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Media Coverage: Help Or Hinderance In Conflict Prevention by Nik Gowing

Media Coverage:
Help Or Hinderance In Conflict Prevention
By Nik Gowing

Carnegie Corporation of New York established the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict in May 1994 to address the looming threats to world peace of intergroup violence and to advance new ideas for the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. The Commission is examining the principal causes of deadly ethnic, nationalist, and religious conflicts within and between states and the circumstances that foster or deter their outbreak. Taking a long-term, worldwide view of violent conflicts that are likely to emerge, the Commission seeks to determine the functional requirements of an effective system for preventing mass violence and to identify the ways in which such a system could be implemented. The Commission is also looking at the strengths and weaknesses of various international entities in conflict prevention and considering ways in which international organizations might contribute toward developing an effective international system of nonviolent problem solving.

Commission publications fall into three categories: Reports of the Commission, Reports to the Commission, and Discussion Papers. Reports of the Commission have been endorsed by all Commissioners. Reports to the Commission are published as a service to scholars, practitioners, and the interested public. They have undergone peer review, but the views that they express are those of the author or authors, and Commission publication does not imply that those views are shared by the Commission as a whole or by individual Commissioners. Discussion papers are similar to Reports to the Commission but address issues that are more time-sensitive in nature.

Additional copies of this report may be obtained free of charge from the Commission's headquarters:

Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Suite 715
Washington, DC 20036-2103
Phone: (202) 332-7900 Fax: (202) 332-1919
e-mail: pdc@carnegie.org

Copyright 1997 by Carnegie Corporation of New York.
All rights reserved.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to many in diplomacy, government, the media, the military, and NGOs for sparing the time to discuss -- often at great length -- their experiences in conflict management. Their patience and enlightenment -- often during moments of intense pressure of conflict -- helped contribute to the conclusions of this study.
Most asked not to be identified. Despite the inevitable wish of readers to discover the source of some observations by way of endnotes, I have been happy to honour the commitments of anonymity that I made to those who helped clarify my perceptions.

I am honoured that under the direction of cochairs David Hamburg and Cyrus Vance, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict was moved to recognise this issue of the media and the information edge in conflict, and invited me to undertake this study. Hitherto, this issue has tended to be ignored in the study of conflict prevention and management. I am grateful to Jane Holl, the Commission's executive director, and Esther Brimmer, senior associate, for their patience and persuasive skills during my research and preparation. They helped to focus thoughts and open new doors for further examination. The patience of Robert Lande, the Commission's managing editor, was also much appreciated.

The text as published represents a study undertaken until early fall 1996. The subsequent violent events in Kivu and the Great Lakes of Central Africa through early summer 1997 have raised new and pressing uncertainties in whatever relationship exists between the media and conflict management. I suggest that they require further study as a matter of some urgency.

The media's role in the new generation of regional conflict and substate violence1 is ambiguous, unclear, and often misconstrued. Journalists and policymakers alike tend to assume that media coverage has an undefined yet pivotal role in helping conflict management or prevention. Indeed, a role for the media in conflict prevention is routinely assumed at conferences, seminars, and gaming sessions without question or any clear understanding of what that role is.
Frequently, there is an undignified rush to judgment. The instinctive assumptions made by policymakers, diplomats, and the military are often wrong. Their instant, superficial analysis of the media's role is usually skewed by the emotion of anecdotal comments as opposed to rigorous analysis. Frequently, the media are blamed both for what does and does not happen.

No reasonable person questions the emotive power of vivid, gruesome TV images from a developing conflict. Senior politicians and government figures refer candidly and without reservation to the "something-must-be-done" pressures created by TV, in particular, when it is present.

But off-the-cuff, apparently well-informed references to what is widely referred to as the "CNN factor"2 are not always helpful to understanding the precise dynamics of this relationship. Often such references are conspicuously ill-informed and based on false assumptions. Understandable, superficial emotional responses by political leaders who make decisions to engage (or not) in a conflict are not the same as a fundamental political will to act in the national interest. This distinction is crucial.

Like many decision makers, former U.S. defence secretary William Perry, for example, confirms the instant power of the CNN factor and the images that pursue him from office to hotel room to home.3 Pressed further, he talks of "digging in my heels" in response. More important, Perry confirms this author's earlier research4 that although vivid media reporting from conflict does provide useful tip-sheet coverage of developments, government officials usually consider most coverage to be trite and crude. Former U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns has highlighted the resulting dilemma: "The challenge for us in government is to balance the need to feed the beast of television against the more natural and wise human instinct to reflect before speaking."5

It is regrettable, some argue, that more real-time technology and capability to report from the world's zones of conflict have not necessarily been matched by a qualitative improvement in journalism or information flow (however they are measured).6 Instead, the trend is towards superficial, less-than-well-informed reporting, often based on second- or third hand information as opposed to primary data. The growing drift towards comment and opinion journalism is also identified as an obstacle to clear, impartial comprehension of a conflict and its root causes.

The picture created by such coverage is not as accurate or reliable as initial emotions might lead one to assume. The emotive effect on public opinion can be profound (though increasingly less so). But despite the conviction of many journalists about the powerful influence that their reporting has on policy,7 ministers and government officials instinctively doubt the veracity of such reporting. In the view of then British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind, "In complex conflicts it is difficult within the constraints in which journalists operate to portray a balanced picture which properly represents all the factors in a conflict."8

Rifkind's analysis is correct. Invariably, the reporter on location does not get it quite right. Sometimes such reporting can be downright wrong. For example, the few "facts" that Lindsey Hilsum reported to the BBC from Kigali during the first days of the Rwanda genocide in April 1994 she now accepts -- as any good correspondent should willingly do -- to have "turned out not to be quite true."9 In 1991 the TV images of JNA (Yugoslav National Army) tanks in the former Yugoslavia moving towards Slovenia left the impression of a unilateral offensive by Belgrade. The fact that Slovenia had declared independence from the Yugoslav federation and set up border posts tended to be forgotten as the graphic TV images showed a large JNA military operation advancing towards military engagement.

