Topic 2 Reporting the World - or bits that matter. The cold war and after

1. Humanitarian Communication Topic 2 Reporting the World - or bits that matter.The cold war and after

2. Framing and representation: These are are prisms through which the media reflects world events. They can help organize and make sense of subjects but they can also stereotype, distort or indicate priotities for commercial, political or cultural reasons.. Selection, as part of framing, decides why some places matter and some don’t?

3. News criteria – from Galtung and Ruge and Schlesinger Frequency: Events that occur suddenly but fit into a news organization's time/print/broadcast schedule are more likely to be reported than those that occur gradually or at inconvenient times of day or night. Long-term trends are not likely to receive much coverage. And nor are long-term crises that are not of key importance to audience. Negativity: Bad news is seen as more interesting and likely to grab the audience’s attention that bad news; conflict more than other bad news – if it bleeds it leads! Unexpectedness: If an event or development is out of the ordinary /unique/highly unusual it will have a greater impact on journalists/editors and so they think on audiences than something that is routine or normal, even if important.. Unambiguous: Events whose meaning, causes, consequences are clear make for better news than those that are open to more than one interpretation, or where any understanding of the nature and causes of the event depends on first understanding the complex context of the events..

4. News criteria 2 • Personalization: An event that can be portrayed as or through the actions of individuals will be more relevant to many of the audience than one in which there is no such "human interest“ – it could be me! • Meaningful/relevant: A story must be one with which your audience can identify. "Cultural proximity" is a key -- stories concerned with people who speak the same language, look the same, and share the same culture/way of life of the audience will receive more coverage than those concerned with people who speak different languages, look different and have different lives and environments. • Involvement of powerful/elite nations: Stories involving global powers are more likely to be reported than others – also the bad guys – axis of evil, Iran, North Korea. • Involvement of major public figures/celebs: Stories involving the rich, powerful, famous and infamous get more coverage.

5. News criteria 3 • Conflict: Clash of people, nations or forces resulting in a dramatic conflict – verbal, economic or physical – are likely to be more newsworthy than stories not involving conflict. • Consonance: Stories that fit into existing frames of reference or understanding of the journalists and of their view of the audience’s understanding are more likely to receive coverage than those that fall outside them. While this conflicts with unexpectedness of highly unusual stories being newsworthy the two can operate together. • Continuity: A big or known story that is already in the news may run because news media have people and resources there to report the story, and previous reporting has made the story more understandable. • Composition: Stories compete with one another for space. Editors usually try to provide a balance of diverse stories and formats. Foreign news often has a lower priority, so often major foreign stories may be ignored to make way for lower value domestic news. So the prominence given to a story may depend on its own news values AND on those of competing stories. (Galtung and Ruge, 1965) • Competition: Competition between media may lead journalists to follow rivals and reject good stories so as to compete on a story. • Co-optation: A marginal story may be covered if it is related to a major running story. • Prefabrication: A story that is marginal in news terms but is ready to go may be selected ahead of a much more newsworthy story that must be researched and written from scratch. • Predictability: An event is more likely to be covered if it has been pre-scheduled. (Bell, 1991) • Time constraints: Traditional news media such as radio, television and daily newspapers have strict deadlines which can govern selection of items that can be researched and covered quickly.

6. The Old Wars in the Cold War • Cold War: World divided into two blocs Capitalist and Communist with Asia, Africa and Latin America caught in between. • USA, W Europe, Canada, Australasia and even South Africa vs USSR, E Europe, Cuba, China, North Korea. Sino-Soviet split made it a three way competition. • War in Korea directly related to Cold War. Malayan insurgency. • Wars of National Liberation or uprisings against colonial/settler rule in Kenya, Vietnam, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe – all vciewed at times in Cold War frame. • Post-colonial conflicts – India, India-Pakistan-Bangladesh, Ethiopia-Eritrea. These developed Cold War overtones. • Left-wing insurgencies against US-backed dictatorships in Nicaragua and El Salvador; left-wing/narco insurgencies in Colombia and Peru. All had to be fought to keep filthy commies out of Uncle Sam’s backyard.

