Winning CNN Wars

Media Coverage and Public Perception

To Win CNN Wars

by Frank J. Stech, Lt. Col. U.S. Army Reserve

Advice on CNN war has focused more on "coping" than on "winning" and tends to echo a warning by Winston Churchill: "Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature."[67]

There is a growing chorus blaming bad US foreign policy on CNN images: when the images get to us emotionally (and through us, to our leaders), these critics argue, we make mistakes, intervening militarily where our vital national interests are not involved. Episodes like Somalia or the intervention in Lebanon, the chorus argues, occur because shocking images got under our skin and overruled rational national reasoning. "Foreign policy by CNN," one critic warns, "may be psychologically satisfying, but it is very dangerous. Our record of interventions provoked by guilt-inducing pictures is an unhappy one."[68]

"The eye, fastened to CNN," writes another: makes a valuable witness. But it has a tendency to stir people to bursts of indignation that flare briefly, spectacularly and ineffectually, like a fire splashed with a cup of gasoline. An advertent and sustained foreign policy uses a different part of the brain from the one engaged by horrifying images.[69]

Foreign policy success, these critics reason, occurs because our leaders make cold, dispassionate assessments of geopolitical national interests: "The Persian Gulf War was not provoked by pictures. . . . We were galvanized not by emotion but by cold calculation."[70]

The solution these critics offer is to ignore the pictures and equate US vital interests with classic realpolitik realities: oil, military power balance, narrow economic and political self-interests. The "cold calculation" view seemingly rejects American causes based on law, justice, or humanitarianism. Historically, the critics' logic is wholly hindsightful. Sending Marines into Lebanon or Somalia, at the outset, rested on US influence and leadership, just as did sending the Marines into monsoon-ravaged Bangladesh (Operation Sea Angel), sending the Green Berets into Iraqi Kurdistan (Provide Comfort), or even sending forces to take back Kuwait. When body bags came back, however, some critics professed to see a lack of national interests, and feckless policies prompted by images.

The observation that focusing policy through the filter of the news sometimes courts disaster provides no fresh insight. Walter Lippmann, in his 1922 classic Public Opinion, wrote [71]:

    The press . . . is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. . . . News and truth are not the same. . . . The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act. When we expect [news] to supply . . . truth . . . we misunderstand the limited nature of news, the illimitable complexity of society; we overestimate our own endurance, public spirit, and all-round competence.

Lippmann saw remedies in a social organization based on "analysis and record" (boring though it may be), decentralization of decisions, "abandonment of the theory of the omnicompetent," coordination among decisionmakers, and a "running audit" of situations to prevent governance by episode. He recognized that the resultant errors of setting policy on a news foundation, of acting "without a reliable picture of the world," could be offset only by "inventing, creating, and organizing a machinery of knowledge." A more contemporary critic believes the solution lies in "leadership and a strength of resolve that allows principle and conviction to ride over the often ill-formed media criticism and the snapshot reporting."[72]

If the critics of CNN-driven policy sometimes have trouble recollecting the sources of national interests, they are right about the potentially dangerous consequences of policy development and military operations in reaction to images and snapshot reporting, without analysis, planning, or readiness. Among the dilemmas of CNN war is this: the government machinery (e.g., the intelligence and policy staffs) suggested by Lippmann's advice tends to be bypassed and ignored; we should not be surprised if this machinery fails to help leaders fight and win CNN wars.

One approach taken by the managers of that government machinery has been to become more like CNN. The Central Intelligence Agency technical staff, under Director Robert Gates, was working on "advanced delivery systems" to get to policymakers DIA products "that combine . . databased information, graphics, even video." Similarly, the Defense Intelligence Agency consulted with CNN on how to coordinate and integrate reports into coherent and interactive communications with their clients.[73]

What these CNN imitators must remember is that simply knowing something, and helping policymakers and commanders to become aware, is not enough. Leadership needs more than advice and information. Providing leaders "a reliable picture of the world" helps only if they are able to use that picture persuasively to communicate their vision of outcomes. The "government knowledge machinery" that supports the leadership must be ready to prepare both information and compelling communications as quickly, readily, and flexibly as CNN provides news video and analysis.

Providing this level of support to leaders presents significant organizational, technical, and intellectual challenges. The biggest obstacle, however, is philosophical: the sentiment that the solution to the problems of CNN wars is to "turn out the lights"; to get the CNN spotlights pointed elsewhere, dimmed, switched off. Or, if you are a policymaker, to turn your back on them.

The "cold calculation" critics, who argue that US foreign policy is too motivated by CNN, crassly imply that shocking images are the only motivations for "do-good" policies. "True national interests," according to the realpolitik perspective, reflect unemotional, geopolitical realities. If these critics are right, US national interests may be very difficult to defend in future CNN wars: they would reflect a cold, calculated, negative image of US self-interest. As noted previously, the Bush Administration got it right when it emphasized "the quality of our ideas, values, and leadership" rather than our undoubtedly dominant military capabilities.[74]

Future CNN wars, like the Persian Gulf War, will require US policymakers to see that the quality of our ideas and values is given proper weight in developing policy. Those wars will require military leaders to reflect the human ideas and values of our national interests in our operations. If our policies fail to reflect a human face, if the cold calculations of our leaders envision no compelling stories of human values, then in a world of CNN war the force of public support and the favor of public opinion for those policies will be questionable at best.[75]

The human face of our policies becomes part of our arsenal, and the force of the stories of our ideas and values becomes the core of US power.[76]

When political leaders have sent the military into harm's way, it does not matter to those in the conflict if our policies are rooted in the programmed political intentions of a cold calculus of realpolitik, or if they are compelled by humane values in response to CNN images. Once the commitment is made and the soldiers go, the minicams will be there, and we must prepare the troops for the roll (and the role) of the CNN video. If policymakers and military leaders hold no vision of the human face of our commitments, if they tell no stories from the heart of the how and why of our military actions, then others will do it for them, and the results may not be to their liking.

There is, however, one lesson at this early phase of discovery about CNN war that policymakers and military commanders, and those who would advise and inform them, should learn. They must communicate the goals of policies and the objectives of military operations clearly and simply enough so that the widest of audiences can envision the ways and the means being used to reach those goals. This understanding needs to extend from the President down to the average citizen and the most junior soldier. The operational ways and means must be clear and simple--how the operation is happening--so individuals can understand how they personally are being affected.

The policy goals and motives for the operation need to be equally clear and simple, but also compelling, so that citizens and allies alike will want to be a part of these operations, while our adversaries will feel powerless to escape the inevitable outcome if they oppose our goals. If policymakers and military leaders draw these pictures and convey this strategic understanding, they should have little fear of video on the battlefields of future CNN wars. The operations, tactics, and images of future CNN wars will follow from these visions. Soldiers, civilians, even enemies, will know why and how we do what we must. We can let them tell the story. And that is how to win CNN wars.

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© Copyright 2001 by David W. Tschanz.
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