Framing and problem definition
9
Framing and problem definition: British responses to the war
against Bosnia
Gregory Kent
Introduction
Since the Holocaust, and before, there have been numerous genocides. The end of
the Cold War allowed the contemplation of internationally sanctioned humanitarian
rescue of those suffering systematic human rights abuse on a massive scale. In
certain cases it might be said the media, partly through developments in electronic
media and communications technology, came to influence which distant crises
entered the public policy agenda through what came to be understood as the CNN
effect.
The Kurdish crisis in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War has been widely
interpreted as an incidence of media agenda setting in a humanitarian crisis. The
advocacy coverage of British television news in particular, with similar coverage in
the US, helped make rescue a central issue on the agendas of top politicians, not
least because television in the UK created a nexus of responsibility to leaders who
had encouraged the Kurdish and Shia rebellions against Ba’athist power (Shaw
1996). These leaders, George Bush and John Major, had intended to avoid
supporting the Kurds and Shia, but sustained media pressure appeared to influence
their decision to lend humanitarian and limited military assistance.
In most of the other humanitarian crises of the 1990s, including the genocides
in Bosnia and Rwanda, governments’ utilisation of symbolic politics (Dolbeare and
Edelman 1977) and non-decision making (Bach and Bachrach 1970) appear to have
been considerably more successful in avoiding commitments and appropriate policy
responses to human-made human catastrophes.
The ‘indexing norm’ is a concept in the literature on political communication,
which has a special relevance here. Indexing, in general terms, directs editors and
journalists to index or correlate coverage in the media to debate among government
officials and elected representatives. That is, arguments not present in the debate in
parliament or congress need not, and are not usually, covered by the media. In a
sense the indexing rule defines the relationship between the media and the state
most succinctly. This paper aims to clarify the role of indexing in a critical, arguably
test case: Britain and the war in Bosnia.
The war against Bosnia, the worst war in Europe since World War II, was
expansionist and genocidal in character. Britain, a key player among other EU states,
played a pivotal obstructionist role within the wider Western powers. Its preferred
policy of humanitarian aid convoys escorted by troops certainly saved some
Bosnians, but at the same time probably cost the lives of many others through its
prolongation of the war.
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It is the argument of this paper that the official British perspective on the crisis,
critical to EU and wider Western responses at the time, resulted in a definition of
the problem of Bosnia that enabled symbolic political action to take the place of
substantial, effective engagement with expansionist war and genocide on the
European continent. ‘Media framing’, in basic terms, the underlying language, key
terms, labels and phrases used to describe events, played a critical role in
establishing how the actual problem of Bosnia came to be defined, particularly
through choice of language and decisions about balancing and what kinds of
evidence would be reported. The resulting framing limited potential policy options
to ineffectual and inappropriate options.
This paper will first elaborate, in the briefest terms, a historic-political
perspective on the crisis and its international response supported by leading
academics in the field, but in stark contrast to the popular mediated understanding
many have imbibed over the years of the crisis. At this point it will be appropriate to
look at theoretical approaches to problem definition and media framing. This is
followed by a summary of my findings in relation to television coverage in Britain
during roughly the first six months of the crisis. In the final section I account for
some of my conclusions by reference to the academic debate over indexing in
coverage of foreign crises (Bennett 1990; Mermin 1999).
The war against Bosnia
There is only space to elaborate in this chapter, in concise terms, the essential
historic-political perspective underpinning my work. Those interested in a more
expansive account will be able to consult my forthcoming book for the Hampton
Press which makes, in far greater detail, the case for Belgrade’s overwhelming
responsibility for the crisis and provides a unique historical account of how
genocide was visited on eastern and northern Bosnia.
It is possible to now state, as it was similarly apparent to many observers at the
time, that Serbia, more specifically the ruling communist clique, destroyed the
consensus and stability in Yugoslavia a considerable time before the people of
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and their leaderships decided, and took active
steps, to leave the Yugoslav Federation. Denitch, (1996, p.180) sees a ‘consensus’ of
reputable scholars on this issue. These writers1 tended to see the crisis primarily as
the ‘product of particular circumstances in the second part of the 1980s’ (Gow 1997,
p.14), in particular the development of extreme nationalism in Serbia, and was,
therefore, in no way inevitable – as primarily the product of ‘ethnic’ tensions or
hatreds – as many commentators have implied.
