and personally become part of them because of the news media. The information and images of human suffering move around the world and reach almost everybody. This is happening instantaneously, with great immediacy and 'realism'. As Curruthers (2000: 200) notes: 'Images are beamed into homes almost as the very events under the camera's gaze actually occur'. It is an observation that has not by-passed politicians. The former US President, Clinton, for example, has claimed that ' [b]ecause of a communications revolution, symbolised most clearly by CNN... we are front-row history witnesses. We see things as they occur. Now we are impatient if we learn about things an hour after they occur instead of seeing them in the moment' (cited in Minear, Scott and Weiss, 1996: 90).

This statement rightly pinpoints the incredible advance in communications technology. Now there are more effective ways of gathering and distributing information than ever before. The existence of portable communications technology such as the satellite phone, camcorder and laptop computer, the proliferation of stations, channels and programmes, make possible not only the availability of more information but also its almost non-stop accessibility as part of the 'round-the-clock' 24-hour news day.

These developments though can only partially account for the increasing presence of wars in media accounts. The other element of the explanation lies in the very nature of the news media. News in itself is broadly defined as the 'unusual'. William Deedes (cited in Hooper, 1982: 14), editor of The Daily Telegraph in 1979, describes news as 'the unusual which will attract people's interest, attract people's attention'. Not surprisingly then, the media as a rule focus on the dramatic, the bloody and the controversial - 'more than ever in terms of news, war is better than peace, violence is better than non-violence'(Young, 1991: 1; Strobel, 1997: 13). As a consequence, the tragic and conflict-filled stories offered by crises like Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo with their starving children and captured GIs have the potential to command massive media attention and 'force their way to the foreground' (Nye, 1999: 29; Nacos. Shapiro and Isernia, 2000: 3). 'Good news', as Zimmerman (cited in Minear, Scott and Weiss, 1996: 32) observes, 'is too often considered not newsworthy... Murder in a small town and its big-time equivalent, war within or between nations, makes better news than a nutrition program that improves a million lives'. A similar view on the human disposition to find alarming reports more stimulating than stories about what is right with the world is expressed by Freedman (1994: 6): 'War is the deadliest of sins, and unfortunately sin fascinates, while good deeds bore' (see also Arno and Dissanayake, 1984: 2). Beyond this truism, Taylor (1997: 99) suggests a range of psychological motives that seem to trigger the palpable 'attraction' of war coverage in the media:

Wars involve the deployment of troops and weapons in a manner that makes for exciting copy and pictures (the more high-tech the better); they produce a stream of human interest stories of tragedy and heroism; they provoke heightened emotions such as patriotism, fear, anger and euphoria; and they involve winners and losers.

From the perspective of the media a simple (not to say simplistic) conclusion follows: war sells. 'Good news seldom sells papers; dull news never does' (Hudson and Stanier, 1999, xi). As a result, war makes it to the most competitive category of headline news.

Not only are the media attracted to wars. There is a much larger claim that the resulting coverage of wars influences, shapes, and even determines the actual policymaking. The news media, and real-time television in particular, transmit images of human suffering from different parts of the world that attract public attention, including the attention of policy-makers and demand of them 'to do something'. This is how the so called 'CNN effect' comes into existence! However, as Livingston (1997a: 291) points out, 'despite numerous symposia, books, articles, and research fellowships devoted to unravelling the CNN effect, success at clarifying it... has been minimal'.

On a theoretical level there are two main approaches, highlighting the extremes of the debate, that deal with the relationship between news media and foreign policymaking: the 'manufacturing consent' thesis and the 'CNN effect' thesis.

The 'Manufacturing Consent' Thesis

The 'manufacturing consent' thesis holds that policy-making is the prerogative of an informed elite, with the media in a subordinate status. Political elites impel newsmakers to 'read' global events in a particular way, therefore the media are influenced by government and government policy. Consequently, the media's agenda reflects the priorities of policy-makers. This view is most notably argued by Chomsky and Herman (1988: 23) who claim that:

[p]owerful sources regularly take advantage of media routines and dependency to 'manage' the media, to manipulate them into following a special agenda and framework... inundating the media with stories, which serve sometimes to foist a particular line and frame on the media, and at other times to help chase unwanted stories off the front page or out of the media altogether.

