ABSTRACT
This study conducted four different types of content analysis on American television news broadcasts and two different types on British television news broadcasts, all with the goal of determining how much and which human rights issues do and do not get covered to see whether or not the CNN Effect exists on human rights issues. As it turns out, there is very little human rights coverage on television news, period. Most human rights issues do not make the cut for evening television news broadcasts, so the CNN Effect cannot be said to exist. Caliendo, Gibney, and Payne (1999) concluded their analysis of New York Times stories with the same finding:
If no information about human rights violations is accessible, it is unlikely that people will judge such issues to be important, and if human rights are not important to the public, political elites are unlikely to devote considerable time to the issue.
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In short, the violations will not be televised and stories that are never broadcast can have no effect.