Transitions Online website<\/p>\n
28 July 1999<\/p>\n
Reporting Kosovo: Journalism vs. Propaganda<\/b><\/p>\n
Philip Hammond<\/p>\n
Throughout Nato’s war against Yugoslavia, no opportunity was missed to\u00a0contrast the propaganda emanating from Yugoslavia’s state-controlled\u00a0media with the truthful, reliable free press of the West.\u00a0 <\/span>The contrast\u00a0was used by Nato as a reason to kill civilians, when it bombed the\u00a0Belgrade RTS television building in April; and by journalists as a way\u00a0to brush aside criticism of British media coverage and Nato\u00a0news-management.<\/p>\n As a demonstration of the vibrant diversity of Britain’s unshackled\u00a0media, take the stories written as reporters entered Kosovo alongside\u00a0British paratroopers on 12 June, carried in the following day’s Sunday\u00a0editions.\u00a0 <\/span>This is what James Dalrymple wrote in the Independent on\u00a0Sunday, describing the town of Kacanik:<\/p>\n ‘It looked peaceful and intact – except for the silence….There were\u00a0no curtains, no ornaments, no door handles, no light fittings.\u00a0 <\/span>Every item\u00a0of value had been removed by the almost exclusively middle-class\u00a0Serbian population and carried away in any vehicle they could beg, borrow or\u00a0steal.<\/p>\n ‘Each small community held a mystery.\u00a0 <\/span>Who had lived here?\u00a0 <\/span>Serbs or\u00a0Albanians?\u00a0 <\/span>What had happened to them?\u00a0 <\/span>The only witnesses seemed to be\u00a0the packs of emaciated dogs.’<\/p>\n Leave aside the fact that, if he didn’t know who lived where, it would\u00a0be impossible to tell who had taken the door handles.\u00a0 <\/span>And leave aside\u00a0the question of how Dalrymple knows middle-class Serbs ‘beg, borrow or\u00a0steal’ motor vehicles.\u00a0 <\/span>Instead, compare his report with that of David\u00a0Harrison, writing in the Sunday Telegraph:<\/p>\n ‘It was the silence that gave away the horror.\u00a0 <\/span>At first sight the\u00a0beautiful little town of Kacanik looked peaceful and intact….There\u00a0were no curtains or ornaments.\u00a0 <\/span>Even the door handles and light\u00a0fittings had been removed.\u00a0 <\/span>This was not random looting or small-scale pillage.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Kacanik had been deliberately stripped of everything that could\u00a0possibly be taken away by the remaining Serbian population and carried off in\u00a0every vehicle they could beg, borrow or steal…<\/p>\n ‘In most cases it was impossible to know if Serbs or Albanians lived\u00a0there.\u00a0 <\/span>The only witnesses seemed to be the roaming packs of pet dogs\u00a0which had somehow survived in the wild for weeks, now emaciated and\u00a0savage.’<\/p>\n Though uncannily similar, there is one interesting difference.\u00a0 <\/span>Where\u00a0Dalrymple’s report gives the impression that houses have been stripped\u00a0by their departing Serbian occupants, Harrison apparently knows the\u00a0missing curtains had been looted, and that the looting could not have\u00a0been ‘random’.\u00a0 <\/span>Quite how this insight was gained remains unclear,\u00a0particularly if dogs were the ‘only witnesses’.<\/p>\n For Harrison the sound of silence evoked ‘horror’.\u00a0 <\/span>Others too had\u00a0sensitive hearing.\u00a0 <\/span>‘This is a land swept clear of people and the\u00a0silence is haunting’, wrote Ross Benson in the Mail on Sunday:<\/p>\n ‘Not a child cries, not a mother calls out.\u00a0 <\/span>Washing flutters neglected\u00a0on the clothes-lines.\u00a0 <\/span>And the houses stand empty….’It’s eerie, isn’t\u00a0it?’ said Lieutenant Nick Hook…’<\/p>\n Benson’s poignant, evocative, first-hand account was equalled only by\u00a0Ian Edmondson of the News of the World, who wrote that:<\/p>\n ‘at the town of Kacanik, the convoy entered a land swept clear of\u00a0people.\u00a0 <\/span>The silence was haunting.\u00a0 <\/span>Not a child cried, not a mother\u00a0called out.\u00a0 <\/span>Washing fluttered neglected on the clothes lines.\u00a0 <\/span>‘It’s\u00a0eerie, isn’t it?’ said Lieutenant Nick Hook…’<\/p>\n These reporters’ apparent disregard for both journalistic standards and\u00a0their usual cut-throat commercial rivalry presumably results from the\u00a0fact that they were under the control of a Nato-run pool system as they\u00a0entered Kosovo.