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Freedom of Press, Freedom to Lie?
I was still perplexed even as I stood in front of the remains of the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation (RTS) building, damaged by NATO missiles - in downtown Belgrade.
One year after the bombing, I still find it hard to accept the explanation by NATO spokesman Jamy Shea used to justify the bombing - this Serbia's "propaganda machine" had been prolonging the war. Another more "persuasive" reason was that this TV station had refused to broadcast a few hours of CNN and BBC programmes as requested by NATO.
Milorad Komrakov, editor-in-chief of the TV News Department of RTS, was furious when he recalled the tragedy of 16 colleagues killed at their work posts.
"You can quarrel or differ; you can label, but you can never condone killing fellow journalists you do not agree with," Komrakov said, "Western powers, who go around waving with the greatest icons of journalist tradition, crossed the line that has for decades been considered as an implicit rule of the profession."
One week after RTS was damaged, the building of Novi Sad TV was bombed by NATO "smart" missiles. Ironically, that event happened on May 3, 1999, when the World Day of the Freedom of the Press was supposed to be observed.
NATO set the worst precedence in the history of journalism by silencing different voices with their most advanced weapons. The 79-day bombing plunged Yugoslavia into one of the worst environmental and human tragedies in modern civilization. When 60 journalists from 35 countries gathered in Belgrade for a seminar earlier this month, they turned their attention to an invisible war - a media war - against this country, which had been going on much earlier than the military aggression.
This media war, masterminded by some major Western media and international political lobbies, vindicated the NATO aggression against a sovereign country in the name of ending "humanitarian crisis" in Kosovo.
Most ordinary people did not know where Kosovo was before the bombing. Their political sympathies and judgments were affected by the first impression given by media reports.
In just a few months, audiences were told a story of "humanitarian tragedy" caused by the Yugoslav Government's "ethnic cleansing" against ethnic Albanians.
With biased reports and circulation of unconfirmed facts, Western media successfully projected a "bad guy" image of the Yugoslav Government and its leaders.
Two months before the bombing, the US State Department showed media a satellite photo of a mass grave in Kosovo, where 7,000 Albanians were buried. It was a lead story for all major US newspapers. When dozens of US journalists, including Mike Wallace, went to investigate the case, they found nothing. But no newspapers or TV stations stood up to say "sorry, we were wrong."
The Yugoslav Government's crackdown on the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was often used as the evidence to support the "ethnic cleansing" accusation.
In 1998, the US Government listed KLA as an international terrorist organization. But in less than a year, they were dubbed as freedom fighters and obtained military help from some Western countries.
The "Racak disaster" was one of the cases reported by the media as the evidence of Serbians' "ethnic cleansing." As CNN and BBC played down the story of four Serbian policemen who were ambushed and killed, they spared no space to the deaths of 44 ethnic Albanians who died in the retaliation by the Yugoslav army. International forensic pathologists proved later that none of the victims were civilians, but were the separatist militants who had killed the Serbian police.
As Western powers tore down their disguises as the firemen who came to end the crisis in Kosovo and became arsonists, the mainstream Western media played a role in fanning ethnic hatred with biased and unprofessional reporting.
The breakdown of Rambouillet talks in France was an incentive to NATO bombing. The whole world was led to believe that Serbians blocked the peace process because they refused to sign the pact.
But anyone who has read Appendix B of the Rambouillet agreement would understand why the country had objected this humiliating pact.
According to this appendix, which clarifies the operation of a "multi-national military implementation force," "NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia including associated airspace and territorial waters..." and "in carrying out its authorities under this Chapter, NATO is authorized to detain individuals and, as quickly as possible, turn them over to appropriate officials."
How would anyone in their right mind trust NATO's pledge to "respect Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial integrity" in the first paragraph of the agreement?
"Not a single responsible government in the world would sign such an agreement," said Jurgen Elsasser, a journalist of Konkret, a German political magazine.
No major Western media explained the real reason why Serbians did not sign the contract.
When this interesting detail was translated and made known to people two months later, the real humanitarian disaster had already occurred in Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia.
As the bombing broke out, NATO's manipulation and control of media could be seen more obviously. To justify NATO bombings, its spokespeople would not hesitate to spread rumours to the media.
On March 25, NATO spokespeople spread the news that ethnic Albanian leader Rugova was killed by Serbians to divert reporters' attention on the airstrikes' legitimacy and the damage caused by the bombing.
Elsasser's magazine told the story behind the "Operation Horseshoe," a plan which was used as proof of Serbia's persecution of ethnic Albanians.
On April 6, 1999, the German Defence Ministry disclosed the ''Operation Horseshoe'' to the media. The Yugoslav Government had a long-term plan to expel ethnic Albanians in an organized way along the border of Kosovo. The plan got its name from the horseshoe-shaped boundary of Kosovo.
This astonishing news was made public after 14 days of bombing, when it became obvious that the "humanitarian catastrophe" in Kosovo was not the reason for NATO intervention, as its leaders claimed, but the result of it, said Elsasser.
Elsasser's magazine Konkret carried a chapter of German retired brigadier general Heinz Loquai's book about Kosovo crisis in the May edition this year.
The general denied that there had ever been a Serbian plan "Operation Horseshoe." In his book, Loquai pointed out that German Defence Ministry had fabricated the "plan" on the basis of a vague and unconfirmed intelligence report from an Eastern European country.
"The facts to support its existence are terribly meagre," said Loquai, now working for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. For one thing, he said, German Defence Ministry was so hurried to produce a convincing story that it named the allegedly Serbian plan with the wrong word "Potkova," which was a Croatian, not Serbian, word for horseshoe.
"This fabricated story was used to extinguish the criticism of NATO bombing, which had grown into a fire that was almost out of control," said the general.
As the international community remain nonplused over the deteriorating Kosovo situation one year after NATO bombing, an increasing number of Western journalists have rethought the media's role in the disaster.
We have seen an obvious manipulation of public opinion by the war machines while some Western media have been used as a loud hailer of lies.
I think it is time to review the basic canons of this noble profession. After all, the freedom of the press is not the freedom to lie.
In a sense, the media are also the victims of the Kosovo war because their reputations have been very much damaged. (Chinadaily)
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