Within the general framework of the manufacturing consent thesis can be identified as the notion of governments setting news media's agendas an 'indexing hypothesis' can be identified. This is the idea that news media coverage of foreign affairs is 'indexed' to the frames of reference of foreign policy elites. In the words of Bennett (1990: 108), 'mass media news is indexed... to the dynamics of governmental debate'. According to him, when media coverage is critical of official policy, this simply reflects a 'professional responsibility [for journalists] to highlight important conflicts and struggles within the centres of power' (Bennet, 1990: 110). Robinson (1999a: 304; 2002a, 13) labels this interpretation of manufacturing consent as the 'elite version' describing it as claiming that news media coverage conforms to the interests of political elites. An important element of the elite version is that news coverage critical of executive policy is possible when there exists elite conflict over policy. Thus, even though the elite version is within the manufacturing consent thesis, it does allow for critical media coverage and by implication for influence of this coverage on executive policy process. However, the latter possibility is not seriously explored and the media indexed to elite opinion is seen overall as passive and non-influential. Substantial empirical support for this view comes from the work of Hallin (1986). In his book, The Uncensored War, he studies the claim that during the Vietnam War the news media were oppositional and critical of the official US policy, which eventually led to the loss of the War. However, Hallin discovers that this probably most cited case of news media influence on government policy actually represents a case of media reflecting/responding to the divisions and strains that appeared among political elites on the policy by producing higher amounts of critical coverage. This occurred only after parts of the political elite turned against the war. On the basis of these findings, Hallin (1986) develops the concept of three spheres that exist with regard to any issue - of consensus, of legitimate controversy and of deviance. According to this, in the case of Vietnam War, as opposition to the war moved into the mainstream, the media reflected this movement of debate into the sphere of legitimate controversy. The media reflect the prevailing pattern of political debate, rarely producing coverage within the deviant sphere, rather:

when consensus is strong, they tend to stay within the limits of political discussion it defines; when it begins to break down, coverage becomes increasingly critical and diverse in the viewpoints it represents, and increasingly difficult for officials to control (Hallin, 1994: 55).

Mermin's (1996, 1997: 1999) studies of post-Vietnam US military interventions offer further empirical evidence that elite indexing continues to structure how the foreign policy crises are covered by the media. However, while concurring with the indexing hypothesis, he adds that major media are doing something to maintain the illusion of fulfilling the journalistic ideals of balance and objectivity (Mermin, 1996: 182). The news media present as subject to question and debate 'the ability of the government to achieve the goals it has set' (emphasis in original).

When there is no policy debate in Washington, reporters may offer critical analysis inside the terms of the apparently settled policy debate, finding a critical angle in the possibility that existing policy, on its own terms, might not work (Mermin, 1996: 182) (emphasis in original).

The indexing hypothesis view is also in part supported by the work of Zaller and Chiu (2000) who examine media reporting on foreign policy during and after the Cold War. While the findings for the news media coverage of foreign policy crises between 1945 and 1991 confirmed the claim that news media reporting follows official policy debates, the findings for the post-Cold War period are more mixed. Looking at eight foreign policy crises up to 1999 Zaller and Chiu did not find 'indexing' characteristics. These results contradict Mermin's findings and are attributed to differences in the methodology and the coding schemes used in the two studies. In effect, this contradiction is indicative of the difficulties that media-foreign policy research faces in general.

Within the framework of the manufacturing consent thesis Robinson (1999a: 303; 2002a: 13) also identifies an 'executive version'. It posits that news media reports conform to the official agenda and do not function to criticise or challenge the executive policy line. Hence the implicit claim here is that the news media are prevented from influencing the executive policy. As Herman (1993: 25) argues, they 'serve mainly as a supportive arm of the state and dominant elites, focusing heavily on themes serviceable to them, and debating and exposing within accepted frames of reference'. He supports this claim with the analysis of cases of human rights violations, plane shoot-downs and Developing World elections and their media coverage, which allows him to conclude that the mainstream media tend to follow a state agenda in reporting on foreign policy even though this often requires them to contradict themselves and ignore relevant information that is incompatible with the agenda. A further example of the executive manufacturing consent is provided in the work of Entman (1991) on the moral framing of US media reports of the shooting down of a Korean airliner in 1983. According to him, in this instance the media coverage was consistent with the policy interests of the US administration. However, in a later study Entman (2000) observed changes in this trend and suggested that the media in the post-Cold War era are no longer acting as 'government's little helpers', thus coming close to the claims made by Zaller and Chiu (2000). He hypothesised that the influence of government leaders over foreign policy news has diminished with the emergence of the post-Cold War media - free of the old Cold War constraints and able to seize the opportunities to evaluate policy, choose sources and construct their own frames. As an example of this development he pointed to the framing of the Kosovo intervention in the US national media that 'tilted decisively against the administration', while the indexing hypothesis would have predicted a more balanced coverage of the administration and its critics. Overall, in their original versions both the elite and the executive versions of the manufacturing consent thesis oppose the existence of an independent news media effect on policy either by denying it completely or by not really exploring the possible media role.