Serbia used ‘fascist’ models of media representation according to the leading
media analyst and Yugoslavia expert Mark Thompson. Albanians in Kosovo were
1
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Including Almond (1994), Christopher Bennett (1995), Donia and Fine (1994), Garde
(1992), Judah (1997), Malcolm (1994), Magas (1993), Mazower (1992), Ramet (1996),
Tanner (1997), Thompson (1992), Silber and Little (1995)
Framing and problem definition
dehumanised in the media, and any who supported them, such as the republican
government in Zagreb, were labelled fascists. Belgrade re-awoke memories of
crimes conducted during World War II and generalised about allegiances of a small
proportion of Croats, implicating all Croats, or sometimes all Albanians or all
Muslim Bosnians, and then legitimised trans-generational blame by mapping these
crimes onto contemporary Croats, Albanians and Bosnians (Thompson 1994).
The first organised violent actions and first territorial claims and conquests
were by Serbian controlled or backed forces, which resulted in Serb control of onethird of Croatia and two-thirds of Bosnia.
Finally, the evidence of massacres and expulsion of non-Serbs perpetrated by
Serbian forces, occasionally in Croatia, very often in Bosnia, involving systematic
massacres of civilians leads to the inescapable conclusion that Belgrade-directed
forces intended to destroy a significant part the Bosnian people and consequently
destroy their society and culture. Estimates vary between 60,000 and 300,000
Bosnians killed in the war through such massacres or (to a lesser degree) artillery
bombardment. Genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention, namely the
intention to destroy a national, religious, racial or ethnic community or group in
whole or in part, is a highly appropriate term for such actions.2
This is neither to argue that no Serbs suffered in these wars, as many suffered
terribly, nor to say that Croats and Bosnians never committed war crimes, as some
did. However, in the early months of the war, which is the focus of my research,
when there was still hope of effective international assistance, these crimes were few
and not associated with the elected governmental authorities or their forces. This is
a critical distinction.
Britain’s response
The British response to the crisis is central for several reasons. In general terms
Britain wields, and wielded then, considerable diplomatic influence as a UN Security
Council permanent member with veto power, a leading EU power, member of the
G7 and as leader of the Commonwealth. Specifically on the break-up of Yugoslavia,
Britain was part of the troika of foreign ministers tasked with tackling the crisis in its
earliest phases and later from July 1992, at the height of the crisis, held the EU
presidency. It consistently played a central role in shaping the EU’s and later UN’s
policy of cease-fire negotiation and later mediation and negotiation of ‘peace
2
Scholars and journalists who support this contention about genocide – underpinned
by a series of Hague Tribunal judgments - include (but not exclusively) Noel Malcolm
(1994); Christopher Bennett (1995); James Gow (1997); Mark Mazower (1992); Martin
Shaw (1996); Quintin Hoare (2000); Brendan Simms (1996); David Rieff (1995);
Chuck Sudetic (1998); Peter Maas (1996); Roy Gutman (1993); Christopher Hitchens,
Dick Holbrooke (1998); Peter Mojzes (1994); Thomas Cushman (1996); David
Stannard (1996); Norman Cigar (1995); Adrian Hastings (1994); Philip Cohen (1996);
Michael Sells (1996); Ed Vulliamy (1998); and Stjepan Mestrovic (1996).
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settlements’ designed to carve up Bosnia. Various political leaders and analysts
(most notably Simms 2001) have accused the Major government of vetoing more
robust action in defence of Bosnia’s integrity.
