Abstract
This paper discusses the increasing influence of television news reporting on foreign-policy making. Due to a remarkable technological breakthrough during the last decade, television images sometimes exert a powerful impact as was the case with the dispatch and the withdrawal of the U.S. mission to Somalia by the Bush and the Clinton administrations. In other cases, however, television pictures do not matter. The U.S. government did not get involved in Rwanda or deepen its involvement in Bosnia-Hertzegovina in spite of the repeated television coverage of the appalling situations in both regions. The difference derives from whether policy-makers have their own firm policy, without which they tend to be susceptible to television images. With today's media environment, policy-makers must have their own visions, agenda, and policies to cope with media's undue influence on foreign-policy making.
