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
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