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet the existence of such a system was mentioned only\u00a0once by one TV news bulletin (Channel Four News 11 June), in contrast\u00a0to the way every single dispatch from correspondents in Belgrade carried\u00a0the warning that it had been ‘monitored by the Serb authorities’.\u00a0 <\/span>The\u00a0press did not mention the restrictions reporters were under at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, near-identical stories were presented as the unique\u00a0eye-witness testimony of individual journalists.\u00a0The uniformity of the articles quoted above is simply the most glaring\u00a0example of media coverage which, throughout the war, was highly\u00a0conformist.\u00a0 <\/span>The case of Kacanik is a particularly interesting one in\u00a0this respect.\u00a0 <\/span>Within 24-hours of these articles appearing, Kacanik had\u00a0become the setting for an international media circus, as reporters\u00a0jostled to get to the site of ‘the first major discovery’, a mass grave\u00a0which might contain ‘vital evidence of war crimes’ (ITN 14 June).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Reports from the site raised more questions than they answered.\u00a0 <\/span>The\u00a0Independent (15 June) reported that two bodies were buried under only a\u00a0few inches of soil because the Serbs ‘almost certainly ran out of\u00a0time’.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet they apparently did have time to place numbered wooden\u00a0markers on the graves, to bury at least some of the bodies in coffins,\u00a0and to dig empty graves ‘for victims yet to come’ (ITN 13 June).\u00a0 <\/span>These\u00a0peculiarities, and the fact the bodies were in a graveyard, were\u00a0explained as the result of Serbs trying to ‘cosmetically rearrange the\u00a0site’ to conceal the evidence of their crime (Newsnight 14 June).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Estimates of the number of dead at Kacanik ranged from 81 to 172, butthere was unanimity that the graves contained civilians massacred by\u00a0the Serbs.<\/p>\n The BBC’s Newsnight (14 June) uncovered evidence which threw doubt on\u00a0the claim that Kacanik’s graves contained civilian victims of atrocities: a letter, purportedly written by a Serbian soldier, recounting a battle near the town, in which 100 Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas had been killed.\u00a0 <\/span>But the letter, shown to the BBC by a KLA officer, was presented instead as damning confirmation of Serbian war crimes against civilians.\u00a0 <\/span>Newsnight’s reporter, Paul Wood, mentioned that the letter ‘talks about a battle’, but then immediately countered this: ‘The KLA say there was no such engagement and that this text can be about only one thing: the murder of civilians’.\u00a0 <\/span>The KLA officer who had produced the letter then explained, in broken English, what it supposedly revealed about Serb depravity:<\/p>\n ‘He feeled funny when he killed children, when he shot a Albanian with\u00a0a 30mm calibre Praga.\u00a0 <\/span>He write in the letter how is fun when he saw the\u00a0Albanian chest was open from the calibre.\u00a0 <\/span>You can believe it.\u00a0 <\/span>The\u00a0civilisation people, nation, can believe it, that exist human being who\u00a0write and think like he does in this letter.’<\/p>\n In fact the letter said no such thing.\u00a0 <\/span>Not all the text was clearly\u00a0visible on screen, but the passages dealing with the battle were: they\u00a0ended with the line ‘enough about me’, and the letter’s author then\u00a0went on to ask after friends.\u00a0 <\/span>Nowhere did he mention killing children or\u00a0any other civilians.\u00a0 <\/span>He wrote that one of the dead had been shot with the\u00a030mm Praga, but in a tone of shock rather than ‘fun’: ‘imagine a 30mm\u00a0shell passing through your chest’ (zamisli granata od 30mm da ti prodje\u00a0kroz grudi).\u00a0 <\/span>The letter did not resolve all the questions about the\u00a0burial site at Kacanik, since it described how a bulldozer was used to\u00a0dig a grave for the 100 ethnic Albanians killed in the battle.\u00a0 <\/span>But it\u00a0certainly did not confirm atrocities against civilians.\u00a0 <\/span>It is easy to\u00a0see why the KLA officer would have wanted to portray Serbs as bestial\u00a0and evil, but it is less obvious why a BBC reporter should accept such\u00a0a distortion of the evidence.<\/p>\n Contrast this style of reporting with Paul Watson of the Los Angeles\u00a0Times.