{"id":2433,"date":"2022-08-05T15:51:22","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T14:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/?page_id=2433"},"modified":"2022-08-05T15:51:22","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T14:51:22","slug":"2449-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/2449-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracks in the media propaganda front"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>World Socialist Website (WSWS) : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan War<\/p>\n

Some cracks in the media propaganda front: reports of grossly\u00a0<\/b>exaggerated atrocity stories in Kosovo<\/b><\/p>\n

By Barry Grey 6 July 1999<\/p>\n

In recent days scattered reports have emerged in the American media of\u00a0the\u00a0inflated and misleading character of claims by US officials of Serb\u00a0atrocities against the Kosovan Albanians.<\/p>\n

On June 28 the Detroit Free\u00a0Press\u00a0carried an article by foreign correspondent Lori Montgomery, datelined\u00a0Prizren, which bore the headline, “Rapes not a policy in Kosovo:\u00a0Assaults\u00a0were individual acts by Serbs, evidence indicates.”<\/p>\n

The article stated: “Western officials have accused Serb soldiers of\u00a0raping\u00a0ethnic Albanian women as a tool of war. Although numerous credible\u00a0accounts\u00a0detail attacks by Serb soldiers, it now appears that rape was rarely\u00a0systematic and that allegations of ‘rape camps’ and ‘rape hotels’ will\u00a0never be proved…<\/p>\n

“Along Kosovo’s Albanian border, where US officials alleged in April\u00a0that\u00a0Serb soldiers were raping and killing women at an army base near the\u00a0southwestern town of Djakovica and in a hotel in the western city of\u00a0Pec,\u00a0few signs of sexual abuse could be found.”<\/p>\n

Three days later USA Today carried the front-page headline, “Kosovo’s\u00a0plight exaggerated.” The article began: ‘Many of the figures used by\u00a0the\u00a0Clinton administration and NATO to describe the wartime plight of\u00a0Albanians\u00a0in Kosovo now appear greatly exaggerated as allied forces take control\u00a0of\u00a0the province.”<\/p>\n

It cited House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter\u00a0Goss,\u00a0a Republican critic of the US-NATO war, who said, “Yes, there were\u00a0atrocities. But no, they don’t measure up to the advance billing.”<\/p>\n

The article went on to note that US claims of up to 100,000 murdered\u00a0ethnic\u00a0Albanians have been replaced by official estimates of 10,000. It\u00a0debunked a\u00a0statement made by Clinton to a veterans group in May that 600,000\u00a0ethnicAlbanians were “trapped within Kosovo itself, lacking shelter, short of\u00a0food, afraid to go home or buried in mass graves dug by their\u00a0executioners, “noting that thousands of Kosovars did indeed go into hiding during\u00a0the\u00a0war, but there is no evidence they were starving or without shelter.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0article further said Kosovo’s livestock, wheat and other crops were not\u00a0destroyed by Serb forces, as had been widely reported.<\/p>\n

That evening NBC Nightly News carried a segment by foreign\u00a0correspondent\u00a0Andrea Mitchell on the same theme. Mitchell characterized the war-time\u00a0reports of Kosovan deaths as a “gross exaggeration” and said officials\u00a0now\u00a0estimate the civilian death toll in Kosovo since the onset of NATO\u00a0bombing\u00a0last March 24 to be between 3,000 and 6,000.<\/p>\n

These reports have been simply ignored by the “newspapers of record” –\u00a0the\u00a0New York Times and the Washington Post – which enthusiastically backed\u00a0the\u00a0bombing of Yugoslavia and retailed the government claims of mass\u00a0murder,\u00a0rape and genocide that were used to justify the war and manipulate\u00a0public\u00a0opinion.<\/p>\n

Significantly, none of the American officials who responded to the USA\u00a0Today and NBC News defended the veracity of their earlier claims.<\/p>\n

Instead,\u00a0they passed off the flagrant inaccuracies as honest and unavoidable\u00a0mistakes. State Department official James Foley told NBC News that the\u00a0government had no choice but to base itself on refugee accounts. Mike\u00a0Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told USA Today\u00a0there\u00a0was no effort to mislead. The Clinton administration found that “as you\u00a0go\u00a0through a campaign like this, there is a great deal of uncertainty.”<\/p>\n

There was, of course, nothing \u00cfuncertain” about the reports of mass\u00a0killing\u00a0and rape given out by President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine\u00a0Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and a host of lesser\u00a0officials. These were presented to the American people and\u00a0international\u00a0public opinion as facts, not speculation.<\/p>\n

Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for Defense Secretary Cohen, told USA Today\u00a0that\u00a0the “best estimates available” had been used. He defended the\u00a0comparisons\u00a0between Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Hitler, adding, “I\u00a0don’t\u00a0think you can say killing 100,000 is 10 times more morally repugnant\u00a0than\u00a0killing 10,000.”<\/p>\n

This cynical bit of moralizing is typical of the official campaign\u00a0waged in\u00a0support of the war. From the outset those prosecuting the bombing\u00a0sought to\u00a0intimidate and stifle opposition by depicting critics of NATO as\u00a0defenders\u00a0of Milosevic and”ethnic cleansing.” But Bacon’s response begs the\u00a0question:\u00a0if the issue is purely one of abstract morality, and the scale of\u00a0atrocities is not important, why the systematic resort to exaggeration\u00a0and\u00a0falsification?<\/p>\n

One of those interviewed on the NBC news segment, former Democratic\u00a0Congressman Lee Hamilton, while no less cynical, was a bit more\u00a0forthright.\u00a0He explained there was always a tendency in war to demonize the enemy\u00a0so as\u00a0to whip public opinion into line.<\/p>\n

Clinton’s own statements during and after the war make clear that what\u00a0is\u00a0involved in the official presentation of events in Kosovo is not”making\u00a0the\u00a0best estimates available,” but using the vast resources of the\u00a0government\u00a0and a pliant media to mislead the public into thinking Serb atrocities\u00a0were\u00a0on such a order – reaching the level of genocide – as to justify the\u00a0aerial\u00a0destruction of power plants, oil refineries, bridges, water supplies,\u00a0schools, hospitals and even television headquarters, and the killing of\u00a0thousands of civilians.<\/p>\n

Within days of the onset of NATO bombing, Clinton described the ensuing\u00a0Serb attack as an attempt to wipe out the Kosovan Albanian population.\u00a0In a\u00a0radio address from the Oval Office on April 3 he said the “cold clear\u00a0goal”\u00a0of Milosovic was to “keep Kosovo’s land while ridding it of its people.”<\/p>\n

Twelve days later he told the American Society of Newspaper Editors\u00a0that\u00a0Milosovic was “determined to crush all resistance to his rule even if\u00a0it\u00a0means turning Kosovo into a lifeless wasteland.”<\/p>\n

On May 5, in a speech at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, he added to\u00a0the\u00a0list of Serb crimes the setting up of concentration camps, something\u00a0that\u00a0never occurred. In a Memorial Day address on May 31 he compared\u00a0Milosevic\u00a0to Hitler, saying his government “like that of Nazi Germany rose to\u00a0power in\u00a0part by getting people to look down on people of a given race and\u00a0ethnicity, and to believe they had… no right to live.”<\/p>\n

On June 11, on\u00a0the\u00a0eve of the deployment of NATO troops into Kosovo, Clinton described the\u00a0actions of the Serbs as”an attempt to erase the very presence of a\u00a0people\u00a0from their land, and to get rid of them dead or alive.”<\/p>\n

Since the withdrawal of Serb forces, Clinton’s rhetoric has become, if\u00a0anything, more unrestrained. Even as NATO was quietly lowering its\u00a0estimates of ethnic Albanian deaths, Clinton repeatedly said the\u00a0evidence\u00a0of death and destruction in Kosovo was \u00cfeven worse than we imagined.”<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0June 20 interview on Russian television he said, “We were only trying\u00a0to\u00a0reverse ethnic cleansing and genocide.” Two days later, in a speech to\u00a0KFOR\u00a0troops in Macedonia, he spoke of” young girls [being] raped en masse.”<\/p>\n

In his White House press conference of June 25, Clinton all but\u00a0declared\u00a0that the continued rule of Milosevic would signify the collective guilt\u00a0of\u00a0the Serb people in the atrocities carried out against the Kosovan\u00a0Albanians. Justifying his opposition to Western aid for the\u00a0reconstruction\u00a0of Serbia, he said, “And then they [the Serbs] are going to have to\u00a0decide\u00a0whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it’s OK\u00a0that\u00a0all those tens of thousands of people were killed and all those\u00a0hundreds of\u00a0thousands of people were run out of their homes and all those little\u00a0girls\u00a0were raped and all those little boys murdered.” (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

The function of such exaggerated and often unsubstantiated atrocity\u00a0claims,\u00a0relentlessly repeated and reinforced by the most sophisticated, modern\u00a0techniques of media manipulation, is to overwhelm the critical\u00a0faculties of\u00a0the public. The aim is not so much to convince as to benumb and bully,\u00a0and\u00a0thereby obtain, if not active support, at least passive acquiescence.<\/p>\n

