Phil Taylor's papers
|
BACK TO : WAR & CRISIS REPORTING
The CNN Effect. Brookings/Harvard Forum 
A Brookings/Harvard Forum: Press Coverage and the War on Terrorism "The CNN Effect": How 24-Hour News Coverage Affects Government Decisions and Public Opinion Moderated by: STEPHEN HESS Senior Fellow, Governmental Studies, The Brookings Institution, author of numerous books on media and politics MARVIN KALB Executive Director, Washington Office, The Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government; former Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for CBS News and NBC News; Former moderator of NBC's Meet the Press Panel: LAWRENCE S. EAGLEBURGER Former Secretary of State CLAUS KLEBER Bureau Chief, ARD German Television STEVEN LIVINGSTON Associate Professor of Political Communication and International Affairs, George Washington University JUDY WOODRUFF Prime anchor and senior correspondent, CNN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Role of the Press in the Anti-Terrorism Campaign project home page Wednesday, January 23, 2002 9:30am-11:00am The Brookings Institution Event Information MR. STEPHEN HESS: Good morning and welcome to the ninth session of the Brookings/Harvard Forum on the role of information and media in the war on terrorism. Today our subject is "the CNN effect". It's usually thought of as the effect that continuous and instantaneous television may have on foreign policy, in the making of foreign policy and the conduct of war. We have four guests who can add rather unique perspectives to this. One of our most distinguished American diplomats, a scholar who has written about this, and two journalists who are considered at the very top of their profession in their countries. Larry Eagleburger, the 62nd United States Secretary of State; Judy Woodruff is the prime anchor and senior correspondent of CNN; Claus Kleber is the Washington Bureau Chief of ARD German Television; Steven Livingston, a professor at George Washington University and the author of a Harvard monograph, "The CNN Effect". I'm Steve Hess, the co-host, and my co-host who will start the questioning is Marvin Kalb, the Executive Director of the Washington Office of Harvard's Shorenstein Center. The classic case often cited of "the CNN effect" is 1992-1993 in Somalia. Pictures that we saw, graphic pictures of starving children; the humanitarian effort of an American President, George Bush, to send in American military who were surprised; and then almost a year later a gang desecrating the body of an American, dragging it through the streets, and the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, announcing that we would be leaving Somalia. So it's often said that we got into Somalia because of horrible pictures; we left Somalia because of horrible television pictures. When we start the questioning today, Marvin, we might note that the Secretary of State who was there helping to make that decision in 1992 is with us today. Perhaps you'd like to start the questioning with him. MR. MARVIN KALB: Well there's no doubt I'm going to start with Secretary Eagleburger. I think our first responsibility is to define what we're talking about. Just exactly what is "the CNN effect" and does it work in all cases? If it doesn't, in what cases might it and in what cases might it not? And when you go back to Somalia there are a couple of quotes that I'd like to just get into the record as we start. One of them is by Secretary Eagleburger when he recalled what had happened back in December of 1992, and I get this quote from an extraordinarily well written and documented book by Stephen Hess, which you can buy right out there. (Laughter) Eagleburger said, "I will tell you quite frankly, television had a great deal to do with President Bush's decision to go in in the first place; and I will tell you equally frankly, I was one of those two or three that was strongly recommending he do it and it was very much because of the television pictures of the starving kids, substantial pressures from the Congress that came from the same source, and my honest belief that we could do this, do something good at not too great a cost. Certainly without any great danger of body bags coming home." And shortly President Clinton was saying, "This past weekend we all reacted with anger and horror as an armed Somali gang desecrated the bodies of American soldiers." And Marianne Means, the newspaper columnist, had written "We went into Somalia because of horrible television images; we will leave Somalia because of horrible television images." But somehow, that sounds too simple. So Mr. Secretary, help us understand the impact, and let's start with the specific in Somalia. Help us understand your own thought process. SEC. LAWRENCE S. EAGLEBURGER: First of all, Marvin, it is much too simple. And I will tell you, if you're talking about "the CNN effect" and specifically CNN, I think that's much more to be examined in the case of the Gulf War. Somalia, yes, television made a big difference as such because of the daily drumbeat of pictures of starving children. No question about that. But that was television across the board, that wasn't just CNN by any means. And when this all came to a head, I'll try to describe it as best I can now. Remember, this was also the time that there was a lot of pressure on the Bush Administration to go into Yugoslavia, or into Serbia, or whatever you want to now call it. So you had two cases running at us at the same time and a lot of television on both. Let me start by saying there's no question that television made a big difference. But I remember thinking at the time that we had two cases where we were being pressured to get involved and I was convinced that if we got involved at that stage in the Yugoslav mess we'd be there for a very long time and it would hurt a lot. Here was the Somali case - I'm being very blunt about it. Here was the Somali case where there was clearly a humanitarian need but there was also a way for the Administration to make its point on that subject and at the same time, to be blunt with you, take some of the pressure off not doing anything in Bosnia or what part of Yugoslavia it was at the time we were supposed to be doing something about. I went to the President, I can't remember if Jim Baker was in town or what, but anyway, I went to the President with a - First of all, the State Department. There were people in the State Department pushing me very hard on both issues and there was no question in my mind, I wasn't going to do anything if I could avoid it on the Yugoslav case at the time. The Somali case was a much easier case and permitted us at the same time to do something right and to make it clear we were doing it. I went to the President, and to my great surprise nobody, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, nobody raised any objection. On the understanding, and on this Bush was very clear. On the understanding that we went in, fed, and got out. And indeed, he called then President-elect Clinton, went through this with him as he felt he had to, and I think he did have to, and it put the President-elect always in a tough spot but in effect I think, I don't want to overdo it, but my understanding from President Bush was that Clinton in effect said yes, go ahead. It's certainly clear that he didn't say don't do it. Then Bush sent me up to talk to Butros Butros Gali to try to get things organized, but I've got to say from the beginning in President Bush's mind and clearly in mine, it was feed and get out. Let me just make one other point. After we had left, the Administration had changed, that objective changed. There's no question, I think, I wasn't around at the time but I think there's no question that TV pictures of the dead GI had a lot to do with our leaving. I think that's, by the way, always a serious mistake if when somebody's killed you pack up and leave. But my point is yes, it made a big difference but it wasn't CNN as such. CNN as such made a tremendous difference in the Gulf War. MR. HESS: But Larry, what is so fascinating about the story you just told is the CNN effect, and it's not really meant to be CNN, it's television. "The CNN effect" is usually told as "television made us do it". And you're saying that at least one type of CNN effect, television effect, was that you used television in order to do what you wanted to do, which is very interesting. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I should also say Nancy Kassebaum, a senator then, was very influential in this whole process, too. She was very interested in getting something done. MR. KALB: Help me out with one point though. You said before that television was very important and you don't want to skip over that. You emphasized that twice. How is it important? You're Secretary of State. Something goes on television. So what? Why does that influence you? SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Marvin, you spent enough time "so whatting" us in your previous incarnation that you know perfectly well what I mean. (Laughter) SEC. EAGLEBURGER: The fact of the matter is we live in a democracy. American foreign policy more often than I think should be the case is affected by not just the news media and television, but by ethnic politics. Some of the things we ended up doing or not doing in Cyprus, for example, were purely and simply because of the Greek lobby. I could go through any number of these. My point is, when you try to manage foreign policy in a democracy you forget at your peril that there are a bunch of people out there that may vote your President out of office and in my case they did. Not for those reasons, I think. But you can't ignore it. You may not always accept it but you can't ignore it. MS. JUDY WOODRUFF: If I can jump in, the pictures coming in from Bosnia were just as compelling, weren't they? SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Oh, sure. MS. WOODRUFF: And yet you made a different choice. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: A different choice because, and I'm going to make it sound as if this was all my decision and it wasn't, please understand. In the end the President made the choice. But the point was, here were two cases where there was a humanitarian need. In one of them the consequences of becoming directly involved were at best totally unpredictable and probably could lead to serious consequences. In the Somali case a much clearer opportunity to do something right and get the hell out. The mistake that was made was we didn't get out. But in terms of making a choice, you have to make choices. If every time all we did was respond to the press or the television we would long since have passed Mexico on the way down the list of powerful republics. But you make choices, and in this case, as Marvin pointed out, the television, the press, the whole thing gave us an opportunity to make a choice which to some degree, I'll be blunt about it again, to some degree took pressure off the constant drumbeat that the Bush Administration didn't give a damn about human rights. MR. CLAUS KLEBER: It sounds almost like there is something bad about the fact that American policy reacted to television pictures. I don't think they reacted to television pictures. They reacted to the facts on the ground that became visible. You couldn't hide them any more. This is why it's not a CNN effect, it's a television modern communications world effect that you cannot close your eyes to something that happens in Mogadishu. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: It's true. But at the same time I can cite you any number of examples where we have shut our eyes. The whole Yugoslav issue for a long time, move on to Burundi where the pictures were pretty awful. But again, at some point it gets you back to the policymaker having to say what are the issues we can affect and how much will it cost? So yes, you're right. Again, if there hadn't been television and the reporting on the mess in Somalia we would never have done it, absolutely correct. But as you pointed out, the press was there on Yugoslavia and we didn't do anything until the next Administration. MR. KALB: Let's try to refine our discussion of "the CNN effect" and bring in our scholar Steve Livingston. You did a paper, at the Shorenstein Center in fact, in which you came up with three ways of looking at "the CNN effect". In one area you call it having the effect of an accelerant. The media shortened the decisionmaking response time. Sometimes it's an impediment. In the third it's an agenda-setting agent. It happens and it moves something forward. The Secretary's already indicated that. Spell it out for us, the three points. MR. STEVEN LIVINGSTON: I think a good way of thinking about "the CNN effect" is to think about the relationship between government officials and the media as sort of a dance, and the claim of "the CNN effect" is that at various points in time it's the media who are leading in this dance. Government is responding to the initiatives of news media and journalists. Whereas most of the time scholarship suggests that news agendas are established by the agenda of the State Department. So the claim of "the CNN effect" is that that typical relationship is reversed. I find it very interesting what the Secretary said, in part because it confirms some of my own conclusions about Somalia. We need to think about Somalia actually not as a single decision point but as two decision points. When we think about Somalia as the Secretary is, he's thinking about the decision on November 27th or so if I remember correctly to send in a large contingent of U.S. security forces. What we forget about are the various efforts before that in the summer of 1992 by Andrew Nazios who is currently the Director of U.S. AID to do anything possible to get CNN and other news organizations to pay the least amount of attention to Somalia. And if you look across Africa, there were humanitarian crises going on at the time that were as bad as Somalia. Angola, the Sudan, any number of cases could be pointed to. But yet through various efforts Nazios and Nancy Kassebaum, Tony Hall, there was an effort to do two things. First, get the news media including CNN and Gary Striker in particular at the time in Africa to pay attention to Somalia. Then one series of American relief aircraft along with a small contingent of U.S. service personnel were involved in the Somalia operations. Then the news media, including CNN, started to pay attention to that. But my point here is that CNN understood as an agenda-setting agent needs to be thought of very carefully because it was the effort of government officials to get the news media to pay attention to the situation in the first place that then led to those pictures that the Secretary says the President saw and others saw that led to that second decision to inject the troops. MR. HESS: Then what you're saying, Steve, is that there are some people in government who are using the media to try to pressure the government. After all, that decision has to be made by the President of the United States who is not otherwise necessarily inclined to make it. For one thing, he was running for office, he was rather busy. MR. LIVINGSTON: Right. MR. HESS: So that circularity is a rather interesting point that you make. MR. LIVINGSTON: Exactly. In two ways. We see that "the CNN effect" isn't the idea of the media leading in the dance, but rather you have a circumstance of whether some government officials are using the news media to move their agenda items further up the pay scale, to get it to the Secretary's desk. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: As long as you don't exclude the other point which is there are times when it is the media that, not because of some government bureaucrat is talking to them, but because events have captured the imagination of the media and that then translates into pressure on the Administration. MR. LIVINGSTON: At that point you run into the other two manifestations that I identified, and I look forward hearing your response to, where rather than working through the offices of the State Department and the National Security Council, the President ends up talking with other world leaders, there's an acceleration of decisionmaking processes. This isn't new to global real-time media. Marvin Kalb was involved in this at the end of the Cuban missile crisis. A direct link between government leaders. Finally, there's this possibility that we saw in the case of the young Ranger's body being dragged through the streets that's now made into a popular movie, that's the impediment effect where you've got a mature policy, you have news media paying some attention, anyway, to a circumstance, and then something like the body circumstance will simply derail the policy at that point. That's entirely different than suggesting that media can on their own set the agenda of the State Department or of an Administration. MR. KALB: Let me bring in our two journalists now. That being the case, listening to the diplomat and the scholar, Judy, how do you sitting at the heart of the CNN operation, you're the anchor, are you aware of all of these pressures as decisions are made in trying to get at inside the network decisionmaking process? Do you care at all that it's going to have an affect on somebody? MS. WOODRUFF: Sure we care. You want to factor in, if you're going to be smart about covering what's going on and telling people what's going on, you want to talk about as many factors as you know about, and whether it's pressure from somebody at the State Department on the Secretary of State and thereby on the President, somebody at the National Security Council, whether it's pictures in the news media. And I can tell you, just to give you a little anecdote about what happened in Somalia, we didn't have anyone on the ground who was working for CNN when the helicopter went down in Mogadishu. In fact we didn't have any access to what happened. What we did have was a stringer who was there. Within 24 hours after this happened, maybe a little bit more than that, he made known through channels to CNN that he had these remarkable pictures of what had happened. The scenes of this devastation in the city and some very grizzly scenes of the Americans, what had happened to them, the torture, and then the dragging of the bodies. We got access to that as quickly as we could. I was just joining CNN at the time and was barely aware of what was going on, I've learned about it since then. But they spent some time in an editing booth looking at these pictures very carefully. They ended up with something like 20 or 30 minutes. We ended up, I think what a lot of people don't realize is we ended up airing only about two and a half seconds of the soldier being, his body being dragged through the streets. But it's been so magnified since then to be those dreadful images. But a lot of care went into that. We ended up editing down the whole thing to something like 30 seconds and two and a half seconds of that was the worst of it. And yet it had this very understandable remarkable effect. We asked the White House and the State Department, I am told, before we aired it, we gave them several hours notice and said we're going to air these pictures, this is exactly what they look like, so be prepared. They chose not to make a statement. I don't know if - SEC. EAGLEBURGER: That was in the Clinton Administration. MS. WOODRUFF: Right, we're jumping ahead to the next Administration. The Clinton Administration chose not to say anything either at the White House or at the State Department. And as soon as we put it on the air we immediately shared it with the networks and with others. It was made widely available. MR. HESS: Reflecting how powerful an image can be on television. And let me just say, a little inside story. We had prepared a minute of film to start this program which was starving children, Americans being pulled through, dead Americans, and President Clinton. We decided that it was so powerful, so disturbing, that we would discuss it rather than show it this morning. That really is partly what we're all about. It's about television because television can be that powerful. MR. LIVINGSTON: At the same time it should be kept in mind too, that the image of the Ranger in particular was replicated in the media all over. And there was a lot of debate at the time amongst editors and newspapers whether it should be run in color, in black and white, how large, all of that. So there was a cumulative effect. We shouldn't just talk about CNN. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Again, I want to put an addendum to your impediment analogy, because in a way we're talking precisely about that. As you're sitting there trying to make decisions about whether you're going to do X, Y or Z there is an impediment effect before you ever do anything in the sense that you're sitting there thinking now if it goes bad what are we going to see and what are the consequences going to be? So even when you decide to do something, and I can't emphasize this enough, I think it's still true. In the background with all of us, at least at the time and I think it's still true, there's Vietnam sitting back there, and it may have given us a lot of wrong lessons but it's there in the back of your mind all the time. So you may have an impediment effect which keeps you from doing something before you ever get there. MR. LIVINGSTON: The best example of that actually follows Somalia, because as we recall about six months after Somalia something called Rwanda occurred, April/May of 1994. The Clinton Administration had been so burned by its mishandling of Somalia that it stood back and watched close to a million people or so be systematically exterminated in Rwanda and did not become involved in Rwanda until July/August of 1994 in the role of a humanitarian response, not in an effort to stop the genocide that had occurred months before. I think it was a direct result of an impediment effect of a sort as a result of Somalia. MR. KALB: Claus, I don't know whether you were here as a Bureau Chief in the early 1990s. MR. KLEBER: I was, yes. MR. KALB: What is your recollection of it? And give us your judgment now, and obviously it comes from the perspective of a European. MR. KLEBER: First I want to say what was said about the pictures cuts both ways. If I'm not totally mistaken I think the pictures at the end of the Gulf War of the so-called Highway of Death where devastation rained on the Iraqi forces had a lot to do with the fact that America decided to let go. So it is not always America defeated which makes an event, it can be also gloriously victorious speaking from a battlefield perspective which changes the attitude. But since you are asking for a European perspective, in my memory the icon of media coverage of Somalia was the American forces landing on the beach. And cameras lighting special forces trying to make a sneak attack which was, of course, ridiculous. It shows that both sides were not ready for this kind of situation. For me it showed one more thing. The American forces brought the correspondents along. They landed on the same beach in the same minutes and they were equally clueless about what they got themselves into. This is where I think the shortcomings of American coverage of the continent of Africa, or you can replace it with almost every other continent where there is no current war with American troops involved, the American commercial networks - CNN has a very specific role but it also has a very small market share. It's extremely powerful but it doesn't address the audience at large. The audience at large in the country still gets the bulk of their international information from the big - declining but still big - television network news. They have decided for purely commercial reasons that having bureaus in Africa with constant staffs, with