ABSTRACT
Overall the research shows critical and empathy-framed press coverage set against policy certainty in the US executive against an escalation to a ground war whilst TV news remained empathising but less critical and, in the case of CNN, supportive of policy. In terms of assessing overall impact these findings suggest media pressure to escalate to a ground war was at best ambiguous. The print media pressured for action whilst TV news gave policy-makers far less of a hard time and, in the case of CNN, served, if anything, to support US policy. Overall the research indicates that media coverage, taking into account the difference between print media and TV news, was mixed in terms of placing pressure on policy-makers to move to a ground war during April. Media coverage might have covered the ground war debate but policy-makers did not give into pressure from newspaper coverage by escalating to a ground war and, indeed, the existing air war policy benefited from more positive coverage in TV news. Moreover the subsidence of critical coverage in May (and supportive coverage from CNN), combined with empathy framing throughout May, meant that at this point overall coverage became supportive of Western air power intervention in Kosovo. In terms of the policy-media interaction model, the presence of mixed coverage (April) and supportive coverage (May), coupled with policy certainty, indicates that a strong CNN effect is unlikely to have occurred in this case. This is consistent with the fact that at no time did policy-makers move to intervene directly, by deploying close air support or ground troops, in the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. Indeed Alexander Vershbow notes that coverage of the air war/ground war debate might even have helped support the goals of Western policy-makers. He states that, during this period, the CNN effect was at best ‘marginal’ and that ‘policy was driven by the dynamics of the conflict’ whilst ‘media coverage of some significant events [e.g. the deployment of Apache helicopters in Albania] inadvertently helped in racketing up the political pressure on Milosevic’.29
