Media Power and American Military Strategy: Examining the Impact of Negative Media Coverage on US Strategy in Somalia and the Iraq War
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2006
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Abstract
Since the Vietnam War, the opinions expressed by the American news media have been considered by many politicians and members of academia to be a powerful agenda-setting device. The term 'CNN effect' has come to signify the power of the news media to 'move and shake' American foreign policy, determining when to enter into and when to pull out of military conflicts. Despite the level of scholarship on this concept, very few works have examined the influence of news organizations on military strategy. This study attempts to redress this failing by examining the influence of negative coverage of American military strategy in Somalia, from 1992 to 1993, and the early stages of the Iraq War, from 2003 to 2005. This paper argues that, despite the high level of negative media coverage of these conflicts from both television and newspaper sources, this coverage had no discernable impact on American military strategy in either conflict