United States media coverage of events of uncertainty in foreign conflists: The cases of Eritrea and southern Sudan

This study aimed at examining media performance at a time when U.S. policymakers are uncertain as to what position to take in a foreign conflict situation that affects the national interest.;The study departed from the argument by some mass communication scholars that Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model is unable to provide explanations for U.S. media coverage of foreign conflicts outside the East-West divide. Based on this, the researcher posed the argument that the propaganda model may not adequately explain media coverage of foreign conflicts that leave U.S. policymakers uncertain of what position to take.;Drawing on the power uncertainty hypothesis of Tichenor, Donohue and Olien (1995), the researcher developed a 'policy uncertainty' model to test whether it would serve as a viable explanation for such in-between types of foreign conflicts. The Southern Sudan and Eritrean conflicts were used as case studies.;Two hypotheses were tested: (1) To the degree that U.S. foreign policymakers perceive uncertainty in a given foreign country, the media tend to report on all sides of the conflict without applying dichotomized treatment. (2) To the extent that uncertainty in a given foreign country is observed by the U.S. policymakers, the media are likely to gather news from all sources without giving any special priority to certain groups over others.;The data revealed in only one of four cases a relationship between uncertainty and neutral coverage. There was no relationship between uncertainty of U.S. foreign policymakers and source diversity. Thus there was marginal support for the first hypothesis, and no support for the second one. Further, although uncertainty tended to vary with length of coverage, both in terms of average length of sources per story and average length of stories, this association was not found statistically significant.;Based on these findings, it was concluded that the impact of uncertainty of U.S. policymakers on media coverage of a foreign conflict was at best minimal. However, it was also confirmed that dichotomous treatment of U.S. media in their coverage of foreign conflicts is not to the level that Herman and Chomsky suggest in their propaganda model.