However the falsification is not simply a matter of exaggerated\u00a0atrocity\u00a0stories and statistics. There were, after all, terrible crimes\u00a0committed\u00a0against innocent Kosovars, and on a large scale. At least as decisive\u00a0in\u00a0the US war propaganda is the removal of the events in Kosovo from their\u00a0real context, and the erection of a completely self-serving and\u00a0distorted\u00a0version of recent Yugoslav history. Only on such a basis could the\u00a0violent\u00a0and tragic events in Kosovo be attributed to the evil motives and\u00a0machinations of one man, the new Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic, and the\u00a0role\u00a0of the United States and the other imperialist powers be whitewashed.<\/p>\n

According to Clinton and his NATO allies, all of the tragedy and\u00a0turmoil of\u00a0the past decade in the former Yugoslavia are the result of Milosevic’s\u00a0grand design to forge a Greater Serbia at the expense, even the\u00a0destruction, of the Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians. That\u00a0Milosevic is a Serb nationalist, and that Greater Serbian chauvinism is\u00a0a\u00a0reactionary political force, are truisms. This, however, is only one\u00a0part\u00a0of the picture.<\/p>\n

What is left out is the disruptive and destructive role played by\u00a0US-dominated financial institutions, such as the International Monetary\u00a0Fund, which imposed austerity and capitalist market policies on\u00a0Yugoslavia\u00a0throughout the 1980s, driving up unemployment and poverty and\u00a0undermining\u00a0the economic foundations of the federated Yugoslav state. These\u00a0policies\u00a0encouraged the growth of nationalist tendencies among all ethnic\u00a0groups.<\/p>\n

In 1991 and 1992 the European powers and the US supported the secession\u00a0of\u00a0three Yugoslav republics – Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia – without\u00a0allowing\u00a0any expression of the will of the Yugoslav people as a whole, or any\u00a0negotiations with Belgrade to secure the rights of large Serb\u00a0minorities in\u00a0Croatia and Bosnia. These suddenly found themselves stripped of their\u00a0constitutional guarantees and ruled by hostile nationalist regimes. As\u00a0many\u00a0had predicted, the inevitable result was an eruption of civil war.<\/p>\n

The Croatian nationalism of Tudjman, Muslim nationalism of Izetbegovic\u00a0and\u00a0Albanian nationalism of the Kosovo Liberation Army are no less\u00a0intolerant\u00a0and reactionary than the politics of Milosevic.<\/p>\n

In the successive civil\u00a0wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, all sides have resorted to methods\u00a0of\u00a0“ethnic cleansing”, not simply the Serbs.<\/p>\n

What set Milosevic up for demonization and destruction, however, was\u00a0the\u00a0conclusion reached by the United States that Serb nationalism cut\u00a0across\u00a0its strategic interests in the Balkans. Thus Washington came to\u00a0support,\u00a0financially, politically and militarily, the nationalist cliques in\u00a0Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo as instruments of its policy directed\u00a0against\u00a0Serbia. In Kosovo this first took the form of covert CIA support for\u00a0the\u00a0KLA, which began several years ago to wage an armed struggle for the\u00a0secession of the province from Serbia.<\/p>\n

This is the real context within which the US decided to go to war. The\u00a0US-NATO bombing, on top of the ongoing struggle between Belgrade and\u00a0the\u00a0KLA, created the conditions for the eruption on a mass scale of Serb\u00a0violence against Albanians, and the reprisals by Albanians against\u00a0Serbs\u00a0which have followed the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0World Socialist Website (WSWS) : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan War Some cracks in the media propaganda front: reports of grossly\u00a0exaggerated atrocity stories in Kosovo By Barry Grey 6 July 1999 In recent days scattered reports have emerged in the American media of\u00a0the\u00a0inflated and misleading character of claims by US officials of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Cracks in the media propaganda front”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"yoast_head":"\nCracks in the media propaganda front - Balkan Conflicts Research Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/2449-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cracks in the media propaganda front - Balkan Conflicts Research Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0World Socialist Website (WSWS) : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan War Some cracks in the media propaganda front: reports of grossly\u00a0exaggerated atrocity stories in Kosovo By Barry Grey 6 July 1999 In recent days scattered reports have emerged in the American media of\u00a0the\u00a0inflated and misleading character of claims by US officials of … Continue reading "Cracks in the media propaganda front"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/2449-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Balkan Conflicts Research Team\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/\",\"name\":\"Balkan Conflicts Research Team\",\"description\":\"Information on recent conflicts in the Balkans\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/2449-2\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.balkan-conflicts-research.com\/archive\/2449-2\/\",\"name\":\"Cracks in the media propaganda front - 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