The War on TV<\/p>\n
Philip Hammond<\/p>\n
In its war against Yugoslavia, Nato has tried to silence all debate,criticism and dissent.\u00a0 <\/span>The most grotesque instance of this was the\u00a0bombing of the Serbian television building, killing an estimated 10\u00a0civilians and injuring dozens more.\u00a0 <\/span>Prime Minister Tony Blair described\u00a0this as ‘entirely justified’.\u00a0 <\/span>The attack was allegedly carried out in\u00a0the name of Truth, since the station produces propaganda.\u00a0 <\/span>The\u00a0image-conscious Blair explained that television is part of the\u00a0‘apparatus’ which keeps a political leader in power, so camera\u00a0operators, make-up ladies and janitors are therefore legitimate targets.<\/p>\n Perhaps Nato also hoped reports by Western journalists in Belgrade –\u00a0filed from the TV building until it was hit – would become collateral\u00a0damage.\u00a0 <\/span>Certainly in Britain politicians have sought to stifle opinions\u00a0and facts they do not like, most conspicuously by portraying John\u00a0Simpson’s reports as Serbian propaganda.\u00a0 <\/span>What are they scared of?<\/p>\n First, they are worried by suggestions that the Serbian people are\u00a0united against Nato.\u00a0 <\/span>Defence Secretary George Robertson argued\u00a0unconvincingly that if an opinion poll were conducted in Serbia it would\u00a0not show the united opposition Simpson had reported.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Second, they are\u00a0uncomfortable about interviewers questioning the success of Nato\u00a0strategy.\u00a0 <\/span>Development Secretary Claire Short, for example, did a bad\u00a0impersonation of the ‘clever dick’ questions asked by the likes of John\u00a0Humphries.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Third, politicians have been rattled by reports of civilian\u00a0damage and death caused by Nato, which began to come out within the\u00a0first 24 hours of the bombing campaign and have continued steadilysince.<\/p>\n ‘I only, as Nato spokesman, give out information when it is totally\u00a0accurate and confirmed’, Jamie Shea told Channel Four News.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact\u00a0Nato information has been about as accurate as its bombs – several of\u00a0which have landed outside Yugoslavia’s borders.\u00a0 <\/span>In this interview, Shea\u00a0was giving out the ‘totally accurate and confirmed’ information that two\u00a0Yugoslav pilots had been captured after their planes were shot down over\u00a0Bosnia while they were attempting to attack Nato peacekeepers there.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Nato later admitted no pilots had been captured and the MiG fighters did\u00a0not have ground attack capability.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n We have since been fed a string of\u00a0stories – that 20 schoolteachers were killed in front of their pupils,\u00a0that Pristina stadium was being used as a concentration camp, that the\u00a0paramilitary leader Arkan was in Kosovo, that President Slobodan\u00a0Milosevic’s family had fled the country, that Kosovo Albanian leaders\u00a0had been executed – all of which turned out to be false.<\/p>\n Nato even lied about its intention to bomb Serbian television.\u00a0 <\/span>We were\u00a0told people in Yugoslavia do not have access to the Western side of the\u00a0story – though in fact they do – and that airstrikes would follow unless\u00a0Serbian TV carried six hours a day of Western news programming.\u00a0 <\/span>When\u00a0Belgrade offered to accept the six hours in exchange for six minutes of\u00a0Yugoslav news on Western networks, Nato backtracked, saying it had only\u00a0meant it would bomb transmitters also used for military communications.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nato also explicitly assured the International Federation of Journalists\u00a0it would not target media workers.\u00a0 <\/span>What are we to make of an\u00a0organisation which kills others because it says they are lying, but\u00a0consistently lies itself?<\/p>\n Hitting civilian targets has been the most sensitive issue for Nato.\u00a0<\/span>The technique for stage-managing the release of such information is to\u00a0begin with a bare-faced lie, in the hope that the first headlines will\u00a0leave a lasting impression.\u00a0 <\/span>This is followed by an admission of limited\u00a0culpability, designed to indicate Nato’s honesty and openness whilst\u00a0continuing to imply the enemy is at least partly to blame.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n This\u00a0procedure was established over the damage caused to civilian areas of\u00a0Pristina, which Nato initially tried to pin on the Serbs.\u00a0 <\/span>They then\u00a0admitted ‘one bomb’ may have been ‘seduced off the target’ – as if the\u00a0Serbs were willing reluctant Nato bombs to hit them.\u00a0 <\/span>The same strategy\u00a0was adopted to explain the attack on the refugee convoy: the Serbs were\u00a0blamed, then Nato admitted to hitting one tractor.<\/p>\n British broadcasters have drawn some self-flattering comparisons,\u00a0suggesting that whilst Serbian TV is a propaganda machine, our news is\u00a0impartial and balanced.\u00a0 <\/span>It is true that some has been, particularly\u00a0reporting by correspondents in Serbia able to see the results of Nato\u00a0bombardment.\u00a0 <\/span>But back in the studio there is a tendency to stick\u00a0slavishly to the Nato line.\u00a0 <\/span>When Simpson reported from the site of the\u00a0downed US Stealth aircraft, his colleagues in London insisted Nato had\u00a0not yet confirmed a plane had been shot down.\u00a0 <\/span>Similarly, Sky’s\u00a0presenter tried to question the credibility of a report by their\u00a0Belgrade correspondent Tim Marshall on the bombing of the refugee\u00a0convoy, even though Marshall maintained his sources were reliable.<\/p>\n Of course, even in London newsrooms there are honourable exceptions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Channel Four’s Alex Thompson introduced some Nato cockpit video footage\u00a0by remarking pointedly that it was ‘impossible to verify\u00a0independently’.