The cnn effect

Introduction

By its very nature, the Cold War had powerful effects on the relationship between U.S. foreign-policy makers, Congress, the news media and the American public. For reasons of national security, these institutions largely deferred to the president in setting their agendas on foreign and domestic affairs.

The reality is different today, when exists a profound debate related tomedia influence on policy makers. From early 1990s, the institution of the presidency seems less powerful that in the Cold War days. The absence of the old bipolar agenda alone fundamentally altered the way the U.S. news media reported on foreign affairs and their impact on those charged with making foreign policy. But those changes were magnified a few years before the end of the Cold War by theappearance of new technologies that have transformed how news is gathered and reported to publics around the globe.

The rise of global, real-time television took the name of “CNN Effect”, …

Most of all, these developments virtually dissolved the factor of time from diplomacy and foreign affairs. Television correspondents now are expected to report the latest development in the place of thedeed and constantly.

For policy makers, these new changes are a double-edged sword. The president can make his policy more rapidly known to leaders around the world and to the American public. But opponents and allies can respond just as quickly, attempting to reach not just the president but his electorate as well. Officials feel pressure to react to televised images far more quickly than theywould like.

Probably it is impossible to precisely apportion responsibility of news media and foreign policy. There is no doubt that real time television puts intense pressure on

officials to respond rapidly, increasing the difficulty of policy making and, in theory, increasing the margin for error.

What it is important to consider is that “this pressure is not necessarily a disadvantagefor a democracy: it is now simply harder for officials to make policy in a vacuum, ensuring at least a modicum of transparency and pluralism in the governmental decision-making process. But real-time television also provides the means for U.S. foreign policy officials to inform, persuade, and cajole the electorate. The “CNN Effect” affects the process of policy making more than it affects policyitself”.1

The CNN effect: Can the news media drive foreign policy?

With the beginning of the CNN effect - and what this phrase encapsulates – started the idea that real-time communications technology could provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to global events.

Strobel, Warren. Late Breaking Foreign Policy: The news media’s influence on peace operations.Washington, 1995, page 89.

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This theory has developed a debate, where some thing that news media have a high impact in foreign policy, others thing that the effect is limited, and some that it does not exist a direct relationship.

Piers Robinson analyzes the research that have been done for different authors in this matter2. First he explores the relationship that exists between the CNNeffect and humanitarian intervention. According to Martin Shaw, emotive and often highly critical coverage of Kurdish refugees fleeing from Saddam Hussein’s forces, quite literally caused ‘the virtually unprecedented proposal for Kurdish safe havens’.3 Later, it was believed that the intervention in 1992 had effectively been forced upon the United States by media pressure.

“Foreign policy ‘experts’in particular were dismayed by what they saw as this unwarranted intrusion by the Fourth estate into the policy process [...] Working from a realist perspective, critics generally decried the CNN effect and stressed the need for elite control of the foreign policy making process.”4 Robinson called this group realist.

However, other writers – especially journalists – praised the new activism...