Therefore, rather than acting impulsively, most (though not all) officials treat what they see or read with considerable caution, if not scepticism. They demand further checks and information or intelligence. As Perry confirms: "We know from long experience that the first assessment of what happened is almost always wrong."10 This official scepticism is justified, given the understandably skewed nature of reporting during a developing crisis.11 However, the scepticism can also be deployed by governments as a convenient justification for doing nothing; increasingly this is the case.

Hence this author's caution in the opening words of this paper -- that the media's role is ambiguous, unclear, and often misconstrued. This is a crucial corrective to the conventional wisdom that a direct correlation exists between media coverage and political (therefore military) action in conflict prevention and management. Most important, the result is a government decision to commit itself publicly to the appearance of action12 by way of palliative humanitarian operations,13 rather than through a firm political commitment to do everything possible to prevent or end a conflict, using military force if necessary.14 As the controversial five-volume findings of the Committee for Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda concluded: "War was the extension of failed diplomatic effort. Humanitarian aid was a substitute for political action in Rwanda."15

Too often a direct cause-and-effect relationship between media coverage and apparent action is assumed. But the absence of national strategic interest, and therefore of political will, is conveniently forgotten and ignored. Signals and actions are often misconstrued. Ministers or government officials signal apparent willingness to engage when essentially the political will and strategy are otherwise. This reality is not helpful if the media reporting seems to create a moral imperative to prevent or halt a conflict.

The Rwanda evaluation report was an important exercise. It raised core issues relating to all media coverage of conflict. On Rwanda, it drew this vital conclusion:

The international media played a mixed role in the Rwanda crisis. While the media were a major factor in generating worldwide humanitarian relief support for the refugees, distorted reporting on events leading to the genocide itself was a contributing factor to the failure of the international community to take more effective action to stem the genocide.16
The same could be said for every regional conflict.

The committee's report also urged the media to learn from their shortcomings. The question now is: Have the media reviewed their errors and improved both their performance and insight in subsequent conflicts? Any judgment is speculative. However, based on the new dynamics of the media business described later in this paper, this author's view is pessimistic.

It is, of course, easy to heap blame and/or responsibility on "distorted reporting" by the media. Others are to blame for nonaction. Humanitarian agencies report that too often the governments of developed countries face a proliferation of data and information. The problem frequently is that they are either overloaded or inept at handling it.17 Thus, it is not only the media who could do a better job of analysing the information available. Many a government can be viewed as equally culpable of skewed interpretation, but probably for different reasons.

The Media or the Mediator: Which Comes First?
Like the misplaced assumptions of the power of the CNN factor in conflict management, most people readily assume that there is, or must be, a direct cause-and-effect relationship between media coverage and the chances for either preventing, preempting, or limiting a conflict. The emotions created by vivid, gruesome TV images add weight to this assumption.
Again, the evidence suggests otherwise. Conflicts are now predominantly of a substate and intrastate nature in what are described as "sick state" cases.18 Rarely is there media coverage of a conflict that is about to explode. It is war, and the images of fighting, that catalyses TV coverage, in particular, and not the vaguer possibility of a conflict breaking out at some indefinable moment. When it comes to prevention, media coverage is usually too late to help.19

Overall, there is now a growing body of analysis and research that, like Gowing's work,20 questions the conventional wisdom of a direct cause- and-effect relationship, although more case work needs to be done. Livingston and Eachus, for example, debunk the conventional assumption that emotive TV coverage of the humanitarian disaster in Somalia in late summer and early fall 1992 was pivotal in forcing President Bush to approve a U.S. involvement. "News coverage trends do not support the claim that news attention to Somalia led to the Bush administration's decision to intervene," they conclude.21

If we extrapolate the conclusions of Gowing and those of Livingston and Eachus, then it is reasonable to conclude that on many occasions (though not all), practitioners in the media and diplomacy overestimate the impact of TV images, especially in the realm of conflict management. As Lindsey Hilsum confirmed after reporting whatever she could manage to see of the horrors unfolding in Rwanda in April of 1994: "I couldn't stop the smallest part of it. I am only slowly beginning to understand it. At the time I could only watch and survive."22

Pressure To "Do Something":
Media Pressure and the National Interest
Ultimately, despite all the bleating, the vital national interests and strategic assessments of governments hold sway over emotions. Usually those national interests are far more limited than most assume, unless national security is threatened. However appalling the TV pictures and newspaper reporting, in the U.S. (and probably in many other Western countries, as well) "severe human rights violations, including genocide" are most unlikely to constitute a vital national interest.23
The official working view of the new generation of substate conflicts further minimises the chance of a significant intervention. They will have "no immediate, substantial impact upon the interests of the great powers" and "the international response to such crises will rarely be decisive."24

The approach of governments appears to follow a trend to be noninterventionist, regardless of the power of media reporting. The Clinton administration's Presidential Decision Directive No. 25 defines clearly those limits of U.S. national interest beyond which it is highly unlikely that the U.S. will ever commit itself, certainly militarily and on the ground.25 The directive came at a time when most leading European governments were exasperated by what they saw as the lack of both understanding and leadership on the Balkans crisis from the Clinton administration.

Eventually, there was a period when the Clinton administration belatedly tried to portray an image of assertive presidential engagement in foreign crises.26 The high-profile U.S. action on crisis management in Bosnia in the summer of 1995, which led to the Dayton peace agreement, is the primary example. The change of heart and new determination were welcomed internationally. The U.S. commitment was born out of a fundamental reassessment of U.S. national interests at the time, not because of media coverage. Privately, however, senior European officials remained sceptical as to how deep the U.S. commitment really went and how long it would last.

It could be said that in many ways the scepticism was justified. In March 1996, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake announced a seven- point, "tough-love" checklist of national interests that might lead to a U.S. use of force. In contrast to the proactive Balkans policy of mid-1995, Lake's new list barely tilted at the challenges of conflict prevention created by the new generation of substate conflicts. 27

Implicitly, the checklist apparently ignored any emotive power of TV and media coverage. Under the new Lake doctrine, defining a clear exit strategy seemed to carry more importance than any immediate urgency for a U.S. commitment to entering any conflict prevention operation. When it came to U.S. national interest, Lake defined the commitment as follows: "Increasingly our interests require that our military keep peace in the wake of internal conflicts." In other words, a U.S. commitment is likely only when there is peace after a conflict. A commitment that might prevent the conflict from exploding in the first place is most unlikely, whether reported by the media or not!