Although in the early weeks of the war in Bosnia, Britain identified Serbia as the
most responsible party, London simultaneously signalled that it saw the war as
essentially a civil war between different ethnic groups who basically were no longer,
after the death of Tito, able to live together. Officials fostered complexity in their
explanations of the crisis. The Foreign Office consistently refused to attribute
responsibility in unambiguous terms. While Britain, like other EU states, was keen
to get diplomatically involved in the crisis from its outset, its creations – the Hague
(September 1991) and London (August 1992) Conferences – were essentially stalling
mechanisms that appeared to many observers designed to allow the Serbian forces
the extra time needed to finish the job of annexing territory in Croatia and Bosnia
respectively (Almond 1994). In the name of the measured, reasonable and peaceable
policy of negotiation and partition, policies proposed by other states, including
punitive sanctions and blockade, lifting the arms embargo (which operated in reality
exclusively against the Bosnian side) and air strikes against Serbian forces, their
bases and key assets were vetoed, sometimes by London alone. Britain developed
this context-specific power because of its willingness to deploy troops for highly
restricted functions including the escort of food aid to beleaguered communities in
Bosnia. With troops on the ground it could determine the escalation against Serbia’s
military forces. For years it was able to prevent more robust responses by others
(mainly the US). What role then did media play in representing and critiquing the
policies of the Major administration?
Policy-making and problem definition
Having established Belgrade’s overwhelming responsibility for aggressive war and
genocide in Bosnia and Britain’s pivotal role in relation to the crisis it created, I
would like to examine how critical the early stages of decision making may have
been in influencing policy over the short and medium term such that pivotal aspects
of the crisis were understood (or rather, misunderstood) in a way that helped to
serve the interests of Foreign Office decision makers.
It seems appropriate in the case of Bosnia – where British and EU officials
jumping at the opportunity to demonstrate their diplomatic and mediation skills, put
the crisis of Yugoslavia firmly on the public policy agenda – to focus not on agenda
setting as such, but rather critical earlier features of what Kingdon (1995) calls the
pre-decision processes of foreign policy making. What is of pre-eminent importance
is Cobb and Elder’s (1973) notion of ‘problem definition’, a particular stage of
policy-making, not generally alluded to in the writing on the CNN effect, which has
a disproportionate impact on policy outcomes.
Broadly, the policy process can be seen as comprising problem definition,
agenda setting, policy formulation, legitimation and adoption, implementation and
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administration, and policy evaluation, with much overlap or sometimes stages
missed out altogether (Paletz 2002). The critical characteristics of a problem are
defined initially and will effectively limit policy debate and options for policy action,
sometimes with long term effect. ‘Once crystallised, some definitions will remain
long-term fixtures of the policymaking landscape’; sometimes ‘definitions may
undergo constant revision or be replaced altogether by competing formulations’
(Cobb and Rochefort 1994, p.4). Determining how definitions crystallise is
important to understanding how definition and redefinition affected the policy
problem of Bosnia.
Dearing and Rogers (1996) distinguish between different types of problems, in
particular noting that some problems seem to be more clear cut or one-sided so that
no-one takes a public position in favour of their continuation. Nobody supports
continued pollution or publicly promotes child abuse, although officials may still
engage in strategies to avoid taking concerted, effective action on such issues. Such
‘valence’ issues have only one legitimate side and proponents struggle over the
solution to the agreed-upon problem, not whether the problem exists. What is
evident is that classifying a condition into one category rather than another will
likely define it as a particular kind of problem. If a problem is defined as ‘pressing’,
‘whole classes of approaches are favored over others, and some alternatives are
highlighted while others fall from view’ (Kingdon 1995, p.198).
In the specific context under examination here there were several important
features of the problem that were arguably critical to an adequate understanding of
(and therefore adequate response to) the crisis. These features include the question
of causation of and responsibility for the war and the means used to prosecute it. As
Cobb and a later co-author, Rochefort, suggest, how a problem is defined always
entails some statement about its origin and it inevitably determines ideas about its
solution. The question of culpability is the foremost of all aspects of problem
definition.
In the Bosnian context the issue of responsibility or culpability was critical to
understanding the nature of the war. To assume an ethnic genesis of the conflict led
to very different policy prescriptions and to an assumption that Belgrade bore
primary and overwhelming responsibility for the war. Ethnic intolerance and
conflict is commonly seen as intractable, almost part of the human condition; when
a war’s causes have such depth, they are not easily remediable, if at all. In
distinction, aggressive genocidal war demands a response (most states are signatories
of the Genocide Convention, which expects them to intervene to stop or prevent
genocide). As Wildavsky (1991) noted, a problem is only a problem if something can
be done to solve it. The way the problem of the war in Bosnia was officially defined
– perhaps without solution, at best only a temporary palliative one – made it less of
a problem or issue for policy, because there was no apparent solution beyond
negotiation.