constant reporting, is not economically feasible. As far as I know, neither NBC nor ABC nor CBS had a full-fledged office with people with local knowledge, real correspondents, the rank of a Cronkite or Tom Fenton, let's say, in Africa. So not only were the American policymakers unprepared about Somalia, in fact the people - MR. KALB: Why do they need the press? MR. KLEBER: They needed to know how complicated the situation is. MR. KALB: But they've got embassies all over the place. MR. KLEBER: Well the policymakers, fine. The American public had no clue of what was going on. A little anecdote from a couple of years later, when Clinton finally made an effort and visited Africa to put the continent on the map, my bloody foreign network reported more on the American President's trip, way more, I think 15 times more. I counted the minutes. About this trip through Africa by an American President and the on-the-ground perspective and the local reception and the problems he was addressing and all this stuff than any American network. MR. KALB: Why? MR. KLEBER: Because I'm doing public television and we felt there is an obligation to tell people about Africa and Clinton's visit was a great angle to bring it into the main evening news. And we did that. Our commercial competition, which unlike America, we are leading the market in Germany, so they had to follow. Their correspondents had to offer a little bit of that stuff to their audiences too in order to be taken seriously. There is an information culture which still exists, thankfully, otherwise I would be out of work, thankfully in Europe which has fallen victim in the United States to the bottom line of the GEs and Mickey Mouse network and so on who calculate the news in a very different way. MR. KALB: But Claus, do you find in Germany for example that all of your coverage, let's say the Clinton visit to Africa, has any impact on government policy? MR. KLEBER: It has the impact that when things went wrong in Somalia the Germans were much less shocked and unprepared, and I'm not talking policymakers, I'm talking the public that supports the policymakers, than the Americans were. They thought they'd go in, everything's fine, the kids get fed, America is even more liked than before and we get out. It is not that easy. It was a story that wasn't told until Aideed became prominent and Americans got captured, and these television pictures. MR. KALB: Mr. Secretary? SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Two things. First of all, I can't prove it obviously, but I'm absolutely convinced that the Bush Administration would not have made what I consider a mistake of the Clinton Administration and have stayed on. Certainly we would not have thought we knew how to reconstruct the government of Somalia when most of us couldn't find where Mogadishu was. That much we did know about our ignorance. But there's another point, and I have to be careful how I say this, but what you've just heard, it's classic European in a way. MR. KLEBER: That's my role. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I know it is. (Laughter) But it's also my role to show you not that you're wrong, but did you notice it is, we have to cover this so the Americans can do something? I don't know how else to say this other than to say one of the, in a way for American policymakers thank goodness the American media aren't as active as you are because if they were we'd be all over the map. The dangers of proliferating our efforts instead of being serious about our strategy would be I think encumbered. But the fundamental point is one of the things, and as I get older I get more of it which only means I'm more crotchety than I was, but - No, I was always crotchety, I know. (Laughter) But this point about, let me put it in another term. And I'm not attacking you, believe me, but I am attacking a syndrome here if I may. That is here's an awful problem and instead of our doing something about it we're going to get the Americans - It's not even a question of we can get the Americans to do it because we don't want to. The attitude after 50 years I guess is, we'll identify a problem and the Americans then can go settle it and if they settle it badly it's because they're stupid or they don't know as much as we do about the particular issue. Most of the time, by the way, that's correct. But my point is there is in the background of what you said, and it's not aimed at you, but there is in the background of all of this something that for some of us at least who used to make decisions of one kind or another, that is a constant frustration. That is the inability on our part to successfully involve our allies in not just the decisions but in the actions that follow from those decisions. Now somewhat better in the Gulf case, somewhat better now in the war against terrorism, but still if we're not there nobody else is. MR. HESS: Can I get back to Judy for a moment? Her intervention showed that in a particular situation, CNN, the network she was working for which is true of anyone, was very very careful in its selection of material. But I want to get a sense of where CNN is unique, despite Claus' point that most Americans get the news from the three broadcast networks, nevertheless most of the world gets it through CNN. So Judy, you're sitting there and you must know that you're being watched in every foreign ministry in the world. A friend of ours, Mort Abramowitz who was Ambassador to Turkey during the Persian Gulf War, talked about going in to see the President of Turkey who barely had time because he was so busy watching the monitor of CNN. How does this affect you? I'm curious as a person, but also in the decisions that you may have to make as a journalist. MS. WOODRUFF: Well you will remember that Ted Turner's famous admonition to all of us was that that word "foreign" was banned on CNN. We had to speak of international affairs, not foreign affairs. The truth is, Steve, that more and more CNN programming, there's a distinction between CNN programming in the United States, what we call the domestic channel, and CNN programming outside the United States. For some time there's been CNNUS, domestic; CNNI, international; but now even more than that it's been expanded so that now the programming overseas is divided up by continent, by region of the world. So there's a CNN that's unique to Latin Americans, to Spanish-speaking people of Central and South America. There's another CNN over Africa. We just cut a new arrangement deal with part of the Arab world. We've got a different CNN over Asia. So that much more of our programming is now unique. But to get back to your question, yes, you are aware of it. And I think it particularly came to mind, and I'm jumping around a little bit. You can bring me back to your point if you'd like. After September 11th. Here we were in a situation where we knew at that time we were being seen, the U.S. channel was being seen overseas everywhere for large chunks of time - on end. Many times, many occasions I did and I know other anchors would say well we, what should we do? Meaning we in the United States. And yet we are the journalists and they are the government. Now we're Americans, but it did, we all, I know we who were on the air wrestled with this question of how do we refer to ourselves? We are U.S. citizens. We are just as outraged and just as hurt by what happened as everyone else in this country. At the same time, we are supposed to be somewhat removed from it as journalists. So we did wrestle with that. I had to be careful not to keep saying we. We put out all sorts of internal directives saying don't refer to the U.S. government as we. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: That only confirms something I've thought for years. (Laughter) MS. WOODRUFF: Which is what? SEC. EAGLEBURGER: No, come on, Judy. I'm kidding. MS. WOODRUFF: I know. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: At least I think I am. MS. WOODRUFF: I just wanted you to say that. (Laughter) MR. KALB: Steve, you wanted to make a comment? MR. LIVINGSTON: I wanted to refer to Judy's first point, that is when we talk about CNN it's important to keep two things in mind. Not only is it true that there are different CNNs, and if you've spent any time overseas you can see how much programming one sees in Europe is different than the programming you see here. In part there is considerably more international affairs program on CNNI than there is on CNN, which is unfortunate. But the other thing too that I think is important, the other thing that should be kept in mind is that the CNN that we were talking about earlier, the CNN of 1992 is a very different CNN than 2002. Not just in what perhaps comes most immediately to mind, the corporate relationships and all of that and business issues, but the technology has changed radically. To cover Mogadishu in 1992 you might have used a satellite phone that was huge and it required a generator. You most recently have seen satellite phone technology that's used, the TH-1, Talking Head 1, the video phone that is essentially self-contained in a laptop computer with a small camera, and that makes for a very mobile reporter who isn't anchored to the Al Rashid Hotel or isn't anchored to a spot where there is juice and a transmitter. You've got a correspondent who can go to the scene of action. That makes for a different kind, at least the potential for a different kind of news coverage of breaking crises than what you had ten years ago or even five years ago. MR. KALB: But might it not have the effect of intensifying "the CNN effect"? MR. LIVINGSTON: It has the possibility of actually intensifying parachute journalism which is not necessarily good. In other words, in 1995 or 1994 for the Bureau Chief, Charlie Hoff in London of CNN to decide to cover something in Africa, he had to decide yes, it was worth sending the KU fly-away unit that was going to cost him $50,000 just to get it in place. Now that decision can be sure, we'll put it in overhead luggage and we'll send that correspondent there, and then we'll send that correspondent here and there and over there, and it has the potential for creating a more fragmented, disjointed international coverage, which is not necessarily something that the U.S. audience needs. MR. KALB: But couldn't one see it the other way, that if the technology makes it that much easier to cover a story and to get it on the air doesn't that really have the effect of intensifying what it is that we're talking about? Because it's there, it's more easily available, you've got the technology, it happens. MR. HESS: It also means that broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC as opposed to CNN that's in this business - is more likely to cover an international story. MR. KLEBER: What do they cover then? They send people only where action is happening. They don't go, well, Rwanda is a bad example because of the volcano story now, but they didn't go there four months ago to say what has happened on the ground. Let's analyze. Let's talk to the people. Let's send a team there for two weeks and put together a decent story that gives a background and framework. To address the Secretary's point of a moment ago, the golden rule here is that better information of the public does not necessarily mean better decisions of policymakers. Yugoslavia is the excellent point in case. Europeans, Germans especially, knew all there was to know about Yugoslavia but it took American action to finally get something done. So sometimes information can also be an impediment to action. MR. KALB: Let's talk about the "Nightline effect" for a second. Koppel and company went to the Congo back in August. They intended to do a five-part series. They were ready to run the five-part series when September 11th happened. They held off waiting for the moment, the volcano erupted the moment, and now they're putting it on. Is there any indication from what it is that you're running in Germany, for example, that Nightline's five-part series on the Congo encourages you to do something, or encourages the German government to do something, or for that matter even the U.S. government to do something? And I'm really asking the question to get back to my very first point and the point of Steve's argument and the Secretary's argument. There are so many variations of the impact of television on policy that it's very difficult, although we label it "the CNN effect", it's very difficult to think of it other than in this very broad media concept. That we live in a media environment in which the impact on policy is almost a natural flow from one up to the other. Does that sound about right? MS. WOODRUFF: Something that comes to mind as you say that, Marvin, I don't know whether this is in Steve's paper or not, but the idea that when there's a vacuum of policy, when policy hasn't been made, it seems to me media coverage is then more likely to fill that vacuum. We don't know anything, we don't have a policy about it. Here come these dramatic pictures of one form or another, either troops or human suffering and oh, now we have at least the outline of what a policy could be, might be, until government catches up and says here's what we should be doing based on these rational reasons. MR. HESS: One aspect of policy that Steve set out that we haven't really touched and is rather important or has been in terms of Afghanistan is the question of security. What do all these pictures mean when there are American troops on the ground and so forth? Are we endangering people by that? Or even one aspect which CNN and the other networks, and you I remember specifically had to deal with was the question of the bin Laden tapes. Would you like to add to that? Your worry about the operational security. MS. WOODRUFF: Those tapes were made available, and at first it was whoa, we have the man, the face of evil, and we can't get it out there fast enough. Then of course it became clear that it was much more complicated. It's not that a lot of thought didn't go into it, but in the beginning we knew what we had was something that was of great value in terms of informing the American people. They knew bits and pieces about it. But here he was talking, apparently soon before the events of September 11th. MR. KALB: But Judy, wasn't that because or at least in part because the White House asked the networks to please not cover, not to give a great deal of - MS. WOODRUFF: That was after. It was put on, and then the White House said to exercise restraint. MR. KALB: Then he sort of vanished from American public - SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I've never understood why the White House wanted to do that. One of the things, if I have learned nothing else in too many years in the government is almost never should the Administration and certainly not the White House get into the business of asking the media not to do something. Not only is it I think unwise because most of the time the media are going to do it anyway, but beyond that why should - If we're talking about a troop ship going somewhere, of course. But why did the White House not want those tapes shown? I still don't understand it. MS. WOODRUFF: I think that's a very good question. I think the judgment they exercised was questionable. I don't know what the value was of limiting his exposure. The American people are smart enough to look at this I think and judge it for what it is. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: And government ought to stay out of that sort of thing as much as it can. I really think that's wrong to do that. You can go all the way back to the Pentagon Papers. My dear friend Henry [Kissinger] would have been a hell of a lot better off if he'd never said one word about it. That's the other point. You tend to hype precisely the thing you don't want to hype when you do that. MR. KLEBER: Obviously nobody believes the official reasoning that hidden messages might be there. Just for the record. MR. KALB: But is there any difference, Claus, when the American government asks American networks not to run something, and for the most part the networks obliged the government. What about your network in Germany? Does it in any way become affected by a White House appeal of that sort? MR. KLEBER: No, certainly not. MR. KALB: Would it go the other way? Because of a White House appeal you'd run it? MR. KLEBER: The German Chancellor with an equally non-convincing reason, I think he would have a choice how heavy he leans on the network, how much office capital he wants to invest. If he really sets his mind to not having this stuff aired I think he would get his way, at least with my network. MR. KALB: Your network is totally dependent - MR. KLEBER: It is like the BBC. It's not Deutsche Welle which is what some people might watch occasionally which is the government Voice of America, but ours is BBC. We are publicly controlled, but not by the government. It's a Board of Directors set up of unions and churches and political parties and all kinds of interest groups. We are reasonably independent from the government. MR. KALB: Mr. Secretary, what about the pictures of the prisoners in Guantanamo and the way in which those pictures, not all that many actually, but the way in which the pictures have affected at least the British tabloids and parliamentary structure. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: And human rights groups here and there. You should never have asked me the question because my answer would be if they're going to show these pictures they should be followed immediately by pictures of planes flying into the two towers. Of course we shouldn't be vicious, nasty, we shouldn't torture, but I don't have the least problem with having them hobbled, being escorted around. I don't know how to - beyond which I'm prepared to take the word of the government, if you will, that you have to be very careful of them because if you're not careful they may end up slitting your throat. You've asked the wrong person. I have absolutely no sympathy for it. MR. KALB: But you're the right person. Why do you think Secretary Rumsfeld seemed to be so upset by the pictures and the criticism that he devoted almost all of his news conference yesterday to that one issue? SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I can't get my head into his but I will tell you I suppose it is because he sees this as the beginning of a major problem for the Administration because we will be perceived to be vicious, nasty, and unfeeling. And instead of we are maybe vicious and nasty but we're also feeling. I'm serious. I can't have a hell of a lot of sympathy, and I'm simply saying you're asking the wrong guy. If I were Rumsfeld I would be just as upset about this. MR. KLEBER: There is a European aspect to this. It's a little surprised that the criticism arose in Europe. Maybe I've been in this country too long. It's just a knee-jerk reaction. OF course they are prisoners of war, they were combatants, they tried to kill American soldiers, they are living in relative comfort from all I know in Guantanamo if you compare it to Kandahar where they are kept in cages stacked one upon the other. In my reporting I used the sound bite of a young military police officer in Guantanamo who rightfully said they are basically living like I'm living here. I don't have good protection against mosquitoes and it's a barking [ph] arrangement and I have no problem with that. What you hear from Europe, from my editors actually who ordered the report and then said well, we think you too prominently displayed the young attractive soldier. I said no, I did it just right. (Laughter) MR. KLEBER: The attitude in Germany is we are concerned about the American image in the world because they have the moral superiority in this war and they are now playing, squandering it by not treating these people humanely. What really is is after the war is over, of course it's not over, it will be going on for another 20 years I guess, they think now let's everybody go home, nobody gets hurt, let's celebrate Easter or something and be nice and quiet and civilized. And the American attitude, which I share in this particular case is no, we are not at that point yet. These people, if I were the Marine commander in Guantanamo, I personally would probably decide exactly like he did. But I would allow media there, allow to film them everything, get away with the fake argument that the Geneva Convention, which by the way doesn't apply, but it specifically rules out filming prisoners of war. So this one clause we enforce, all the others we don't care for. But this ridiculous irrelevant clause we enforce, putting a screen of secrecy over the whole thing, making it obscure and suspicious and causing some of the European reactions which really mean more trouble than they are worth. MR. KALB: Is it a broad-based European reaction? You called it knee-jerk a moment ago. Is it quick and apt to end within a matter of a day or two or five? Or is this something that reflects a more deep set of problems regarding the European view of American policy in Afghanistan, or more broadly the war against terrorism? MR. KLEBER: Europeans have this urge that somehow if we all talk and have enough conferences and publish enough papers and send in enough relief workers all problems can be solved peacefully, including the war on terrorism. The American reaction is totally opposite. It's a problem, let's deal with it and do whatever it takes. These two attitudes, especially towards Third World countries collide again and again. It took the shock of September 11th to overcome these cultural differences and apparently that was good only for a couple of weeks and now on the issue of treatment of political prisoners, on the relief efforts, and also on the conduct of war, Americans are using cluster bombs. I got called to do a story on the use of terrible cluster bombs. Rumsfeld said they are part of our arsenal and we use them when we deem it necessary. Yeah. I think so. There's a war going on and I don't think that the other side was terribly selective in their choice of weapons. But again, I may have been in this country too long. The use of cluster bombs was deemed to be somewhat against international law and one should conduct the war a little more nicely. MR. HESS: Is there still a war going on? Or are we about ready, or have we gone back to business as usual? Of course your wonderful program that I love, because it's in my business, "Inside Politics" starts again next week. MS. WOODRUFF: Monday. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Have you got this all arranged between the two of you? MR. HESS: Absolutely. We couldn't otherwise pay her fee. (Laughter) MS. WOODRUFF: It depends on who you talk to and what the purpose is. I think the Administration says for its purposes at certain moments the war, we've done very well, we're celebrating, they're not saying it's over. They keep reminding us that it's going to go on and on and on, and I think there are other purposes behind their stating that. We all know that it doesn't end, they don't look at the war against terrorism over here in a box and then they have the rest of their agenda completely separated. It's all part of a parcel. Karl Rove came out and said it over the weekend, the Administration should benefit from its conduct of the war. MR. HESS: Katie Couric said offhand that maybe some of the loss of listenership for the Today Show was that maybe they stayed on the war too long. Aren't you all sort of interested in having the war over? MS. WOODRUFF: We covered the war fairly well, as long as it has been, there's been a lot of activity, when there was bombing, when there was daily activity, we were covering it. But now we're down to a very small mopping up operation. We're looking for Osama, we're looking for Omar. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: If I may, however, here, because you've touched on something I want to try to mention anyway. You talked about "the CNN effect" and here again I need to come to the Gulf War. We sat with our television sets tuned to CNN throughout that whole time, and this is a point that CNN can do which unfortunately the Katie Courics of this world at least don't understand, which is CNN has an impact at least on decisionmakers, some at least, because it's there all the time. During the Gulf War you could always figure out by turning on the television where things were going in Iraq and a hell of a lot better than I could tell from any telegram. So there was first of all, but it's a very important point in terms of a particular crisis that CNN, not the networks who are always worried about their money-making, but CNN was able to stay with these things when others were not and I found that very very important in the Gulf War. The second point I would make gets back to this secrecy thing. And I think maybe it is also a CNN effect. That is you get decisionmakers who resent the fact that they're driven by CNN and so forth and so on so that when it comes to issues like should we let CNN or the television into Guantanamo, aha, this is a chance not to do it. It is always wrong, it always leads to suspicions that, in fact if the suspicions are correct then I understand why they won't let you in. But if they're not correct, all they do is make the suspicions look real. Again, if I learned nothing else in too many years in the U.S. government it is, because I started out the other way just like everybody else. But I learned that it makes no sense 99 times out of 100 not to let them see as far in as they want, the media, as far in as they want to go. Particularly in cases like the Guantanamo thing. We are stupid not to let them in, just as we may have some government officials right now who are stupid because they won't talk about their arrangements or lack thereof with a certain company that just went down the tubes. MS. WOODRUFF: We need you back in the Administration making these arguments. (Laughter) SEC. EAGLEBURGER: It's so dumb. That's the basic point. MR. KALB: One of Steve's earlier points is that CNN today is not the CNN that the Secretary just described. It's quite different. The management of CNN is different, the money structure of CNN is different. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: If you had a Gulf War would they do it differently? MS. WOODRUFF: I think a short-lived military action such as the Gulf War we would do it the same way. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Short-lived was a couple of months. MR. HESS: Ninety days. MS. WOODRUFF: Three months. MR. LIVINGSTON: I would speculate that you wouldn't do it the same, simply because you wouldn't be tied to the Al Rashid Hotel so much. You had a foreign transmission unit that you were - MS. WOODRUFF: I meant in terms of how much coverage. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: It might be different in coverage, but with the time spent it would be more or less the same. MS. WOODRUFF: The time would be just as - MR. LIVINGSTON: One of the concerns I have about the contemporary version of CNN is that it's news as mini-series. You have Chandra Levy. Before Chandra Levy it was - So you have these periods of intense concentration on a story and then somebody wakes up one morning and says ah, the war is over and we can go on to the next bang-bang, the next action. You're defining news as a dramatic event rather than as a process. It leads people to not be able to understand the underlying conditions, the processes, that led to the war and that will lead to a war perhaps in Somalia or the Philippines or an invasion of Iraq. That's where the next phase of the story goes and it's left to CNN to decide whether it's important enough to continue to cover it. MS. WOODRUFF: That's why it's so important for example right now for us to cover events like this redevelopment conference in Japan where they've been discussing the need to - SEC. EAGLEBURGER: That's next. MS. WOODRUFF: That Afghanistan has going forward. And we have done that. But your point is right. It's not as exciting as a bang-bang so we're probably not all over it, but we're still covering it. But you're right. Decisions are made every day. How much weight do we give to this, how much weight, and the balance - MR. KLEBER: There is a commercial interest, of course, in blowing one story up as big as you can get it. That may be Chandra Levy, it may be the Gulf War, it may be OJ Simpson, it may be Somalia, it may be Afghanistan. You need one story because this is what the market responds to. Nothing complex. And while this is going on in Afghanistan Sumatra has a real problem. This is not how you make ratings. You want the nation focused on one story. This is a vicious cycle. One network feeds the other and leads more in the focus of one story and a lot of other stories don't get the coverage they deserve. They blow up tomorrow. MR. HESS: Are we all convinced that it's back to business as usual? Is there anyone here who will take the position that Americans, because of Afghanistan, terrorism, because of the proposition that it's a long war, have become more interested in the rest of the world at least as it affects them? And that the networks would respond more to that, especially since as Steve points out, the technology exists there for them to do it? Is it really going to be the way it had been largely from the end of the Cold War for the next decade? MS. WOODRUFF: My evidence is only anecdotal, but I have to believe that the American people are newly awakened to terror as a result of 9/11. Does that mean that everyone will now go out of their way to read those long pieces in the New York Times or in the Wall Street Journal or in the Washington Post about what's going on in, name a country? Latin America. I don't know. But I do think there is at least a heightened awareness which does mean the news media has to respond to that. How much greater is it? I don't think we're going to go back to where we were pre-September 11th, but have we done a dramatic change? Probably not. MR. LIVINGSTON: Let me respond to Steve's point by plugging one of Steve's books. One of Steve's books looked at foreign affairs news coverage, and one of the things he found in his content analysis was something a guy named Jim Larson found before him, and something that I have found in my own analysis afterwards, and that is international affairs news on the part of American news media tends to be understood as instances where the United States is involved in something going on overseas. An alternative understanding is that events happen overseas that don't necessarily involve the United States. MR. HESS: Yet. MR. LIVINGSTON: Yet, or maybe never. The concern is that after September 11th if CNN and other news media see international affairs news solely through the lens of the American war on terrorism, we are actually going to have less rich, international news coverage that's not as rich, as varied, but rather it's going to continue to be seen through the lens of what the United States is interested in at a given point in time, and that's not to prepare us well for understanding the world. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I think there's another answer to your question, and again it shows my prejudices. But I think what the September 11th events have done that have a lasting impact, and by lasting I mean five years, I don't know how long but for a period of time, the only way I can describe it is that the Church Committees of this world, the wrecking, if you will, of, let's use a more neutral world. The decisions that the CIA should not be recruiting nasty people or dealing with them. This whole atmosphere, I think those who advocated it on September 10th have largely had it shoved down their throats on September 11th and I think it will be awhile before that general attitude about government and the military and the whole issue of security, I think it will be awhile before that gets back to where it was, which I think did serious damage to our ability to manage these kinds of affairs. But in that sense I do think there's been a change that will last awhile. MR. HESS: And a note for the transcript. The Church Committee is not the Episcopal Church. It's Frank - (Laughter) SEC. EAGLEBURGER: That shows you how old I was. MR. KALB: Two points. One, immediately after September 11th and for about two or three months thereafter there was not an anchor, forgive me Judy, or there was not a prominent person in the media who did not say that the media had changed forever. September 11th has changed the media forever. I think that is a statement that is going to have to be reexamined. Point number two, it's a question of whether the people running networks and newspapers today can make decisions consistent with two points. One, what might broadly be called a national interest; and two, what more narrowly might be called the public interest. What I mean by that is a recent poll that Andy Kohut did just today or yesterday says that the American people by a very large majority still remain committed to the idea of fighting terrorism, committed to the notion that there will be sacrifice, casualties, committed to the idea that it will go well beyond Afghanistan and other types of military operations will have to take place in other areas. The question is can editors, can executive producers, can the anchors see their responsibility in that light or see their responsibility more narrowly as producing in newspaper terms a 22 to 27 percent increase in profit each year? That is an extraordinary pressure that operates now on newspapers and I imagine in a slightly different way on networks. You're shaking your head. MS. WOODRUFF: You cannot ignore what management tells you is the case. If they're only going to spend so much money on international news coverage, what are you going to do? You can continue to work for that news organization and they say we're going to devote this amount of money to covering stories outside the U.S., and here are the ratings, and we expect this, that and the other. You cannot ignore that if you're the executive producer of a program or the anchor or whatever. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: When I'm not up here in the effete capital of the United States, I live in Charlottesville, Virginia which, is far enough away that it isn't infected by everything you people all have up here, but there is a serious point here which I will now get to which is you get out of Washington or out of New York, get out into the countryside, and I'm telling you, I hate to say this, but if you all think you really make that much difference on a day-to-day basis, you're wrong. I can't tell you how things in and around Charlottesville, the flags are still up that weren't there on the 10th, they fly them on their cars, they have them in their windows, they have them on the lawns, and the whole place is different. It's going to stay that way I think for a fairly long time. And what that I guess is telling me is as we all sit here and talk about this whole question of the CNN syndrome or whatever, and as I'm the first to concede to you if you're in government you worry about it a lot, we may all be exaggerating the influence when you get out and around in the middle of the countryside. It's not necessarily, and they all love Judy, there's no question about that. But at the same time, they don't necessarily always accept what somebody on television says. I don't know how to emphasize it enough. I see it every time I go back to Charlottesville and I'm sure it's the same - in fact originally I'm from the Middle West and I've been back there a couple of times. It's so different. MS. WOODRUFF: They shouldn't accept what everybody says on television. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Of course not, I'm not saying they should. What I'm saying is we may all be exaggerating amongst ourselves the impact not so much in Washington and amongst the decisionmakers but out there in the great wide country as a whole we may all be exaggerating the impact. MR. LIVINGSTON: The thing is that "the CNN effect" is about how television affects you when you're - SEC. EAGLEBURGER: That's quite different. Yes, sir. I agree with that. MR. KALB: That's where it takes place. MR. KLEBER: Let me say something about the country as a whole. The European perspective on September 12th was now America has awakened and in the usual American way they will trample the world brutally, do something powerfully but stupidly, and they take European civilization to steer the giant in the right direction. That was the common denominator in Europe. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: He's really very good, you know? (Laughter) MR. KLEBER: I don't hear that often, so thank you. So I made an effort, and I've covered the United States for 12 years, and can I say I know people in all 50 states. So I just took my Rollodex, called the painter in Iowa or the rafting guide in Utah and people like that and said what do you think now? I was surprised. I was struck by the differentiated tones I heard. I didn't talk to one ordinary American who said let's nuke them back to the Stone Age or something like that. They said let's think about it. We made mistake. We had disassociated ourselves from the world. They did not always choose these words, but that was the message. Let's do this thing right. There is no hate. The problem has been around for 20 years. We can stand back and think for a moment before we act. So this totally unscientific telephone polling influenced my reporting on the future American actions to no end, and I'm glad. In the end it turned out to be right. So it was good to go to Charlottesville, even by telephone and talk to the real people. One thing about this Administration, they are more closely linked to that than the previous Administration. They would have talked inside Washington Beltway. I think this whole Midland, Texas thing about the Administration steered them in the right direction in this case, not the wrong one. MR. KALB: I think it's time for some questions - MR. HESS: One question. Claus, I should have warned you, you wanted to catch a plane. Can you wait for 15 minutes or do you have to go? MR. KLEBER: I'll wait. Q: My name is Adu-Asare. I'm a reporter for AfricaNewscast.com. My question is to Mr. Eagleburger and concerns the conduct of diplomacy. Do you consider communication, political communication between governments, especially in times of war, as a normal channel, normal traditional conduct of diplomacy? That is before things, before the events of cable technology. And I'd like you to, if you would, premise your response within the context of the prospect for peace. SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Diplomacy and diplomats in times of crisis can play a modest role. The trouble is they all think they're going to play a major role. It very fast escalates, I think, in most critical cases, beyond the average diplomatic exchange to at a minimum Secretary Powell on an airplane here, there and everywhere in a hurry, or to put it in a different message, one of the things that so impressed me during the Gulf War, or the preparations for it, was what I considered to be the absolutely brilliant way in which President Bush got on that telephone and called I don't know, 25 different heads of state and made the difference in terms of building this coalition, more than anybody else. And certainly more than the average diplomat. I don't think I've answered your question, but the only way I can even come close to it is to say that in times of crisis the normal patterns of doing business very fast go out the window, beyond which the role of the diplomat today, under normal circumstances, is not the same |