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207 7 MASS COMMUNICATION BECOMES MULTIPOLAR 1991 and After With the ending of the cold war, tensions dating back to 1945 lessened. Simultaneously, as many observers have noted, the restructuring of international relationships into a multipolar pattern presented new challenges. In the realm of mass communication, the main problem for the United States involved adjusting to the fact that the disappearance of the Soviet Union did not translate into worldwide American hegemony. America’s resources of mass communication were vast. But by the 1990s, many countries had developed their media, others were working energetically to do so, and nongovernmental organizations, both political and economic, were entering the communications picture. In some ways, the new configuration in world communications resembled the pluralistic environment of the 1920s and 1930s. America could not assume that it would dominate world communications. Indeed in the governmental realm, the United States soon appeared to be making serious errors in its use of mass communication that weakened its standing in the world, while quasi-governmental and private-sector actors attempted to fill the void. Wars Are Packaged If President Reagan received the credit for ending the cold war, this was in part because his successor, George H. W. Bush, was much less competent in the use of mass communication. As a political favor, Bush appointed an old friend, Bruce Gelb, to be director of the USIA; Gelb proved an ineffective advocate. The president was seen as cavalier in his treatment of many of America’s allies and, when accused of lacking an overall plan in foreign policy, dismissed this criticism as “the vision thing”—a phrase given wide circulation by the media. When Bush fainted from exhaustion during a state dinner in Japan, the intense press coverage left the impression that he might no longer be fit to hold office. 208 Chapter 7 The exception to this media pattern was Bush’s conduct in the Persian Gulf War. Led by the dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq attacked Kuwait in 1991. President Bush went to the United Nations and formed a coalition of states that launched a counterattack, receiving high praise for his skill in gathering allies and encouraging thoughtful debate in Congress, which was extensively covered by the media. Bush communicated effectively with journalists and used the USIA to explain his pursuit of the conflict to nations abroad. The Gulf War brought major changes in the relation between war and mass communication as the new technologies that had begun to develop in earlier years started to exert broad influence. One such change was the speed and freedom with which print reporters in war zones were able to transmit their stories. Earlier they had used landline telephones or shortwave radio for instantaneous filing. These methods were cumbersome. Getting to a land phone or a radio was not always easy. Moreover, access to phone lines could be denied, and radio transmissions could be jammed. With the arrival of the Internet, however, filing stories became easier. Working with a laptop computer, the small, easily portable phones that were by now available, and a satellite hookup, a reporter could file a story almost anywhere and at any time. After being edited at the home office, the story could be quickly integrated by computer into the paper’s layout and distributed in hard copy and on the World Wide Web. The Internet and the Web also expanded the capacities of television news coverage. The Gulf War was notable for the 24/7 coverage, presented live by CNN. By this time CNN was no longer cable-dependent; instead it made extensive use of satellite transmissions from combat areas, turning on-the-scene correspondents like Peter Arnett and Christiane Amanpour into media stars.1 The sheer amount of information made available by the media during the Gulf War was unprecedented. Whether there was any depth to the coverage is, however, debatable. The military gave journalists nearly open access to some areas of the conflict but subtly directed them away from others. For example, CNN reporters were allowed to remain in Baghdad while missiles were falling, and to report from Jerusalem when it was under bombardment. Similarly, at press briefings the military provided arresting videotapes, taken from cockpit-mounted TV cameras, which showed American missiles being launched from fighter planes and precisely obliterating their targets on the ground thousands of feet below. But television news reporters were kept away from the gory slaughter of Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait and southern Iraq. The amplitude and immediacy...

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