Media in
Serbia
by Diana Johnstone (3/27/99)
[Note
from www.emperors-clothes.com - feel free to
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Over the past
nine years, how many
times have we heard that "Milosevic is about to
shut down the last independent radio (or newspaper)
in Yugoslavia"? Nobody notices, a few months
later, that the martyred newspaper (or radio) is in
fact again functioning. But never mind - we'll soon
hear that yet another "very last free
media" is about to be shut down.
This
exaggeration has helped Yugoslav
journalists, publishers and editors raise
contributions from the West (from the European Union,
from foundations...) to finance their publications.
It's hard to afford to keep a newspaper going, even
in a country that is not subjected to sanctions as
Serbia has been. Yugoslav media people should not be
judged harshly for exaggerating their political
difficulties -- the only way to shake money out of
the rich West. Moreover, there has been more than a
grain of truth in their complaints. From time to time
the government has caused more or less serious
difficulties for one or another newspaper or radio
station, although such harassment has been
opportunistic rather than systematic, and has never
prevented Yugoslavia from enjoying a strikingly broad
range of print media. I cannot think of a Western
city where scathing criticism of the government is
available in print day after day at newsstands all
over town the way it is -- or has been until NATO
began to bomb -- as in Belgrade.
Because no
freedom interests the press
as much as freedom of the press, and , complaints
about Yugoslavia's "banned media" have had
a resonance far beyond the gravity of the matter. The
constant cry of "wolf!" (the big bad
Milosevic about to eat up the media) has greatly
contributed to the myth of Milosevic as
"dictator" suppressing all freedoms and
therefore "obliging" NATO to restore
"human rights" by all means... eventually
by destroying the country.
Having seen
the various opposition newspapers being sold on every
major street corner in Belgrade, as well as in
provincial towns, having seen the Muslim
fundamentalist newspapers on the stands in Novi Pazar
and the numerous Albanian language publications on
newsstands in Pristina, it is hard to understand how
the myth of "no free press in Yugoslavia"
could be maintained. Have the foreign observers and
journalists been blind, sold out, or censored?
The freedom
accorded the Albanian
language press in Kosovo, which for years has
specialized in promoting the idea that the Albanians
must have Kosovo for themselves, is quite remarkable.
Just as the freedom allowed ethnic Albanians to
boycott all their normal civic obligations, even
tax-paying, is without parallel in any other country.
Now, since
NATO has begun a massive open-ended war against
Yugoslavia, that country's government has really and
truly closed a number of opposition media, including
a radio station, B92, whose funding has come from the
countries whose armed forces are currently mounting a
massive and brutal war against that country. It seems
that the government has also shut down certain
Albanian-language newspapers openly supporting the
"Kosovo Liberation Army".
And our human
rights champions profess to be shocked. Night before
last I was in a debate with a representative of Human
Rights Watch, who thought I ought to share his
indignation over this Milosevic outrage: Belgrade
actually told journalists from the four NATO powers
bombing Yugoslavia to leave the country. -- How dare
the Serbs deprive us of our freedom to watch the
effects of the torture machine we have set in motion?
For this they must deserve to be bombed some more,
even invaded (the next step).
Our Western
human rights champions have lost all contact with
humanity. Their infinite self-righteousness makes
them unable to realize that for people on the
receiving end of high-tech,
kill-them-from-a-safe-distance warfare, war is still
war. Seeing your country destroyed is the same as it
always was. Dying has not changed. For the Serbs,
this is not a video game, a show called "Can we
make Milosevic back down?" presented in tidbits
between commercials and comedy shows. It is a matter
of life and death, especially death.
No, our
humanitarians can't understand that, it is not part
of their "human rights" agenda. So they
need to be asked:
How many
Japanese journalists were given free run of the
United States after Pearl Harbor?
How many Nazi journalists were accredited
to London to observe the blitz? For that matter, how
closely could independent media observe Britain's
Falklands war, or the Gulf War operations in Iraq in
1991?
There is no
need for Western media in Yugoslavia now. We know
what bombs do. They explode. They kill people. They
frighten people. They make people very, very angry.
They unite a nation.
There is no
need for Western media to be there, because what they
would say has been written in advance anyhow. It is
part of the scenario. Even without any journalists on
the scene, NATO officials are telling us what must be
happening: brutal reprisals by Serbs against innocent
Albanian civilians. Is it true? They would tell us
that in any case. It is part of the bombing campaign:
provoke Serbian reprisals. It is the trigger for the
next phase of this criminal operation: after
"humanitarian" bombing,
"humanitarian" invasion.
NATO wants its
protectorate. If Milosevic won't give it to them, as
demanded in the ultimatum (called "peace
agreement") the Serbs refused to sign in Paris,
NATO will try to conquer by it by force. This is
NATO's new mission for the 21st century: humanitarian
nation deconstruction.
Expelled from
Yugoslavia, Western journalists should turn their
attention to an even bigger and much more mysterious
story, one that really needs to be told: how and why
did the United States and its European satellites
manage in half a century to liquidate their entire
heritage of human decency?
***
Diane
Johnstone was European editor of In
These Times (from 1979 to 1990) and
press officer for the Greens in the Euro Parliament
from 1990 to 1996. She is the author of The
Politics of Euromissiles: Europe in America’s
World (London/New York:
Verso/Schuchken, 198+). She is now writing a book on
Yugoslavia.