Schattschneider’s idea that the definition of alternatives is ‘the supreme
instrument of power’ has special relevance to the Bosnia case study (1960, p.68).
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However, as has been demonstrated, the way in which a problem is classified and
defined will usually limit the range of alternatives under consideration. ‘Alternative
specification’ is the process of narrowing the range of possible positions for any one
issue (Dearing and Rogers 1996, p.76). Relatively hidden clusters of people including
academic specialists, career bureaucrats and legislative staffers affect the alternatives
according to Kingdon (p.199). Alternative specification over Bosnia was constrained
by the problem defined, as it will be shown, in rather disparaging, ethnic terms,
highly suggestive of moral equality.
In terms of specific policy alternatives, defined in this way, Bosnia merited on
the one hand complete abstention and non-intervention, as parliamentary figures of
every political hue in most European countries were seen to advocate, and on the
other hand, massive military intervention and a war to ‘stop the fighting’. Although
there was already an established policy option of humanitarian intervention (as the
Kurdistan example demonstrated) involving air exclusion zones, which could have
been re-shaped for the Bosnian context, this was essentially excluded, constrained
partly by the specific definition of the problem and flowing from that, the
alternative policy options taken seriously by officials.
In a similar way the nature of the war – in particular the severity of the means
employed – would be a ‘contentious matter since this element of problem definition
is pivotal to capturing the attention of public officials’ (Cobb and Rochefort 1994,
p.17). Defining the war as aggression and genocide, a ‘valence issue’, would have
had a critical impact on the impression of the severity of the problem. Policy
alternatives would have been quite different and perhaps more constrained; it is
unlikely that Western publics would merely spectate the destruction of another
European people.
A central question, given the early establishment of the official perspective on
the crisis, relates to whether re-definition of the problem of Bosnia was ever
possible. Issue proponents, in Kingdon’s parlance, are interest groups that attempt
to get specific problems onto the public policy agenda and try to shape the
definition of the problem on the agenda. Cobb and Elder (1972, p.85) distinguish
between systemic and institutional (or formal) agendas in agenda building. They
suggest that redefinition of an issue can occur if new perspectives become
‘channelised’ on to the systemic agenda. For this to happen there needs to be, at a
minimum, widespread awareness, shared concern of a significant portion by the
public that a policy response is required, and ‘a shared perception that the matter is
an appropriate concern of some governmental unit and falls within the bounds of its
authority’ (p.86). The crushing of the Kurdish (and Shia) rebellion and resulting
humanitarian catastrophe could be seen as a systematic agenda issue which redefined the problem of the aftermath of the Gulf War and established humanitarian
intervention as the most applicable option on the institutional or official agenda. As
noted in the introduction to this paper, it has been argued that pressure primarily
from television news organisations forced this systemic agenda issue onto the
formal or institutional agenda. News organisations are critical to efforts by
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themselves or other ‘issue proponents’ to get problems re-defined in a more
accurate manner, being able to spread awareness through dissemination of
information. Framing is central to this process.
Media framing and problem definition
Prior to problem formation comes the critical question of which problems (or
aspects of problems) enter the public arena. I have already mentioned that the state
(the EU and its members) placed the issue on the public agenda through its assertive
action over the crisis as war began in Slovenia. In respect of problems that
government is not keen to address, the media are especially important in what has
been described as their surveillance function, more commonly understood as
gatekeeping. The events described in the historic-political outline above, as will be
shown, did not translate seamlessly onto the television screen. Events, especially
those relating to genocide, were not fully reported. As Robert E. Park proposed
earlier this century, editors see ‘certain items for publication…as more important or
more interesting than others. The remainder [are] condemn[ed] to the oblivion and
the wastebasket. There is an enormous amount of news “killed” every day’ (in
Dearing and Rogers 1996). Gatekeeping can have a critical effect on how problems
are formulated. Critical aspects of problems can be omitted under the rationale of
news worthiness – especially the requirement for immediacy – having a significant
impact on how problems are categorised and defined.