\u00a0 <\/span>The only Western reporter to remain in Kosovo throughout the\u00a0conflict, his articles consistently presented a more complex – and more\u00a0credible – picture of the situation inside the province.\u00a0 <\/span>Watson’s 31\u00a0May report from Kacanik included an interview with Saip Reka, a member\u00a0of an ethnic Albanian self-defence unit set up by the Yugoslav\u00a0authorities in September 1998, and armed by Serbian police so they\u00a0could help repel KLA attacks.\u00a0 <\/span>But for British journalists, the idea that\u00a0some ethnic Albanians could be pro-Yugoslav just didn’t fit their idea of\u00a0the war as a morality play in which the Serbs were evil, ethnic Albanians\u00a0their innocent victims, and Nato the knight in shining armour.\u00a0 <\/span>As one\u00a0BBC reporter put it in urging tougher Nato action against Serbs, ‘where\u00a0is the middle ground between good and bad, right and wrong?’ (16 June).<\/p>\n Facts which didn’t fit this simple-minded picture were frequently\u00a0downplayed, distorted or suppressed.\u00a0 <\/span>Newsnight (18 June) interviewed a\u00a0Serbian worker at Dobro Selo colliery, where a Serb driver had been\u00a0abducted only four days earlier, and where the KLA had already taken\u00a0over part of the mine complex.\u00a0 <\/span>Asked about Serbs fleeing the area, he\u00a0began by saying ‘the Albanians are attacking’ (Albanci napadaju).\u00a0 <\/span>Yet\u00a0the BBC’s voiceover translation had him explaining that Serbs had taken\u00a0flight ‘as the Albanians come home’.\u00a0 <\/span>The mass exodus of Serbs was seen\u00a0as an expression of their ‘ethnic hatred’, not as a response to KLA\u00a0violence and Nato occupation.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Similarly, while the discovery of a\u00a0torture chamber’ at a police headquarters in Pristina made headline\u00a0news, the discovery of a torture chamber in Prizren the following day\u00a0was treated very differently.\u00a0 <\/span>Standing in the empty Pristina police\u00a0building, reporters speculated wildly about what atrocities might have\u00a0been committed there before the Serbs left.\u00a0 <\/span>But the Prizren torture\u00a0chamber left nothing to the imagination: KLA soldiers were literally\u00a0caught in the act of beating 15 suspected collaborators, and the body\u00a0of a 70-year-old was found handcuffed to a chair.\u00a0 <\/span>Apparently this was notso newsworthy.\u00a0 <\/span>This time, no British newspaper carried pictures of the\u00a0site; the Independent, Express and Sun ignored the story altogether;\u00a0the Telegraph, Times and Mail buried it on inside pages; and the Mirror\u00a0confined it to the last three sentences of an article headed: ‘British\u00a0tanks roll in to halt final Serb rampage’ (19 June).<\/p>\n Reporters have found it hard to sympathise with the tens of thousands\u00a0of Serb refugees fleeing Kosovo.\u00a0 <\/span>One BBC reporter described them as\u00a0leaving ‘with their lips sealed, taking with them the dark secrets of\u00a0ethnic hatred’ (16 June).\u00a0 <\/span>Matt Frei, sent by Newsnight to watch the\u00a0exodus, seemed to relish the opportunity to gloat:<\/p>\n ‘Imagine the Serbs’ reversal of fortune today: the rulers have\u00a0themselves become refugees, shedding tears of departure and stashing\u00a0the loot – two phones in the back of the car.\u00a0 <\/span>Brutality has given way to\u00a0self-pity.\u00a0 <\/span>Overnight, the villains think they’ve become the victims in\u00a0this war.’\u00a0 <\/span>(16 June)<\/p>\n Even as they fled with whatever possessions they could carry, Serb\u00a0civilians were self-pitying ‘villains’ who deserved no compassion.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u00a0seems entirely obvious that Nato would not be regarded as protectors by\u00a0the people they had been bombing for weeks, yet the Serbs’ distrust of\u00a0Nato seemed to perplex many Western reporters.\u00a0 <\/span>‘But why don’t ordinary\u00a0Serbs trust Nato?’ the BBC’s Kate Adie asked one Yugoslav soldier,\u00a0before her interview was cut short by incoming gunfire.\u00a0 <\/span>She concluded\u00a0that the problem was not the bullets whistling past the camera, but\u00a0that ‘fear is infectious’ (17 June).\u00a0 <\/span>Another BBC correspondent observed\u00a0simply that ‘they didn’t want to wait to welcome Nato to Kosovo’ (11\u00a0June).\u00a0 <\/span>As attitudes hardened even further, the Serb refugee columns\u00a0were said to conceal war criminals, while even civilians had to sharethe collective guilt after tolerating ‘genocide’.