ABSTRACT
Since the Gulf War of 1991, the relationship between the military, the media, the reporting of wars and of ‘conflicts other than war’ has attracted a considerable amount of professional and scholarly attention. 1 At the heart of this writing is an attempt to validate or refute the claims of such distinguished figures as Henry Kissinger, George Kennan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali that the media, and live television in particular, have become a significant driver of the diplomatic environment of the post-Cold War era. The argument runs as follows: officials are now being forced to respond to dramatic television ‘real-time’ images either in ways that they might otherwise have done or at a speed that they find incompatible with their traditional methods of working. Hence there is a danger of hasty or ill-thought-through decisions based on emotional responses to tragic images rather than rational judgements made in the cold light of day. This might even include the deployment of armed forces into situations that make it difficult for them to achieve their objectives because those objectives have been driven more by political factors than by military objectives. The media, having created the situation, now revel in the dramatic pictures which result, while their quest for ‘infotainment’ causes friction with the armed forces whose job is made even more difficult by their presence. This phenomenon has been termed the ‘CNN effect’ or the ‘do something factor’.