7. New frames and new world order • Since the Cold War, new frames have been developed because: • The world has , in the view of neo-liberals and Western securocrats, become more chaotic and threatening as a result of what they see as: • new forms of conflict • upsurge in ‘ethnic/tribal’ antagonisms • ‘rogue states’ • terrorism aimed against West • Rise of Islam • The Cold War is seen to have contained these dangers – though, of course, it didn’t – Afrghanistan, Angola, IRA, ETA, Corsican separatism, Cyprus, Biafra, Bangladesh (being just a few examples).

8. Post-Cold War Conflicts • From 1990-2001, there were 57different major armed conflicts • In 2000, about 30 million people were believed to have been displaced from their homes as a result of conflict • Biggest displacements? eg Northern Uganda – invisible to media. Holy Spirit Movement, Lord’s Resistance Army. LRA still active in areas of DRC and CAR. • In 2013, UN personnel deployed in peacekeeping operations (does not include AU forces in Somalia, Mali and CAR). • Uniformed personnel: 92,099 • Troops: 77,702 • Police: 12,553 • Military observers: 1,844 • Civilian personnel (28 February 2013): 16,831 • International: 5,107 • Local: 11,724 • UN Volunteers : 2,088 • Total number of personnel serving in 15 peacekeeping operations: 111,018 • Total number of personnel serving in 16 DPKO-led peace operations: 112,840

9. Problem of state breakdown – during Cold war it was prevented or hidden • Growth in paramilitary orgs, private armies/party militias. Privatization of violence – eg Colombia, Kenya etc. Loss of state’s monopoly over violence • Kidnapping, drugs, poaching, arms exports and people trafficking as means to finance them • Blurring boundaries state and non-state • Disruption of civil society • Growth in numbers of refugees and displaced people

10. How has the media responded? • The simplistic east v west, bad guy v good guy picture has been replaced by an even more simplified version of a more complex reality • The bewilderingly complex, small, inter-related, geographically obscure, conflicts and antagonisms that have developed over the past decade are rarely explained well and usually in simplistic terms according to the outlook of the particular media responsible or the link of the conflict to the home territory of that media • This has led to different news frames - the media’s use of different news frames and discourses to report diverse conflicts to its readers and viewers. But many of the frames have common elements.

11. The popularity of the ‘ethnic/tribal’ explanation • Fits nicely into the Cold War legacy – lift the Cold war lid and find ethnicity bubbling underneath. • It diverts from issues of policy and complexity. • Disguises the consequences of the Cold War and Western foreign policy during and after • It is simple and easy and avoids complex explanations and blames these primitive ethnic or tribal combatants.

12. Ethnic/tribal simplification • Greater volume of news output = tighter deadlines, less time to research and prepare stories • Fewer journalists, fewer experts, less specialisation • In Jean Seaton’s words, • “they know less, they cost less, but they produce news that is disseminated more powerfully than ever” • Ethnic/tribal explanations are a simplistic form of framing and representation that exclude many factors and may distort understanding. Socio-economic and political factors tend to be kept out of the frame and cultural, religious and ethnic ones included.

13. Simplification - depoliticise Result is neglect of historical and economic factors. Random, fickle reporting, no context or background explanation to reasons behind the fighting. Post cold war less interest but very scary. Sometimes good to scare audience, Fear sells papers. But not too often and don’t report distant, complex conflicts that are too far away to scare people.

14. Media Impact • Effect is refracted via public opinion – not government reacting directly to suffering. • Government may influence media to cover stories through leaked information, briefings, etc, to get press support for a policy the government wants to adopt. • After all governments often ‘know’- media is not news to them – eg Ethiopia reporting 1984. Today, surveillance techniques, satellite imaging etc mean governments often know or suspect long before the media reports an event. Such as recent pictures of violence against Rohingyas in Burma – satellite pictures avaiulable to government/intelligence agencies long before they are available to the media showed the extent of destruction of Rohingya areas.