On passing media gatekeepers and officials who may suppress important
information before it can reach the gatekeepers, a problem begins the process of
definition. The media can act as carriers of cultural values, they can shape the
language commonly used to describe an issue and even be advocates for the cause
of a particular group. As Paletz confirms: ‘the media can be quite influential at the
problem formation stage. By routine reporting and commentary, they bring events
and issues to the public’s and policymakers’ attention as they occur’. News media
are most influential when they represent events in a ‘policy-relevant way, as
expecting, deserving, even requiring a governmental response. At its most detailed,
such media coverage can include the problems’ causes, severity…responsibility and
blame; and possible solutions’ (2002 pp.313-314). As noted by Cobb and Rochefort
(1994, p.4), how problems are defined is rarely incontestable and can be challenged
by media.
Framing is of obvious relevance to problem definition. Framing is seen as the
selection of features ‘of a perceived reality and mak[ing] them more salient in a
communicating text [so] as to promote a particular problem definition, causal
interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item
described’ (Entman 1993, p.52). The process of framing is a critical aspect of the
process of problem definition for elite and wider public debate (ibid.). How these
interconnected processes function has yet to be extensively examined empirically or
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theorised fully, but it should be apparent that the process of media framing
determines how the problem is actually defined on the public policy agenda.
Entman (1991) defined a media frame as an independent variable that
influences both policymaking and public opinion. He identified five characteristics
of media texts that impact on information processing by setting a certain frame of
reference. They include importance judgments and agency, or locating
responsibility. In defining problems, frames determine ‘what a causal agent is doing
with what costs and benefits’. They often diagnose causes and implicitly make moral
judgments by evaluating ‘causal agents and their effects’ and suggest remedies to
problems (Entman 1991). Frames are ‘both the constitutive elements of an issue
around which details are built’, and ‘the borders of discourse on the issue and they
define which elements of an issue are relevant in public discourse’, and – echoing
much of what has just been said about problem definition – which problems are
‘amenable to political action, which solutions are viable, and which actors are
credible or potentially efficacious’. Other traits include identification with potential
victims; categorisation, or the choice of labels for the incidents; and generalisations
to a broader national context (Meyer 1995, p.175). I argue below that the linguistic
choices of news organisations in the framing of the Bosnian crisis were critical to
problem definition. The centrality of framing in the context of the political process
of responding to war and genocide cannot be underestimated. Framing is critical to
problem definition in public discourse.
News framing of Bosnia
So how did television news frame the problem of Bosnia in the critical early months
of the war? Before that question is addressed I briefly state my reasons for selecting
this period for extensive and detailed content and discourse analysis.
The rationale can be divided into historic-political, media and communication
related factors. I examine a continuous time period of flagship television news
reports from 1 April 1992, the date of the first serious incursion of Serbian militia
from Serbia proper into Bosnia to late August 1992, by which time Serbian forces
controlled two-thirds of Bosnian territory – the peak of their expansion. The period
comprises many of the constitutive events of the three and a half year Bosnian war,
including the genocide in eastern and northern Bosnia and the accompanying mass
deportation of people; the establishment of the siege of Sarajevo (and sieges of the
other key towns and cities); and the first intense phase of international diplomatic
and limited military involvement in the crisis, including the passing of critical
Council resolutions and the London Conference (at which point the sample ends).
Gunter (2000, p.55) notes that ‘infrequent, but highly salient or significant events
can have the greatest impact on the audience’. As already mentioned the period is
important to a study of British media because of London’s central role in the crisis
at this time and the establishment of its ultimately destructive policy of escorted
humanitarian convoys. Apart from the Croatian-Bosnian war (1993-1994) the
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remaining three years of war could largely be seen as a continuation of these sieges
and of escorted humanitarian aid to the besieged. A major shift occurred with the
Srebrenica massacres, and eventual large-scale bombardment by NATO and the
Croatian-Bosnian roll back of the Serbian armies were the final events of the war.
In terms of the representation of the war, the period under examination was
also key: the establishment of the framing of the Bosnian war, the decision to cover
Sarajevo (largely at the expense of the rest of Bosnia), the media’s ‘discovery’ of the
camps, and the employment and normalisation in coverage of the term ‘ethnic
cleansing’, all occurred in this period. Cohen and Wolfsfeld argue that it is extremely
difficult to change existing media frames, especially about conflict. ‘These frames
take on an almost mythical quality, and after a while none of the parties raise many
questions about them. Antagonists who attempt to swim against this interpretive
tide usually drown’ (Cohen and Wolfsfeld 1999, p.xvii).