The Lake principles and the definitions of national interest in other capitals of the world help to explain the negligible response to most media coverage of conflicts, whether the conflict is looming or already being fought. Except in rare and unpredictable circumstances which can occasionally lead to "policy panic,"28 this explains the political impotence of TV pictures, despite any personal emotions that the images create among ministers, government officials, or members of the public with anything more than a fleeting interest in the horrors that they see or read about.

It can be argued that there is a strong measure of political hypocrisy and cant in many government circles. Leading nations publicly espouse an apparent determination to nip in the bud all challenges to stability and regional order. That, after all, is the tone of deliberations and communiqués at international forums like the G7 or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

But is such rhetoric reflected faithfully in official actions? Governments argue that the new threats to regional stability come not from ethnic fault lines29 but from "extreme nationalists and tribalists, terrorists, organised criminals, coup plotters, rogue states and all those who would return newly freed societies to the intolerant ways of the past."30 The former British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd characterised the same challenge with a different twist. "We have an interest in a world which is not run by a lot of tyrannical, blood-stained crooks" he said.31

Thus there may be an interest, but this author argues that except in moments of policy panic32 this interest usually does not translate into a determination to prevent. This underlines the stark limits to national interest. Determined belligerents coldly weigh up limits.33 They make a calculation to exploit such international lack of interest to their own advantage.34

An example of this occurred during a showing of the vivid TV pictures of the massacres in Rwanda. At a diplomatic banquet in London, Foreign Secretary Hurd described movingly the conflict as a "true heart of darkness" whose details "I can barely bring myself to watch." But for the British government, as with almost all others (except France), such horror and emotion did not translate into a proactive switch in policy designed to end the fighting. The later international response to the cholera catastrophe in Goma was a palliative panic response born out of shame more than a determination to end a policy of systematic slaughter that had already lasted four months.35 Politically, the impact of TV images in particular was at best marginal.

National Interest: The Media's Complaint
Many in the media despise the minimalist view implicit in government calculations of national interest. For reasons of self-interest and/or conviction, many journalists who risk their lives to report on a looming or exploding conflict will not be deflected from the view that the CNN factor either directly influences policy,36 or, if it doesn't, then it should.
Martin Bell, the BBC's distinguished former foreign affairs correspondent, complains that the wars he has covered were the result of failed politics and diplomacy. "The Bosnia war," said Bell, "has left me with the conviction that a foreign policy based only on considerations of national interest, and not at all of principle, is not only immoral but inefficient." Just before leaving TV journalism and becoming a member of the British Parliament, Bell actively promoted the need for what he christened a "journalism of attachment." Many colleagues, however, have rejected the concept.37 Others continue to argue that without TV coverage, looming conflicts and humanitarian crises would not appear at all on the government radar screen and therefore would be ignored by the international community.

Such expectations are wholly reasonable, of course. And they do make for a powerful argument.

However, once again, putting a conflict on the governmental radar screen is not the same as forcing that government to do something about it. The U.S. definition of "vital" or "extremely important" national interests is not the only one to rule out virtually any conflicts without direct relevance. British national interests, for example, are little different.38 Additionally, it is hard to find evidence that preemptive media coverage has explicitly led to preemptive diplomatic action designed to prevent a conflict from exploding. Almost none of the covert preparations made in advance of a conflict (e.g., secret weapons deliveries or plotting by adversaries) are ever known to or discovered by diplomats and NGO's, let alone journalists, until it is too late, and the conflict has exploded.39

Underlining the chasm between governments of leading world powers and the likes of Bell, Douglas Hurd wrote:

Martin Bell's principle cannot surely be that we should intervene against horrors only when they are televised? . . . Bosnia is far from unique. I can think of eight civil wars raging at this moment, with others simmering. Britain cannot be expected, even with allies, to intervene each time.40
Often the international community, once it sees the images, turns away, invokes international law, and declares that the conflict is an "internal matter" for the "sovereign government." Chechnya in November and December 1994 is the most vivid example. Burundi in July 1996 is another. For a variety of reasons underpinned by international law, governments with the power and capability to intervene cited "sovereignty" as a primary reason for doing as little as possible. Such nonresponses are the hallmark of what Martin Bell complains is the "nothing can be done club." Many journalists like Bell take a robust and emotive stand against such negativists. "It is in the interests of all our children -- theirs as well as ours -- that they do not prevail" he wrote.41

Nevertheless, the record suggests that despite emotive and often brilliant reporting, the government negativists have prevailed. This author questions whether the kind of moral stand taken by the likes of Bell, whether implicit or explicit, influences politicians who make costly decisions about whether to commit effort and resources to intervene in some way in a conflict. For the many journalists who have witnessed and reported conflicts as they unfold, there is no doubt, however. They want the bloodletting halted in an impartial way. "The case for intervention is not to help one side against another, but the weak against the strong, the armed against the unarmed; to take the side of the everyday victims of war who, until now, have had no protection. It is really a question, finally, of whether we care," wrote Bell.42

Except for a few rare moments of policy vacuum, politicians by and large take a starkly different view. Both in Chechnya (claimed as part of the territory of a former superpower) and Burundi (a tiny independent nation with no strategic importance to any great power), the international determination to respect the right of a sovereign nation to reject offers of outside assistance overrode any personal ministerial revulsion at the unfolding horrors being reported by the international media.

