1
Introduction
On July 30 2006, in the midst of a summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, an
Israel bomb destroyed a house in the southern Lebanese village of Qana, killing 28
civilians. While the death count from this incident represented less than 2% of the
total killed during the 33 days of fighting that summer,
1
the international media’s
coverage of this incident appeared to have had a significant impact on American and
Israeli foreign policy regarding the war, leading to a CNN effect in which policy
shifted at both the tactical and strategic level.
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Tactically, the political pressures
generated from this incident led to a self imposed 48-hour air bombing ban by the
Israeli Air Force (IAF). The incident, however, also ratcheted up the pressure on
American and Israeli policy decision makers to accept a final settlement that was less
than the originally stated goal of an enduring ceasefire involving the removal of
Hezbollah’s strategic threat to Israel. In this way, the war changed strategically from
being a total war aimed at the elimination of the adversary to a limited one.
Section 1: Definitions and Methodology
The CNN Effect
Throughout the 1990s, the CNN effect was alleged to be a driving factor behind a
number of military interventions, including those in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, Somalia
in 1992, Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. Since 9/11, a number of thinkers have
assumed that new geopolitical realities have relegated the CNN effect to an anomaly
of the post cold war 1990s, either killing it off entirely or placing it on extended life
support.
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This argument certainly appears credible, at least in the United States, in
relation to agenda-setting or challenging typologies of the CNN effect, where emotive
media images of human suffering are alleged to pressure policy makers into
supporting interventions that may not be a priority based on the national interest.
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1
It is assumed that the death toll includes 743 Lebanese civilians, 34 Lebanese soldiers, 500 Hezbollah
fighters, 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians for a total of 1,439. Twenty eight killed represents
(28/1,439) 1.95% of the total killed in the war or (28/786) 3.6% of the total civilians killed. Casualty
statistics cited from Marvin Kalb and Carol Saivetz, “The Isreali-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media
as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict,” (Cambridge, MA: The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press,
Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2007), 11-12.
2
As a phrase, the CNN effect emerged after the 1991 Gulf War to describe a number of alleged
influences on war-related diplomacy and foreign policy from the broadcasts of newly formed global
television news networks such the Atlanta-based Cable News Network (CNN). The CNN effect,
however, is not solely based on this news network but uses the name of the network to capture the
larger phenomena that is alleged to exist. The CNN effect and its different typologies are described in
more detail later in this paper.
3
Eytan Gilboa, “The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of International
Relations,” Political Communication 22, no.1 (2005): 39, and Piers Robinson, “The CNN Effect
Revisited,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22, no.4 (2005): 346-348.
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This argument itself is based on the assumption that there is something that can be identified as the
‘national interest.’ While traditional political realism suggests that the national interest exists and is
Convention