December 5, 2004

Here is a discussion between Lawrence Eagleburger, Claus Kleber, Steven Livingston and Judy Woodruff on the effects of continuous instantaneous news coverage by satellite television on policy makers in America

It’s called “the CNN effect”. And for a time, during and immediately after the Gulf war in 1991, it was associated only with CNN — the effect of live and continuous television coverage of foreign affairs on the conduct of diplomacy and the waging of war. CNN covered the war, beaming its signal into foreign and defence ministries all over the world. Dick Cheney, then secretary of defence in the first Bush administration, often acknowledged that he got more timely, relevant information from CNN than he did from US diplomats.

Soon, with the explosion of violence in Mogadishu, mass starvation in Ethiopia, and the ethnic wars in former Yugoslavia, old and new networks, spawned in the age of new technology, followed CNN’s example of providing continuous coverage of dramatic events, at home and abroad. Though it was still called the CNN effect, it included more than just CNN coverage — it meant that the world was now wired, open to instantaneous coverage, and that the coverage affected everyone and everything, including world leaders and their tactics and strategy.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush saw television images of starving children in Somalia and he felt obliged to send US troops there to distribute food and establish security. Less than a year later, President Bill Clinton saw television images of Somali fighters dragging the desecrated body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu and he felt obliged to withdraw the troops. Was it policy, or the power of television to influence policy? Was it, in other words, a graphic example of the CNN effect at work?

CNN’s Judy Woodruff put special emphasis on the power of a picture, even if shown for only a brief time. CNN’s editors had a half-hour mini-documentary on the soldier’s body, but after lengthy deliberation, they decided to show only two and a half seconds of the footage. The impact, she said, was “magnified” and magnetic.

On January 23, 2002, we invited a former US diplomat, a German journalist, a scholar, and a TV anchor to discuss this extraordinary phenomenon in the context of a war against terrorism. They were Lawrence S. Eagleburger, who served President Bush as secretary of state from August 1992 to the end of his administration, Claus Kleber, who was finishing a long stint as Washington bureau chief for the German TV network ARD, Steven Livingston, a distinguished scholar at the George Washington University who has written on the CNN effect, Judy Woodruff, one of CNN’s principal anchors and a senior correspondent based in Washington, DC.

For Eagleburger, there was “no question” that television affected US policy in Somalia, no question either that CNN in particular made a “big difference” in the Gulf war. “We sat with our television sets tuned to CNN throughout that whole time,” Eagleburger recalled. “CNN has an impact at least on decision makers, because it’s there all the time.”

Diplomats, if they work in a democracy, have to respect public opinion, and CNN helped shape it. So it has been since Vietnam, which ended with an American defeat. But even with an American victory, Kleber reminded us, Washington had to be mindful of the impact TV images had on public opinion.

When television disclosed the full dimensions of the US victory on the “highway of death” running from Kuwait northwest into Iraq, with bloodied bodies scattered everywhere and military equipment left in smoking ruins, the American people felt that enough was enough — the war should end. Livingston stressed the importance of the new technology in allowing instantaneous coverage. While television equipment once was costly and heavy, now much of it is light and portable, opening even faraway places to live coverage.

Woodruff added another dimension to the panel’s deliberations. When an administration fails to construct and articulate a clear policy, television talk and images tend to fill the vacuum. “Here come these dramatic pictures of one form or another, either troops or human suffering,” she explained, “and, oh, now we have at least the outline of what a policy could be, might be, until the government catches up and says, here’s what we should be doing based on these rational reasons.”

Everyone recognized that coverage of the war against terrorism would be very costly. The question was whether the networks and the newspapers would pay the extra cost of covering it. Would the public interest be satisfied? Or would newspapers continue to insist on 20 to 30 per cent profit margins and local television on 40 to 50 per cent profit margins? Woodruff boldly and bravely stated what everyone knew to be the case: “You cannot ignore what management tells you,” she said. “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 US. Here are the ratings, and we expect this, that, and the other. You cannot ignore that if you’re the executive producer of a programme or the anchor or whatever.” No, you cannot.

Marvin Kalb: I think our first responsibility is to define what ... the CNN effect[is] ... [D]oes it work in all cases or in some cases? With reference to Somalia, there are a couple of quotes that I’d like to read. One is from Secretary Eagleburger: “I will tell you quite frankly, television had a great deal to do with President Bush’s decision to go in the first place, and I will tell you equally frankly, I was one of those two or three that [were] 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.” The second quote is from President Clinton: “This past weekend, we all reacted with anger and horror as an armed Somali gang desecrated the bodies of American soldiers.” So, Mr Secretary, help us understand the impact with respect to Somalia.

Lawrence S. Eagleburger: Somalia, yes — television made a big difference 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. 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.

So [we] 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, 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 [because we were] not doing anything in Bosnia.

I went to the president — 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, raised any objection — on the understanding, and on this Bush was very clear, that we went in, fed, and got out. And indeed, he called then President-elect Clinton — 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.

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 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.

Stephen Hess: What is so fascinating about the story you just told us is [that] “the CNN effect” is usually [understood to mean that] “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.

Kalb: You said before that television was very important and you don’t want to skip over that. How is it important? You’re secretary of state. Something goes on television. So what? Why does that influence you?

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.