<\/p>\n Journalists have seized on every grisly discovery in Kosovo with a\u00a0certain relief.\u00a0 <\/span>As Newsnight’s Paul Wood proclaimed: ‘for the Western\u00a0allies, the steadily accumulating evidence of atrocities will be\u00a0confirmation that this was a just war’ (14 June).\u00a0 <\/span>Yet even if all the\u00a0atrocity stories were true and the official British estimate of 10,000\u00a0dead was accurate, this would not justify Nato’s war, since all the\u00a0allegations of atrocities relate to the period when Nato was already\u00a0bombing.\u00a0 <\/span>To present them as a retrospective justification relies not\u00a0just on questionable evidence, but on the implausible premise that Serb\u00a0attacks were not motivated by anything other than a fiendish master\u00a0plan for genocide.\u00a0 <\/span>Attacks on Serbs, if they are reported at all, are\u00a0mitigated by being described as ‘revenge attacks’.\u00a0 <\/span>Would it not be\u00a0just as reasonable to regard violence against ethnic Albanians by Yugoslav\u00a0forces as a reaction to both KLA insurgency and Nato bombing?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Similarly, the return of ethnic Albanian refugees to Kosovo was hailed\u00a0as vindication of Nato’s cause.\u00a0 <\/span>The BBC’s report\u00a0why Nato went to war: so the refugees could come back to Kosovo’ (16June).\u00a0 <\/span>Channel Four’s Alex Thompson enthused about ‘the success of theUS policy’: ‘after all, the President fought this war so that these\u00a0people could go home in peace’ (22 June).\u00a0 <\/span>Somehow reporters have\u00a0forgotten the chronology of events: there was no refugee crisis or\u00a0‘humanitarian disaster’ until Nato started bombing.<\/p>\n One of a handful of exceptions to the general trend, Robert Fisk,\u00a0divided his fellow reporters into ‘sheep’ and ‘frothers’.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact many\u00a0journalists managed to be both at once, combining slavish subservience\u00a0to Nato spin with self-righteous moralism.\u00a0 <\/span>In this, they took their\u00a0cue from the British Prime Minister, who talked incessantly of a ‘just war’\u00a0between ‘civilisation and barbarity’.\u00a0 <\/span>The historian of war reporting\u00a0Phillip Knightley has noted how this crude Good versus Evil framework\u00a0turned warmongers into peacemakers in Kosovo:<\/p>\n ‘In Kosovo the media tend to believe everything the military tells them\u00a0because the military has stolen the moral high ground by claiming it is\u00a0anti-war.\u00a0 <\/span>It bombs in the name of peace, to save or liberate, so those\u00a0who object are the war-mongers, appeasers, Nazis.’ (Independent on\u00a0Sunday 27 June)<\/p>\n The photograph chosen by almost every newspaper to accompany the story\u00a0of Kacanik was of a young female soldier sorrowfully contemplating the\u00a0graves.\u00a0 <\/span>Earlier in the war, Nato’s role was illustrated with pictures\u00a0of soldiers playing with refugee children and bottle-feeding babies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>While contrived to tug our emotions, such pictures also carry another\u00a0message: the most powerful military force on earth is really just abunch of pretty girls and caring guys. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As the bombs and missiles rained down we were informed by Nato leaders\u00a0that this was ‘not a war’, and when it ended every newspaper found the\u00a0same word to describe the occupation of part of a sovereign country by\u00a0foreign troops: ‘liberation’.\u00a0 <\/span>This was a fitting climax to a media\u00a0crusade which had frequently turned reality on its head in an utter\u00a0dereliction of what journalism is supposed to be.\u00a0 <\/span>It would seem that\u00a0one casualty of the Kosovo war was British journalism, although some\u00a0sources maintain it was already long dead.\u00a0 <\/span>In its place we have\u00a0propaganda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Transitions Online website 28 July 1999 Reporting Kosovo: Journalism vs. Propaganda Philip Hammond Throughout Nato’s war against Yugoslavia, no opportunity was missed to\u00a0contrast the propaganda emanating from Yugoslavia’s state-controlled\u00a0media with the truthful, reliable free press of the West.\u00a0 The contrast\u00a0was used by Nato as a reason to kill civilians, when it bombed the\u00a0Belgrade RTS television … <\/p>\n