Chechnya, 1994: Media Coverage but International Inaction
Chechnya in December 1994 is probably the most tragic example of lack of action. On the day that images of Russian bombing and burning aircraft at the Grozny airport were being transmitted worldwide, the 52 heads of state and government of the OSCE were in Budapest debating European security and crisis prevention measures, no less. The TV images from Grozny were broadcast in the national mission rooms of the conference center as the debate on the principles of European conflict prevention continued. But despite mutterings of concern, the flames and horror of Chechnya created little public resonance among the European leaders. There was certainly no decisive will to intervene to prevent the "limited" Russian military action from spiraling out of control.
It can be argued that, in Chechnya, the key moment to send a decisive political signal to prevent a wider conflict -- including a veiled threat that military action might be part of a determined diplomatic initiative -- was squandered. Political fears and caution among Western nations about intervening in the horrors taking place on the sovereign territory of a great power overrode any emotional reaction being generated by TV pictures that "something must be done." This situation emphasises the clear limitations of intervening in conflicts where a major power like Russia has its own clear national interest.

As a result, apparent European indifference -- based on the hope that Russian defence minister Pavel Grachev was right in saying he could secure Grozny in two hours -- effectively sent a green light to the Kremlin to continue its planned offensive in Chechnya. Less than two months later, Ambassador Audrey Glover, head of the first OSCE delegation eventually allowed into Grozny, described the horror she had witnessed as "another Dresden."

If graphic TV reporting of the carnage throughout Christmas and New Year 1994 had created an impact on the international community to do something, then "another Dresden" might have been prevented. It did not have that effect. TV's impact was minimal.

As Thomas Friedman wrote in a New York Times column on double standards in U.S. international diplomacy:

Excuse me, but President Yeltsin kills more people in Chechnya on a slow morning than ever died in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Yet for some reason a U.S. president can go to Moscow to support Mr. Yeltsin and no one says boo. But if Mr. Clinton were to stop off in Beijing he would be pilloried.43
Thus one "legitimate" policy option is to ignore the TV pictures and have a policy to do nothing. Constructed wisely, such a zero policy can always be sold politically to a public in developed countries that is both ill-informed on foreign affairs (especially in the U.S.44) and increasingly numbed by images of subregional wars in which they have no interest.

Burundi, 1996: The Impotence of Media Coverage
From 1993 through 1996, the prolonged bloodletting in Burundi illustrated the illogical and inconsistent nature of the media's role in conflict. During these three years a combination of international editorial indifference and the physical dangers of visiting Burundi meant there was virtually no international media coverage of the unending murder and terror producing about 100 deaths a day.45 Other stories elsewhere in the world took precedence.
Rare reporting like the emotive TV coverage by the BBC's George Alagiah of a period of mass slaughter in Burundi in October 1993 created no international resonance. In some respects, it might be argued that Alagiah's coverage was inadvertently mistimed. When he filed his reports, diplomatic prevention had failed, but the rate of killing might have been described as still only "getting up to speed." To many people, such a suggestion seems obscene. But the level of slaughter in a distant country few knew about had not reached a sufficient critical mass to mobilise international public opinion. So no one else bothered to follow up Alagiah's findings, even though one leading nongovernmental organisation (NGO) said that Burundi 1993 was "the only crisis which caught us by surprise."46

After Alagiah, the tragedy of Burundi continued virtually unrecorded by the world media. But the killing got worse, and further warnings from NGOs were ignored.

We now know that the murders Alagiah reported in October 1993 were early warnings of a developing pattern of violence in the Great Lakes region of Africa that the international community was unable or unwilling to acknowledge, let alone tackle in an effective proactive manner. It was part of a similar regional pattern that led eventually to the Rwanda genocide in 1994.

The international community only gave signs of stirring after the massacre of at least 304 people in Bugendana in July 1996.47 President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya was then stoned at the mass funeral and forced to seek refuge at the U.S. embassy. Journalists and television satellite dishes descended on Bujumbura. The Tutsi army pulled off a coup, and the international community held its breath.48 The best that Western ministers could do was to "hope"49 things would not slide into the full-blown genocide that many feared.

On the night President Ntibantunganya was deposed, the UN secretary-general's spokesperson, Sylvana Foa, urged that the international community act before they saw appalling TV images of slaughter. "Unfortunately, it is not until we see babies being macheted to death on TV, that public opinion forces their governments into action," Ms. Foa appealed explicitly on one TV news programme with an air of desperation. "We do not want to see that this time."50

But what international impact did Foa's appeal have? Did international TV coverage of the massacres and coup in Burundi in late July 1996 lead to any additional and sustainable diplomatic effort to prevent a Rwanda-style process of mass slaughter? The answers are not encouraging for conflict prevention.

Led by the then head of the UN Peacekeeping Department, Kofi Annan, and Foa, the United Nations harnessed the media to put emotional pressure on the U.S. and other Western powers. The UN's aim was to shame them into providing the political and logistics commitment on Burundi that they had refused for Rwanda in 1994. The UN failed. "It is not possible for the U.S. to lead everywhere and in every situation," U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns responded in the face of UN appeals for at least logistics support. "We have led where we think U.S. interests require: in Haiti, and in Bosnia, and we will not hesitate to lead in future situations, where our national interests are directly and in some cases vitally affected."51

In other words, on Burundi, despite intense media coverage for a few days, the U.S. answer was "No!" Subsequent analysis and revelations following the Great Lakes crisis of late 1996 and early 1997, which led ultimately to the overthrow of President Mobutu of Zaire, have illuminated an unannounced strategic U.S. policy towards Central and East Africa that supported the Tutsi interests in the region. This ensured that U.S.-backed intervention was always considered a nonstarter.

The UN continued to warn that, after Rwanda two years earlier, history would judge the international community "rather severely" if it failed to "move very quickly before everything blows up in our faces" and mass slaughter ensued in Burundi.52 At the same time, NGOs warned of a failure of international "courage" and "will," and a Burundi "steadily slipping towards genocide before our eyes."53 But Western capitals prevaricated. Leading East African nations imposed economic sanctions instead of ignoring the legal technicality of Burundi's sovereignty and imposing a conflict-prevention force as they had earlier committed themselves to doing.54 Burundi returned within a week to its former lowly position as barely an also-ran in the news agenda: the same rating it had during three years of slaughter in which an estimated 150,000 people were killed.