This research demonstrates that the framing of the war in Bosnia placed the
identity issue of ethnicity centre stage. There was, at times, strongly critical reporting
of the actions of Serbian forces, although mainly in respect of their laying siege to
and heavy artillery bombardment of towns inhabited by civilians. While undercut at
times by journalistic indulgence in relation to Serbian claims of provocation, a more
effective diminution of this framing was enacted by the consistent reporting of
Serbian denials. As I have noted elsewhere (Kent 2003) if it had been the dominant
framing it appears likely this framing would have influenced opinion strongly against
‘the Serbs’ and Belgrade.
The use of the term ‘the Serbs’ in the paper is intentional and important
because the findings suggest there were two predominant framings of the conflict,
the other, taking precedence over what here is called the Serbian aggression frame,
because the elements of which it was composed were visible in every report and
were consequently deeply, structurally embedded in the framing. This frame is here
termed the moral equalisation or Balkanist frame (the dehumanisation of Bosnians
and other peoples of the region, in the words of Sells, ‘as “Balkan” tribal haters,
outside the realm of reason and civilisation’). This inherently quasi-racist, pseudohistoric perspective appears to have informed the structurally embedded linguistic
preferences of news organisations, as well as, less subtle, more direct, but still
somewhat opaque, aspects of falsely balanced reporting, which will be discussed
below.
The linguistic choices alluded to above included a raft of terminology very
much supportive of what Banks and Murray describe as an essentialist
understanding of ethnicity. As was alluded to earlier, the use of descriptors located
at the level of ethnicity included labels such as ‘the Serbs’, the Croats’ and ‘the
Muslims’, used over their higher level political identities, in the case of the
‘Muslims’, a highly contentious labelling of people, who actually fitted more into the
Bosnian grouping, which included Jews and Christians, some of whom were Serbs
and Croats. Repeated reference to other terms redolent of ethnicity, including
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‘ethnic civil war’, ethnic groups, ‘ethnic cleansing’, and others, reinforced this
template.
Parenti’s notion of ‘false balancing’ is of considerable relevance to the television
news coverage of the war in Bosnia. In essence, it is when the media ‘tries to create
an impression of even-handedness by placing equal blame on parties that are not
equally culpable’ (1993, p.199). I have identified several forms of such balancing
which in different ways reinforce the equal responsibility for war. The most
significant, ‘face value transmission’ occurred frequently in the period focused on.
This occurs when journalists accept at face value what is known or suspected to be
inaccurate and passing on such information to the public ‘without adequate
confirmation or countervailing response… Without saying a particular story is true
or not, but treating it at face value, the press propagates misinformation – while
maintaining it is being merely non-committal and objective’ (p.194). Other forms of
false balancing included examples by journalists themselves and by Serbian
spokespeople (Kent 2003).
My overall assessment of the television framing of the war, which on cursory
inspection appears not too dissimilar from mainstream press framing, is that
framing in many individual reports and in general over the almost six months of
coverage was ambiguous about the central questions of the war: the issues of
causation and attribution of responsibility and the actual nature of the war. While
both the moral equalisation and Serbian aggression frames were pre-eminent, and
the former took precedence, overall the contradictory nature of the two meant
ambiguity was often the result.
This finding is reinforced by the second major conclusion about television and
broadsheet press framing of the critical problem of genocide. Genocide was not
reported as such in the period. Despite the existence of overwhelming verified
evidence of systematic massacres of the Bosnian people in eastern Bosnia, of
destruction of cultural monuments and artefacts and the mass deportation of those
surviving the onslaught, the links to Belgrade of forces carrying out these atrocities
were not established. The systematic nature of the attacks and the careful
verification of these massacres were critical elements of genocide missing from
television and apart from a few exceptions, press coverage. Consequently it is
unsurprising, despite the desperate claims of Bosnian leaders, that the label
‘genocide’ was not applied by television or press in this period. Instead, some
broadsheets by late spring, occasionally and tentatively (using apostrophes) used the
Nazi term, ‘ethnic cleansing’. Television adopted it after the ‘discovery’ of the
camps. To the British public the term was a neologism that needed explanation and
definition. My assessment is that the term, as generally used at the time, came to
mean the expulsion or driving out of civilians. Thus taking the place of genocide as
a descriptor and more subtly reinforcing the ethnic template, reporting ‘ethnic
cleansing’ undermined possibilities for understanding the real nature of Serbia’s
campaign against the people and state of Bosnia.
