The 'CNN Effect' Dies in Syria

When working as a war correspondent, one is often forced to answer the question: How is what you are doing anything other than 'suffering porn'?

The obvious answer is that if enough journalists report the horrible truth of atrocities and war crimes, this may eventually force powerful people to act to stop it. Known as the 'CNN effect', this intense, no-holds-barred coverage of conflicts was credited with forcing the US to intervene in a number of crises around the world for (nominally) humanitarian reasons.

However, in 2018, the idea that press coverage can result in concrete action rings rather hollow.

With more than half a million people dead, and millions of refugees spread across tens of countries, the war in Syria is the defining humanitarian crisis of our time. Journalists, for our part, have covered the conflict in unprecedented detail, and several have paid for this with their lives. But no matter how many graphic pictures we share, or stories of abject human suffering we write, nothing has compelled powerful people around the world to end the war.

Uri Friedman's article for The Atlantic looks at the history of this 'CNN effect', and how in Syria it has been as useless as the conflict's countless peace deals and UN resolutions. It raises important questions regarding why this approach has failed in Syria, and what this means for journalism itself. Are our current leaders uniquely callous and uncaring? Or is the situation so complex that all intervention is self-defeating?