The 'CNN Effect' Thesis

The other extreme thesis within the media-policy relationship debate is known as the 'CNN effect'.¹ In essence, it claims that news can make policy. Yet, as Strobel (1997: 4-5) points out, the term is understood and used differently both inside and outside the media. Some of the definitions of the CNN effect are more general, such as the interpretation of the CNN effect as 'the way breaking news affects foreign policy decisions' (Schorr, cited in Gilboa, 2003: 6) or as an illustration of the 'dynamic tension that exists between real-time television news and policymaking, with the news having the upper hand in terms of influence' (Seib, 2002: 27). Others use the term to describe the shrinkage of the time in which foreign policy officials must respond to world events that are instantaneously displayed on their, and many others', television screens (Livingston, 1997b. 2000). Some definitions of the CNN effect focus on the question of 'political control' (Robinson, 2002a: 21) - that is the responsibility for setting the news agenda (see Livingston and Eachus, 1995; Mermin, 1997). As Livingston and Eachus (1995: 415) argue. '[t]he question at the heart of the CNN effect is, who controls that capacity [to influence]'. This interpretation of the CNN effect is concerned with news sources as a way of determining if non-governmental actors have control over the policy process. In a way, this is similar to the elite manufacturing consent version that linked media reliance on elite sources with passive and non-influential media as it assumes that the CNN effect does not exist if elites are setting the news agenda, but does exist if non-elites do so (Robinson, 2002a: 22). Robinson (2002a: 23) identifies two inadequacies in this CNN definition. Firstly, analysing the sources of news reports could explain why journalists cover a particular crisis, but cannot explain why the news coverage appears to influence humanitarian interventions in some instances and not in others. Secondly, this definition is not useful in providing evidence for or against the claim that by compelling policy-makers to respond to emotive coverage of suffering people, news media coverage influences humanitarian interventions.

This latter claim is at the core of what seems to be the most dominant interpretation of the CNN effect, seeing it as a loss of policy control on the part of government officials charged with making that policy. This definition implies that there is an independent effect on the foreign policy-making process by the media such as CNN, which virtually wrest control from policy-makers, who in turn can do little or nothing about this transformation. As a result, the news media influence or determine what governments do. Public opinion can also be part of this process. It can be so moved by images of suffering humanity that it demands action, even when inappropriate (Freedman, 2000: 338). This is often assumed to be the major factor behind humanitarian intervention. For instance, when the Bosnian crisis began to dominate the headlines, the then British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, observed that the novelty is not 'in mass rape, in the shooting of civilians, in war crimes, in ethnic cleansing, in the burning of towns and villages', but 'that a selection of these tragedies is now visible, within hours, to people around the world. People reject and resent what is going on because they know it more visibly than before' (cited in Seaton, 1999: 49). In other words, the media drive conflict management by forcing external governments to intervene militarily in humanitarian crises, sometimes against their will. The causal mechanism of the CNN effect is usually conceived in the following way:

(Jakobsen, 2000: 132)

As Gilboa (2003: 7) points out, this definition consists of two parts: the first being a classic example of agenda-setting - forcing policy-makers to deal with an issue they prefer to ignore, and the second referring to the power of news media to force policymakers through public opinion to adopt a policy 'against their will and interpretation of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Media and War
• 2 New Wars and New Humanitarianism
• 3 The Kosovo Crisis
• 4 Bulgarian Media
• 5 Press/Foreign Policy Interaction in Bulgaria
• 6 Press/Foreign Policy Interaction in the UK
• Conclusion
• References
• Index