Media Pervasiveness

GLOBAL REACH AND PICTURE POWER

The dramatic increase in live television reporting of international crises began just five years ago with the satellite coverage of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. CNN pioneered such real time coverage and other broadcasters adjusted rapidly upon seeing its power. Print journalism also modified its style to intensify emotional and on-the-spot depictions, often at the expense of analysis. These capabilities of modern media to be immediate, sensational and pervasive are unsettling the conduct of foreign affairs. This would be so were the Cold War still underway, but in the shapeless aftermath of a clear-cut superpower rivalry the impact of media’s immediacy is magnified. The technology that makes possible real-time, global coverage is truly revolutionary. Today’s correspondents employ lap-top computers, wireless telephones that transmit directly to satellites and mobile satellite dishes to broadcast vivid pictures and commentary from the scenes of tragedy and disorder without the transmission delays, political obstructions or military censorship of old.

For policy makers, the nonstop coverage of CNN (also coming in the future from the BBC and others) presents opportunities to constantly monitor news events and disseminate timely diplomatic information. Despite these benefits, politicians are more concerned than elated by global, real-time broadcasting. They worry about a "loss of control" and decry the absence of quiet time to deliberate choices, reach private agreements and mold the public’s understanding. They point with nostalgia to how those opportunities helped President John F. Kennedy respond safely to the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In an era when satellite intrusiveness was still a government monopoly, Kennedy was able to sustain secrecy for six days of crucial negotiations. Television in 1962 was sufficiently underdeveloped that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara did not turn on a television set during the two weeks of the crisis.