US Media Pools and Military Interventions in the 1980s and 1990s

Media pools have frequently been deployed by the US military during the past 25 years, and there has been much written about the effects and limitations of their use in particular cases. The military actions reviewed in this study are troop deployments to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, and Somalia, all of which resulted in the loss of American lives. The research examines whether there is a correlation between the characterization of the intervention as it is presented in media pool stories and the shifts in public opinion during this range of US military interventions. The examination shows that (1) when US media are constrained by military pooling, then the military intervention is characterized by the media as facilitating political change, and the public opinion is initially favorable; and (2) when US media are not constrained by military pooling, then the military intervention is characterized by the media as facilitating humanitarian efforts, and the public opinion is initially less favorable. This evidence also suggests a savvy practice of agenda-framing and second-level agenda-setting among military operations planners who determine the implementation of media pooling. The evidence also suggests the need for additional attention by researchers interested in the variables of second-level message-framing effects during those periods when both media and audiences are vulnerable to message management.