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.

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