Thus in Burundi, as elsewhere, the effect of TV coverage on focusing international political action was limited and marginal at best. It did not overcome the new international instinct of caution that is driven by negligible political will and national interest.

Two months later, in September 1996, the UN secretary-general and the United Nations Association (UNA) were reporting that the massacres continued.55 In view of a high level of ethnic slaughter, the UNA asked:

Why so little international media coverage of events in Burundi? How many Burundians have to be murdered before the story becomes newsworthy? It is difficult to believe in claims that we live in an era of global communications, when none of the major TV channels appears even to have sent a camera crew to Burundi.56

Fear of Casualties and Likely Media Coverage:
A Justifiable Anxiety?
Fear of casualties, and the effect of media coverage of body bags on political legitimacy, seems to be a key political consideration that restrains military intervention to contain or prevent a conflict. But is the predicted emotion and fear of body bags justified by reality? Despite understandable domestic political fears, the spectre of even small numbers of casualties may not be the factor that many, especially the media, readily assume it to be.
The prima facie evidence from the UNPROFOR and IFOR experience in Bosnia -- especially the high number of casualties sustained by French forces -- suggests that public opinion in Europe, at least, is far more robust on the issue of casualties than many politicians instinctively fear it to be. Commanders from several nations, including those at the highest levels in U.S. forces, have expressed privately to this author their irritation with political paranoia about the possibility of casualties. They say it restrains unnecessarily their military effectiveness. After all, they argue, any military operation must plan for casualties. Political preparation of the electorate in advance, along with vigorous ministerial handling of any casualties, should be enough to prevent a major public backlash that can undermine a military deployment. The casualty issue only becomes a problem when there are weak, diffident political efforts at belated damage limitation.

After searching for other evidence of significant fluctuations in public support for U.S. peace-support operations in Lebanon and Somalia, Burk has also questioned the conventional wisdom that the public is intolerant of casualties.57 He concludes that public opinion backed both operations and was "neither volatile, overly sensitive to casualties, nor obviously irresponsible," even after incidents like the deadly firefight in Mogadishu. Fear of casualties did not influence policy as many assumed it would -- especially politicians and many in the media.

In separate research, Larson58 has further shown that public support for U.S. military operations and public tolerance for casualties is related directly to clear, unequivocal bipartisan political approval for "compelling" missions. Failure to secure such agreement will inevitably lead to questioning a mission's merits. Such a situation has been highlighted uncomfortably by controversial U.S. involvement in the new generation of substate conflicts. As Larson concludes: "When political and other opinion leaders fail to agree with the President that much (or any) good is likely to come of an intervention, the public also becomes divided."

The consequences of such disagreements can be near catastrophic. According to Larson, "They can lead to enduring divisions in the public, and to support that is brittle and easily exploited by adversaries, thereby leading both to failed interventions and incorrect lessons for the future." Inevitably, the media will highlight such splits and thereby weaken the image of the policy. This author suggests that, as a result, the need for unity -- whether interstate or intrastate, and especially in the European Union (EU) -- has been seen consistently as the overriding prerequisite for policy. The best way to achieve unity is by way of a minimalist, low-risk response that has virtually no chance of preventing or halting conflict.

The Media and NGOs In Conflict Management
Media involvement in conflict is further complicated by their new relationship with NGOs. NGOs have learned to harness the power of intense TV coverage of a conflict as a way to generate significant cash flows from both governments and the public, especially in the new environment of increasingly strapped financial circumstances, where generosity is squeezed and national donor agencies are retrenching.
But, at the same time, there are signs that NGOs and humanitarian organisations are belatedly coming to terms with the inherent limits and distorting influence of TV coverage on conflict management. An urgent reassessment of priorities and likely responses is taking place. "Rapid and radical shifts in the nature of international disaster response have left agencies reeling," concludes one new assessment.59 In the view of one leading NGO figure, the kind of military response prompted up to now by TV coverage in particular is not the most cost-effective. Indeed, while such operations carry the kind of high profile demanded by politicians to satisfy the need to "do something," they are no longer effective or appropriate.60 Impulsive intervention prompted by a conscience-driven political response to TV pictures is considered counter-productive,61 despite the valuable boost it gives to fund-raising.

The massive, belated international response to the cholera catastrophe in Goma after the Rwanda genocide in 1994 seemed a worthy, correct action at the time. But the resulting Gaza-style refugee camps soon took on the air of permanent structures. They created a new crisis of fiefdoms, criminality, and social inadequacy. The intense media coverage produced Pyrrhic consequences. Governments and agencies made "ad hoc decisions that were not always in line with sound operating principles and resulted in skewed emphasis on some relief activities at the expense of others."62 Two years later, in October 1996, the subsequent mass exodus of Hutu refugees during ethnic fighting in eastern Zaire became the predictable and preventable crisis foreseen by aid agencies. For two years, however, there had been no international will to act until matters took on crisis proportions with over 300,000 refugees on the move.63

For the time being, however, most NGOs continue to fight hard -- both subtly and blatantly -- to persuade TV news organisations to cover conflicts or looming catastrophes like Afghanistan, Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. They believe, or at least assume, that high-profile media coverage of a simmering crisis will prevent much worse.

Often the outcome is despair at the media's indifference or inaction.64 So great is the increasing desperation of some NGOs to get worldwide attention and funding for forgotten conflicts that they tempt journalists into the conflict zones with offers of transport and logistics support. But to what effect? Do the big nations really care about Afghanistan or Liberia? Do international mediators have the kind of political or military leverage that will persuade determined warlords or substate leaders to consider peace rather than the kind of military campaign for hegemony they have long planned?

The evidence is not encouraging. The answer to both questions is likely to be "No."65 Again, Burundi 1996 is a prime example. In the buildup to July, Tutsi prime minister Antoine Nduwayo expressed what many governments quietly fear: "The real problem is the ideology of genocide that has been developed for years here, as well as in Rwanda."66

It is an ideology of murder that neither leading world powers nor the media have the power to overcome. In addition, the novelty value of media coverage of conflicts that few know about or want to know about has long worn off.

