ABSTRACT
During the 1980s the proliferation of new technologies transformed the potential of the news media to provide a constant flow of global real-time news. Tiananmen Square and the collapse of communism, symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall, became major media events communicated to Western audiences instantaneously via TV news media. By the end of the decade the question being asked was to what extent had this ‘media pervasiveness’ (Hoge 1994: 136-44) impacted upon government – particularly the process of foreign policy-making. New technologies appeared to reduce the scope for calm deliberation over policy, forcing policy-makers to respond to whatever issue journalists focused on (Beschloss 1993; McNulty 1993). This perception was in turn reinforced by the end of the bipolar order and what many viewed as the collapse of the old anti-communist consensus which, it was argued, had led to the creation of an ideological bond, uniting policy-makers and journalists. Released from the ‘prism of the Cold War’ (Williams 1993: 315) journalists were, it was presumed, freer not just to cover the stories they wanted but to criticise US foreign policy as well. For radical technological optimists these developments suggested the realisation of a genuine ‘global village’ (McLuhan 1964) in which the news media were helping to erode people’s identification with the state and instead ‘mold a cosmopolitan global consciousness’ (Carruthers 2000: 201).