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet his self-consciously even-handed use of this phrase\u00a0was striking precisely because it was a departure from the norm.\u00a0 <\/span>Most\u00a0of the time, official briefings are faithfully reproduced complete with\u00a0pictures supplied by Nato and the Ministry of Defence, and the prepared\u00a0soundbites of politicians and military spokesmen are parroted by\u00a0journalists.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n For example, when it became clear that airstrikes were\u00a0precipitating a humanitarian crisis rather than achieving the stated\u00a0purpose of preventing one, Nato covered its embarrassment by saying it\u00a0needed to ‘catch up’.\u00a0 <\/span>This euphemistic description of intensified\u00a0bombing was dutifully repeated by Mark Laity, the BBC’s man in Brussels,\u00a0on both the evening’s bulletins.<\/p>\n The problems with the coverage run deeper than an insufficiently\u00a0questioning attitude toward official sources, however.\u00a0 <\/span>Some journalists\u00a0have actively taken the part of Nato.\u00a0 <\/span>When Robert Fisk’s article in the\u00a0Independent contradicted the outlandish claim that the Serbs had bombed\u00a0Pristina themselves, one British television correspondent stood up at\u00a0the briefing in Brussels and urged his fellow reporters not to ask Nato\u00a0any awkward questions.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Allegiances have been signalled in more subtle\u00a0ways too.\u00a0 <\/span>Reports which take us on board planes flying missions over\u00a0Yugoslavia invite viewers to identify with Nato just as much as the\u00a0‘bomb’s eye view’ cockpit video.\u00a0 <\/span>Coming under fire with the Kosovo\u00a0Liberation Army inside Kosovo, Jonathan Charles spoke romantically of\u00a0‘the men who dream of liberating Kosovo’ as ‘a symbol of hope for ethnic\u00a0Albanians’, while Channel Five News offered a human-interest story about\u00a0the family of a Kosovo Albanian who had left Britain to join the KLA.<\/p>\n Many seem to have bought into the simplistic ‘Good versus Evil’ morality\u00a0with which politicians have framed the conflict, and have joined in with\u00a0Nato’s demonisation of Milosevic and the Serbs.\u00a0 <\/span>A Panorama special\u00a0exhorted Nato leaders to prosecute Milosevic for war crimes.\u00a0 <\/span>Brian\u00a0Barron went to Montenegro in search of the ‘grizzly details’ of the\u00a0‘troubled history’ of the Milosevic ‘clan’.\u00a0 <\/span>Jeremy Paxman suggested a\u00a0programme of ‘thoroughgoing imposed de-Nazification’ for post-war\u00a0Serbia, echoing the view voiced by everyone from government ministers to\u00a0the Sun newspaper that the Serbs are the new Nazis.<\/p>\n The heavy-handed moralism has made it difficult to ask questions,\u00a0especially about the plight of refugees.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet questions demand to be\u00a0asked: about the reasons for their flight, and the tales of atrocities\u00a0they bring with them.\u00a0 <\/span>Judging from British news reports, these must be\u00a0the first airstrikes in history no-one has fled.\u00a0 <\/span>Even when told they\u00a0had been bombed by Nato, survivors of the attack on the convoy blamed\u00a0the Serbs.\u00a0 <\/span>This gives some indication of the reliability of refugees’\u00a0statements.\u00a0 <\/span>From the viewpoint of ethnic Albanians who welcome Nato\u00a0action, such statements are understandable.\u00a0 <\/span>But this does not explain\u00a0why Western reporters should accept them, nor why the hundreds of \u00a0thousands of Serbs displaced by Nato attacks are routinely ignored.<\/p>\n Rather than admitting they don’t know what is happening inside Kosovo,\u00a0correspondents on the border repeat every horror story.\u00a0 <\/span>The fact such\u00a0accounts are uncorroborated is countered by the mantra that refugees’\u00a0claims are ‘consistent and credible’, despite sometimes flimsy\u00a0evidence.\u00a0 <\/span>The experience of Bosnia is cited as support for the tales of\u00a0‘systematic mass rape’, for example.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet despite claims that more than\u00a050,000 Muslim women were raped by Serbs in Bosnia, a 1993 United Nations\u00a0commission scaled down to 2,400 victims – including Serbs and Croats –\u00a0based on 119 documented cases.<\/p>\n No doubt civilians are being killed and terrorised from their homes by\u00a0Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, just as Serbian civilians are being killed\u00a0and terrorised by Nato bombing across Yugoslavia as a whole.\u00a0 <\/span>That’s\u00a0war.\u00a0 <\/span>But the focus on atrocity stories obscures what little we do know\u00a0of what is happening: a military campaign against armed separatists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Occasionally, this hidden story leaks through.\u00a0 <\/span>Panorama repeatedly\u00a0mentioned attacks on ‘KLA strongholds’.\u00a0 <\/span>A Newsnight report on ‘video\u00a0evidence of the killings of civilians’ let slip that at least one of the\u00a0six ‘civilians’ was a KLA member and another a strong KLA supporter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But it generally appears no KLA members are ever killed, and no-one is\u00a0killed by them.<\/p>\n Every war produces atrocity stories, and it is difficult to chart acourse through propaganda and rumour.\u00a0 <\/span>A useful start would be to\u00a0discount the obviously ludicrous claims, such as the story of the ‘mass\u00a0graves’.\u00a0 <\/span>Nato asked us not only to accept a grainy aerial photograph as\u00a0evidence of atrocities, but also to believe that the Serbs forced ethnic\u00a0Albanians to dress up in orange uniforms and bury the dead in ‘neat rows\u00a0of graves facing Mecca’, in the words of Nato general Guiseppe Marani.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Presumably this too was ‘totally accurate and confirmed’?<\/p>\n