The Unpredictable News Cycle and the Tyranny of Real Time
It is important to understand the nature of the news cycle. Its wavelength in this age of real-time reporting from conflicts becomes ever shorter.67 The consequence is that the media's attention span is diminishing proportionately.
The news cycle has a voracious appetite for new information. It shows no mercy. It is uncharitable and ungenerous. Data and video are updated and replaced rapidly. Information becomes stale more rapidly than ever, unless freshened up regularly. The absence of new details, material, or angles means an issue drops swiftly out of the news cycle, replaced by something fresher.

Witness how in July 1996 the TWA Boeing 747 disaster was soon eclipsed by Burundi. Unrest in Burundi and the subsequent coup were then relegated swiftly to virtually zero coverage by the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. Within days, international pressure to do something about Burundi had dissipated, even though interethnic slaughter continued after the coup, and was reported.68

Prima facie, vivid coverage will only create major national political resonance if, by chance, it hits a critical, often unpredictable void in the news cycle. News editors have to search constantly for a new story that departs significantly from what has become a stale news story, whether domestic or international. A lull in the news cycle, often reinforced during vacation time when politicians are away from their legislatures, can also mean that there is no home political story to compete with international news. Resources, personnel, and satellite dishes can then be deployed abroad, but selectively and only if media organisations see the chance for high-profile editorial impact. Hence the fickle nature of the media.

One of the most powerful examples of this random impact of coverage was the chance TV story transmitted by the BBC in late July 1993. The timing coincided with the start of midyear vacations worldwide, when the news cycle is slow. The item reported the plight of Irma, a young girl in Sarajevo who had been severely paralysed by shrapnel lodged in her brain. Many other children had been similarly maimed. But because of the international news vacuum at the time, Irma's plight grabbed emotive media attention worldwide. The media clamour created public-opinion pressure, forcing the British prime minister to mount an airlift, primarily to evacuate Irma, with intense media attention.69

Hardened correspondents like Martin Bell, who had witnessed much worse in Bosnia, were astonished by the British government's response. "That the BBC on that Tuesday should devote more than half of one of its main news programmes to the plight of a single five-year-old girl struck me as daft," Bell wrote. "I felt like a humble foot soldier in an army whose high command had taken leave of its senses."70

This example underlines how timing and chance are crucial. It is impossible for an aspiring "conflict preventer" to predict with any accuracy when these factors will converge. Often the relentless news cycle and the pressure of vivid domestic issues will conspire to prevent a pending conflict from making an impact as a lead or close-to-lead story to which ministers, civil servants, or the public will respond. For governments with little interest in making a more positive engagement in a conflict, it seems that media indifference is an increasingly convenient alibi for doing as little as possible.

Alternatively, diplomats, military officers, or civilians must live with the expectation that at some time they will wake up with "big bruises" inflicted by emotive TV coverage that unexpectedly creates strong public emotions and resonance without warning.71 At other times, nothing will happen.

Two examples of a direct cause and effect are the postconflict predicament of Kurdish refugees driven from Iraq to southern Turkey after the Gulf War in early 1991 and the Bosnian Moslems herded into Srebrenica in April 1993. In both cases emotional TV coverage did have a profound political impact.72 By comparison, in Rwanda and the early weeks of the unfolding conflict in the former Yugoslavia, TV coverage did not have an impact.

Northern Iraq and Southern Turkey, 1991
In February 1991, having won the Gulf War, the Western allies had not even begun to contemplate what possible revenge Saddam Hussein might exact on oppressed ethnic groups like the Shias and Kurds. His Iraqi army forced tens of thousands of Kurds into the freezing mountains of southern Turkey. Their plight would have remained unseen by the outside world had the Turkish government not made the rare concession of allowing TV satellite dishes into border mountains usually closed to outsiders. The resulting heartrending TV images of the squalor, mud, and death were key factors in moving Western leaders to set up an urgent humanitarian mission, and ultimately the military protection of Operation Provide Comfort.73 It can be argued that this operation has prevented renewed conflict and slaughter in northern Iraq.

Srebrenica, 1993
Similarly, in April 1993, the Hi-8 video images, taken by a single freelance cameraman of General Morrillon pledging to save the encircled Moslem population of Srebrenica, were a key factor in persuading the UN Security Council to set up Safe Areas. France, the U.S., and the United Kingdom objected. They said the safe-area concept was a bad precedent to set and a bad principle to adopt.
But the emotional impact of the TV images on nations holding rotating seats in the Security Council overcame the powerful political objections of the three nations with permanent seats. The less powerful, nonaligned nations, without the benefit of extensive resources for intelligence gathering and analysis, relied to a great extent on the emotional power of the TV images. As a result, the Safe Area was authorised by Security Council resolution, even though the Venezuelan president of the council, Diego Arria, admitted to this author in 1994: "I did not know that what we were creating was a trap."74 The nature of the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, and the consequent mass slaughter of fleeing Moslem men, justified Dr. Arria's belated forebodings.

Rwanda, 1994
TV pictures showing the slaughter of at least half a million Rwandans between April and July 1994 produced the opposite political response. Horrifying, intermittent TV images of people being hacked to death and piles of bodies and cadavers floating down rivers shocked ministers of major Western governments. The kind of "true heart of darkness" emotions, referred to by Foreign Secretary Hurd, pricked diplomatic consciences fleetingly. But they did not lead to any major or fundamental policy change, even though senior officials, especially in the U.S. government, like to believe that they did. The international community virtually ignored the terror of Rwanda, just as it chose to overlook a series of apocalyptic warnings via the UN and NGOs in late 1993 and early 1994.75 It refused even to provide aircraft to transport the 5,500 peacekeepers eventually pledged to the UN early in the post-April 1994 bloodletting.
After the images of dead Rwandan cholera victims being tipped into pits in Goma, the resulting humanitarian operation can be construed as a calculated palliative. It was as much a public relations show as a way to provide substantive aid. Especially in the U.S. case, it was high-profile, low risk, very visible, and conceived for maximum media impact so that the public would conclude that "something is being done." Yet it can be argued that the response was not the most appropriate.76 Decisions subsequently taken were often misguided, having been too influenced by skewed media coverage.77 Military commitments and the high-profile interest were soon scaled down once the media interest died. The Great Lakes crisis of November 1996 was as much due to the highly inappropriate response in July 1994 that created vast, permanent camps for "refugees," many of whom had committed genocide.