15. CNN effect • Blair Doctrine on humanitarian intervention ‘prodded by CNN to act’ according to Blair and other politicians • Boutros Ghali UN Sec general : ‘CNN is 16th member of the Security council’ • Modern origins in Gulf War – real time coverage 1990/1 ‘Live from Bagdad’ • But how new is the idea of media coverage prompting action? Is the CNN effect the same as effects say of Times reporting of Crimean War, British newspaper reporting of Boer War and US reporting in Vietnan War? • While there are some similarities the key aspect of the CNN effect is speed, constant, repetitive reporting, concerted agenda setting and the effects on government no longer bound by the restrictions on action produced by the Cold War. • There were media effects in pre-24 hour news period but not the same, that is why it is questionable talking of a CNN effect in Vietnam and why it requires particular examination as a concept applicable from late 1980s and particularly from the end of the Cold War • BUT DOES THIS EFFECT REALLY WORK........

16. Livingston on CNN effect Media as Accelerant Accelerant Media shortens decision-making response time.Television diplomacy evident. During time of war, live, global television offer potential security-intelligence risks. But media may also be a force multiplier, method of sending signals. Evident in most foreign policy issues to receive media attention. Impediment Two types: 1. Emotional, grisly coverage may undermine morale. Government attempts to sanitize war (emphasis on video game war), limit access to the battlefield. 2. Global, real-time media constitute a threat to operational security. Agenda Setting Emotional, compelling coverage of atrocities or humanitarian crises reorder foreign policy priorities. Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti said to be examples. • Research Paper CLARIFYING THE CNN EFFECT: An Examination of Media Effects According to Type of Military Intervention by Steven Livingston • June 1997 • The Joan Shorenstein Center - shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/r18_livingston.pdf‎

17. Robinson on CNN effect • Robinson gives a v good table on p 118 setting out 6 crises – describing the media framing (whether critical, empathetic, mixed, supportive or creating distance), level of policy uncertainty and then his decision about the relationship between media and state and so the strength or absence of the CNN effect. • In Somalia, media coverage, he believes, came after the decision to intervene by Bush; it created a manufacturing consent effect plus an enabling effect – so CNN effect was weak. Empathetic news coverage has an enabling effect for government policy. • Lack of coverage or coverage that shows complexity or confusion has a distancing effect. • Where there is policy certainty and elite unity media will often follow that line and become a form of manufacturing of consent. • Where CNN effect works is where there is policy uncertainty but a critical media coverage with empathy for victims as in the February 1994 market place massacre in Sarajevo which was widely reported with film of the aftermath and within four days there was an ultimatum to Serbs and threatened air strikes. Similar effect in July 1995 to defend the Gorazde safe area • In Kosovo in 19998-99, there was policy certainty in the US that they did not want to commit ground troops but would use air power – air war started on 24th March 1999, which lasted until June 1999, when a peace deal was signed and NATO troops were put in to monitor peace. Elite criticism of the air strikes had fractured total unity but there was no overwhelming desire among all the critics of the air strikes to become part of a ground war, though former chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell believed that air strikes weren’t sufficient. Senator John McCain tried to force a ground intervention but elite criticism was not strong enough and post-Somalia the body bag effect among the public was prevalent enough for critical media coverage of Kosovo and the air strikes to be insufficient to prompt a change in policy – at best media coverage enabled the air strikes.

18. The CNN effect – when does it operate, if at all? • Most likely to happen where there is weak policy, lack of elite consensus or a need to reassess policy in the light of events • Often, media reporting on major crises that appears to prompt interventions or other forms of action is really “manufactured consent” (Herman and Chomsky) or empathetic reporting that runs parallel with policy changes but neither prompts it nor is directly prompted by government. • Post cold war notion – speed of media coverage and ad hoc policy rather than programmed Cold War reaction to events. Can give the impression of more reactive and responding to media. • Lawrence Eagelburger (acting US Sec of and a chief adviser on Yugoslavia) and US Ambassador to Yugoslavia in early 1990s, Warren Zimmermann, said that media coverage of Yugoslavia had little effect on Bush’s policies. • Eagelburger: “We had largely made a decision we were not going to get militarily involved. And nothing, including those stories [Serb concentration camps and atrocities against Croats and Bosnians], pushed us into it. It made us damned uncomfortable. But this was a policy that wasn’t going to get changed no matter what the press said.”