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It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the mediated television debate about
policy action on the problem of Bosnia was highly restricted by the way the problem
itself had been framed for public discourse. There was no urgent need for action to
prevent or stop genocide in eastern Bosnia in the early months. The most
appropriate and most effective option of lifting the arms embargo on the besieged
and embattled Bosnian forces and NATO air targeting of Serbian forces, bases and
assets was barely mentioned in the period. Discussion centred on the impossibility
of a massive Gulf War type intervention involving hundreds of thousands of
American and European troops, which at the same time implicated the Bosnians
who were depicted as cynically attempting to engineer such assistance by any means.
Other options including ‘corridors’ or armed escorts for aid convoys, safe havens
protected by the UN, and sanctions were all given extensive treatment. Once the
horror of the transit, concentration and death camps became known to the world –
the term ‘death camp’ was largely disavowed though in fact deadly accurate –
something had to be done about Bosnia. However, the manner in which the
problem of Bosnia had been framed and, therefore, defined meant there were only
‘shades of grey’, ‘no heroes, only villains’ to use some of the terminology applied to
the situation at the time. My research shows that even within days of the camps
story, unambiguous attribution of Serbian responsibility was far from how the war
was actually framed. Instead all sides had camps and all sides had committed
atrocities. Military escorts for humanitarian aid to stop besieged civilians dying from
starvation and injuries from sniper and shellfire seemed, in this light, perfectly
appropriate to the problem of Bosnia, setting up its people for years of sustained
conflict and low-level slaughter and the eventual massacre at Srebrenica (Kent
2003).
A pressing question posed by these research findings is why did news
organisations complicate, confuse and ultimately get some of the important issues
that defined the problem of Bosnia so very wrong? Does not the ideal of journalistic
independence from government suggest scope for the media to critique foreign
policy and to present a different perspective to that held by officialdom on
important international crises?
Indexing
Contrary to the expectation implicit in this question of a free and independent
press, the indexing norm is more the rule than the exception. The indexing means
reporters index, or correlate the spectrum of debate about problems and policies in
the news to the spectrum of debate among elected politicians. Significant
contributions to this conceptualisation include Sigal (1973), Gans (1980) and
Fishman in Mermin (1999). Such a rule is extremely convenient to news
organisations because ‘a single set of sources minimises the expenditure of time and
money and maximises presumed credibility’ (Mermin 1999, p.19). However, when
there is no policy debate (in Washington, or Westminster) but only consensus,
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indexing allows for critique of policy. Journalists may find a critical angle ‘in the
possibility that existing policy, on its own terms, might not work’ (p.9). This
perspective is an important one to report, however, is this the extent or limit of
journalistic criticism beyond reporting what the government, the opposition party or
other elected representatives have to say? By this account the parameters of
independent reporting seem rather narrow and cannot be said to provide adequate
information for citizens to assess policy decisions. In situations where there exists
cross party consensus on policy, admittedly less likely in Britain with its multi-party
system than in the US, without other perspectives derived from outside
Westminster, citizens have to evaluate policy on the terms set by the government
itself. It would seem that such reporting would undermine the notion of ‘watchdog’
role, in which the press works as a balance against government, ‘providing the
public with an independent source of information with which to form opinions and
make decisions concerning the political issues of the day’. Watchdog theory suggests
that there should be ‘a good deal of analysis of government decisions, including the
most important one about whether or not to use military force’ (Thrall 1996,
pp.342-343). However, ‘if politicians are granted the power to set the terms and
boundaries of debate in the news’ such analysis is precluded. Mermin (1999, p.20)
explains that indexing does not actually amount to a mirroring of an objective
account of problems and policies, but to a reinforcement and reproduction in the
news of the ‘strategic calculations of politicians’ (pp.25-26).