As in so many cases, TV coverage of the Rwanda carnage before Goma made no difference until it was too late, and then it distorted the picture of what was really happening.78 In Rwanda, hate radio -- Radio Mille Collines -- had systematically laid the groundwork for mass slaughter from the moment it was licensed in July 1993.79 On the buildup to the Rwanda genocide, it must be concluded that the media were unbriefed, ill-informed, ill-prepared, and therefore unaware of what might be looming. On the other hand, NGOs, the UN and, therefore, leading world powers, all had access to early warning signs.80 But in some cases they failed to understand them, and in others, governments and the UN actively suppressed them.81

Former Yugoslavia, Late 1980 -- 1991
Similarly, in the former Yugoslavia, there were plenty of signals in the official media during the late 1980s and the period 1990 -- 91 of Serb strategic intentions.82 The media's incitement of hatred is well documented.83 At some level, foreign governments noted the signals, but by either design or default, they chose to do nothing. These governments must not be allowed to get away with the claim that they did not know.84

Is Media Coverage A Sine Qua Non
for Conflict Prevention?
There may be a strong argument that media coverage is counterproductive for effective diplomacy aimed at conflict prevention or management. Too often during discussions or negotiations, the protagonists or delegations perform somewhat theatrically for the press corps, thereby apparently stiffening their positions and compounding the problems of mediation or confidence building.
In late 1995, one exceptional BBC TV documentary by Michael Ignatieff on the work of the UN secretary-general included a unique insight into the effectiveness of unseen diplomacy by the UN special representative in Burundi, Ould Abdullah. Abdullah's limited effectiveness was partly due to the absence of any media coverage that can inflame tensions and polarise positions rather than assist in conciliation.

Although journalists want a story, the wiser, more seasoned conflict journalists recognise that unseen mediation and diplomacy can play a more pivotal role than -- and even be complicated by -- public posturing to the media. Witness the frustrations of David Owen, Cyrus Vance, and others in the protracted Bosnian negotiations in Geneva, where the faction leaders indulged in public posturing at the microphones in the Palais des Nations before and after each session of "peace talks." 85

Ignatieff's film of Burundi also highlighted the limits and frustrations of quiet, unheralded, unobtrusive mediation. Therefore, rather than hindering mediation, it could also be argued that increased media coverage might have helped focus international concern on Burundi,86 thereby attaining a sustainable momentum and mediation-support mechanism. The contention is debatable and possibly hypothetical. Because of the international lack of interest in Burundi, the media coverage never happened.

Eventually Abdullah asked to be relieved of his position because of his despair at the lack of political support and resources for his work. In no way had the media put Burundi on the governmental radar screen, and by April 1996 the warning signals had apparently come full circle. It seemed to be the autumn of 1993 revisited.

Then, to the delight and surprise of many conflict analysts, some governments expressed concern and even tried to do more. In a move apparently at odds with clear international indifference towards Africa's festering conflicts,87 the U.S. government proposed a UN preventative force whose aim would be to stop Burundi from turning into another Rwanda- style mass genocide. Two months before the murders and coup that fleetingly put Burundi on the world's TV screens, U.S. ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright preemptively described Burundi as "a car driving in slow motion over a cliff."88 She chided France for vetoing a plan reportedly backed by President Clinton to prepare a UN rapid-intervention force for Burundi.

Even allowing for the complex political undercurrents between the U.S. and France, the prevention plan was unique and praiseworthy. Why the sudden U.S. interest to do in Burundi what it conspicuously refused to do in Rwanda in 1994? In no way can it be said that media coverage was the reason. Diplomacy was taking a lead politically. On Burundi's catastrophe the international print press and TV had been virtually silent, despite a virtually constant level of killings and the many warnings in NGO reports of increasing violence reminiscent of Rwanda before April 1994.

Again, no obvious cause and effect between media coverage and diplomatic action can be detected. In Burundi in early summer 1996, it was the opposite.

Western News Media and Conflict:
The New Commercial Realities
It is misguided for diplomats, the military, and NGOs to view the "media" as a single, homogeneous grouping of journalists and broadcasters who act in a predictable, uniform way. The media are neither monolithic or homogeneous. They are a diverse, highly competitive, unpredictable lot.
Except in the most cataclysmic events -- like an air crash, a disaster with high levels of instant death, or a political upheaval -- there is no automaticity to a uniform, international news response. Indeed, the response of news organisations at all levels has become increasingly variable and unpredictable.

Treatment of stories will vary according to national and regional agendas. A crisis in one part of the world can easily be viewed elsewhere as irrelevant. The level of coverage (or refusal to cover) will often be a function of national interest and distance from the event. The lower the national interest and the greater the distance, the less likely it is that news organisations will have anything more than a passing interest in the developing story. There is no uniform media response that defies international borders and national identities.

Responses to conflicts depend on considerations like editorial perceptions, the nationalities of those fighting and the forces being engaged to stop them, calculations about the interests of their audiences, and cash- availability in the news organisation. Gatekeeping theory has narrowed the media trends in conflicts that are a fickle and nationalistic process.89

Henceforth, commercial pressures are likely to predominate. The overriding pressures for budget discipline in media operations will be a harsh reality that cannot be overstated. Conflicts that explode at a moment of overspending or budget-stretching in a news organisation are unlikely to receive firsthand coverage, however pressing the threat. As the sharp drop in media coverage of IFOR's military success in Bosnia illustrated during 1996, coverage of "unsexy" nation building90 and development projects,91 or the kind of economic regeneration efforts required to avoid conflict,92 is likely to be negligible at best.

None of these factors offers any comfort to those working to improve international awareness of conflicts to be prevented or resolved. The outlook is increasingly gloomy. U.S. State Department spokesman Burns has publicly acknowledged a trend that other insiders are less willing to express candidly. From his perspective of promoting and explaining U.S. foreign policy, Burns has described what is now a "sorry minimum of foreign coverage, reflecting current prevailing public attitudes," especially on U.S. TV news networks.93 The European Union's Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, Emma Bonino, has expressed the new challenge in more caustic terms:

What does it take for a humanitarian crisis to make it into prime time slots on radio or television? Deaths are essential, preferably hundreds of them in places that have not captured media attention before. News is by definition new. . . . I became aware that for every humanitarian crisis that made it into the headlines, there were dozens that went unnoticed.94
One reason above all else generates such pressure: The information and media business is experiencing a technological and commercial revolution of seismic proportions. The revolution's ultimate direction cannot be predicted, but current signs indicate that it will disturb the business of conflict prevention. The ultimate paradox will result: there will be increasing and overwhelming volumes of information, but less interest in harnessing the information commercially unless a profitable revenue stream can be generated.

The conflict between journalistic instincts and commercial realities in the increasingly tough information marketplace will be profound. The relentless push for news that entertains ("infotainment") seems unstoppable, with a trend towards the "trivial and mediocre"95 and news that is predominantly domestic with scant reflection of foreign crises.96

The leading journalists and producers at the 1996 awards ceremony of the One World Broadcasting Trust were warned of the "danger of apartheid of the communications world"97 between media coverage of developed and the developing world. The audience was then presented starkly with a new challenge: "We [as broadcast journalists] can raise consciousness or retreat."98

Many fear that commercial realities have already forced the retreat. "Television and radio coverage of humanitarian issues outside the main news bulletins is dwindling throughout Europe," EU commissioner Bonino has concluded. "The sidelining of documentary and current affairs programs about humanitarian issues is also due to lack of interest among the owners and directors of broadcasting companies."99

On the positive side are programmes like Channel Four News from Independent Television News (ITN) in London and the output of quasi state-funded broadcasters like the BBC and the two German channels, ARD and ZDF. They are proud to retain a significant news-gathering infrastructure worldwide. (The BBC, for example, retains a network of about 250 correspondents in 42 foreign bureaus.) The aim remains to broadcast comprehensive news, current affairs, and documentary coverage worldwide. The journalistic mission is still to cover international issues and conflicts, even for high-profile, low-audience programmes that the commercial sector considers too marginal to support.100 However, audience shares are falling, with increasingly fragmented and transient viewing patterns across a fast-increasing proliferation of channels. Cash remains a constraint, but not because of any threat to profits. The real value of licence fees and state revenues is being cut. We must therefore ask what political impact such programmes can really be expected to have unless there is a resulting rare public outcry about a conflict that the politicians cannot dare ignore. The chances of this happening are low, and probably negligible.

On the negative side, are the new commercial realities. Much to the regret of many (though not all) journalists, their editorial instincts to cover a conflict are increasingly being heavily constrained by the ever-tougher conditions in the media marketplace.101 For commercial TV news organisations, the ratings or circulation figures produce revenue. The conventional industry view is that coverage of domestic issues will buoy up flagging sales and public interest, even though advertising agencies say well-researched documentaries, including those covering international issues, generate good revenue streams.102 The typical commercial view, however, is that only in exceptional circumstances will coverage of an international crisis raise circulation or viewing numbers. Coverage by way of news or docu mentary is therefore increasingly rare.103

In addition, the new data and news software embraced by information technology has an ominous potential power to distort the integrity of information. The Internet and multimedia products like CD-ROM are in the infant stages of challenging the monopoly of news organisations to disseminate "news." It seems likely that they will further fragment the market in a way yet to be charted accurately. The proliferation of unchecked and uncorroborated "facts" circulating in cyberspace may also serve to distort the perception of conflicts. When reading a newspaper or watching most TV news programmes, the average reader or viewer assumes that the output has been checked and verified by editors and skilled journalists. In the future, with unfiltered Internet access to cyberspace, the typical consumer is unlikely to have the skill to discriminate between "facts" and carefully disguised propaganda or polemics circulating freely under the likely guise of independently verified "facts."

Meanwhile, on the commercial side, information technology is slicing the market into ever-smaller portions. As a result, revenue at the marginal end of each market is being cut. To preserve profit, newspaper and broadcast groups have to drive costs down. Thus the high costs (and risks) of committing editorial manpower to a conflict in a distant country in which there is no national interest to become involved will increasingly militate against conflict coverage. In mainstream daily journalism, senior editors and managers have been heard to say: "If we don't cover it, no one will know the difference, so let's not bother."

As a result, for both text and video reporting of conflict, the international news and video agencies like Reuters, the Associated Press, and Worldwide Television News (WTN) have become the conscience of many (though not all) large broadcast and newspaper organisations. The agencies provide the words and pictures for a fixed annual contract price. This satisfies the accountants because it ensures that there are no financial surprises. Editorially, it ensures rapid, real-time coverage of a story well before a correspondent and crew can be scrambled and sent to the airport, at a considerable extra cost. The agency material is assembled at base in either a TV edit room or on a journalist's video display. In this way, above-the-line costs of such coverage are rock bottom, if not negligible. A degree of editorial honour can be retained, allowing editors to claim correctly: "But we covered the story."

To the purist, the sight of a company's own correspondent in situ is what field reporting of conflicts is all about. But for many organisations, the cost of securing that image and presence is disproportionate and of questionable value. No great compensatory revenue is generated. Regrettably, most viewers and readers cannot tell the difference between a company's experienced correspondent on the spot and a cheaper (though not always) credible journalist sitting in a head office merging text and images into a convincing, if not always accurate, package. To reduce costs and preserve profits, the commercial news organisations are prepared to risk the disaffection of the handful of readers or viewers who notice the difference, along with any errors in interpretation of the second-hand information. The risk is more than offset by the big saving made by not dispatching the company's own staff and resources. The bottom line is that having a named, recognised journalist on location increasingly carries a high marginal cost that many news organisations wil

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