For certain authors including Dorman and Livingston, Entman and Page, Gans,
and Sunstein, who report critical perspectives on foreign-policy decisions, the
indexing norm is seen as fundamental to journalistic independence. Gans argues for
a multi-perspectivalism in which all alternatives are represented. Others like Zaller
and Paletz suggest that expecting journalists to inform the public through evaluation
of a range of policy alternatives ‘places an untoward, even unachievable expectation
on the news media’ (Paletz 1994, pp.285-286). Mermin concurs that there are
fundamental practical problems with multi-perspectivalism, but concludes that an
approach which broadens the definitions of whose views count beyond the limits of
experts with ties to government and simple notions of public opinion is needed.
Bennett (1990, p.113) argues that the continued application of this ‘indexing norm’
undermines the democratic ideal of the press as a guardian of democracy. The
practice of journalists granting government officials ‘a privileged voice in the news is
… generally reasonable’, unless the range of official debate on a given topic
‘excludes or “marginalises” stable majority opinion in society’ or ‘unless official
actions raise doubts about political propriety’ (p.104). In addition it seems
appropriate to suggest, in relation to global crises, unless official actions raise doubts
about adherence to international legal obligations, such as the Genocide
Convention. In relation to Bosnia, failure of the UN to provide adequate protection
or restitution after having denied Bosnia the possibility of proper defence by the
imposition of an arms embargo was a failure to live up to legal obligations. More
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clear cut, legally speaking, was the failure of Britain and other Western states to
prevent and stop genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Conclusion
The war and genocide in Bosnia, the worst in Europe since World War II and the
Holocaust, led to inadequate policy responses from the EU and the US. Britain’s
pivotal role in restraining robust intervention against Belgrade’s highly destructive
project of territorial expansion has implications for the role of British media in
representing the crisis. In summarising findings from the above cited extensive
study into television’s role in particular, it was found that the framing of critical
aspects of the ‘problem of Bosnia’ may well have affected which policy options
appeared appropriate to policy makers and acceptable to the British public. The
ultimately successful option of supporting beleaguered Bosnian forces with arms
and air support was not given adequate consideration in news media in the critical
period examined, because the crisis was not defined in a manner that suggested such
options would be appropriate.
The theoretical implications of this study are that indexing as currently
understood by news organisations does not allow for holding governments to
account in the critical context of genocide and aggressive war. Western governments
appear able to build agendas that address symbolic problems, avoiding effective
action directed at real problems. Through seizing an issue and defining its basic
contours on the public policy agenda the state is able to limit the alternative options
for policy action with minimal critical or independent perspectives aired by
television news media. Media framing in the case of Bosnia appears to have
followed closely the official British perspectives of moral equalisation and avoidance
of recognition of genocide despite the available evidence. A review of the literature
on the media and the Rwandan genocide reveals a similar unwillingness to define
dire international problems as valence issues that demand adequate response.3 It
might well be argued that the case of Britain and Bosnia also demonstrates that the
propaganda model extensively discussed in critical literature in recent years, applies
equally to cases in which governments seek to avoid war as much as to those where
the state adopts the path of militarism.
Serious media organisations need to rethink policy with regard to the reporting
of genocide and war. Most important is the necessity to hold governments to their
international legal commitments vis-à-vis the Genocide Convention, a rational
extension of the indexing norm. This will require sometimes bold decisions to
undermine, through the use of alternative descriptors and labels, and critique, the
very language used by official sources in representing the degradation of genocide.
A first step may require the recognition that the media have failed victims of past
genocides. Close observation of British media coverage of the events leading up to
3
See for example, Erikson (1996); Shaw (1996); Wheeler (2000); Melvern (2000);
Destexhe (1995); Philo (1996); McNulty (1999); Ignatieff (1997).
173
Gregory Kent
the recent war in Iraq seems to demonstrate that broadcast news organisations and
most newspapers routinely referred to the Ba’ath party’s gassing of 5,000 Kurds at
Halabja in 1988, but scrupulously avoided mentioning its considerably more
important context, the Al Anfal genocide campaign against them, of which the
attack on this village was one important and symbolic event. Exposing the fact that
(according to Human Rights Watch and others) over 100,000 Kurds were murdered
would hold governments to account for past failures, current (professed) concern
and future inconsistencies over serious human rights abuse on a massive scale.
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