-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- From http://www.newswatch.org/January%20stories/Media's%20Balkan%20Blind%20Spot%20012 000.htm {{<Begin>}} Balkan Blind Spot Editor’s Note: The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Serbia is at the point of collapse. One politician opposed to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic estimates that up to 70 percent of the population are living on or below the poverty line. And the country has been struggling with up to a million refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. A big story, you might think, but why is it not making news? With that in mind, NewsWatch invited Mustafa Malik, a journalist who has specialized in looking at ethnic and religious conflict, to comment on the media coverage. By Mustafa Malik January 20, 2000 In 1993 Vladimir Matic resigned his diplomatic post in Yugoslavia over differences with Slobodan Milosevic, then Serbian president, and flew into self- imposed exile in the United States. Ever since, the Serbian patriot has been making the rounds in Washington lamenting "the devastation of Yugoslavia" by Milosevic and other Balkan jingoists. These days Matic includes the "American media" among those who have let the Serbs down. The U.S. news media did a great job, he points out, of reporting the travails of 800,000 or so ethnic Albanians expelled from Kosovo by Milosevic, now president of Yugoslavia. But where are the media now, he asks, "when 900,000 Serb and Roma refugees are suffering" in Serbia and Montenegro, two of the original six republics that remain in Yugoslavia? These refugees have been expelled by Muslims and Croats from Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. American reporters, Matic says, care to mention them only when they criticize Milosevic. Janusz Bugajski, Balkan specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, adds that the Serb refugees' "plight is terrible because they are also being ignored by the indigenous press." The government-controlled Serbian media play down the refugee problem as it reminds people of Milosevic’s defeat in three wars. Most refugees in Serbia have to fend for themselves, which is especially hard in a war-ravaged economy under Western economic sanctions. A Serbian-American who has returned from a visit to Belgrade says many refugees "can’t manage two full meals [daily], can’t afford medicine or winter clothing." Many Balkan watchers have a hard time rationalizing America’s market-driven journalism that led to the selective coverage of the Balkan mayhem. In the stampede to grab the public’s limited attention span, reporters feel compelled to "lead with blood and guts," to quote Paul Friedman, executive producer of ABC’s "World News Tonight With Peter Jennings". And Kosovo offered lots of Albanian blood and NATO guts. Yet the Balkan story had a downside: it was still a foreign story. Since the end of the Cold War, the media have cut back on foreign news coverage supposedly because Americans, busy with stocks and sports, have no time for old- world feuds. With politicians’ help, however, news organizations managed to package the Kosovo conflict with wrapping that helped grab the public’s attention. Milosevic's crime in Kosovo (and Bosnia) was among the ghastliest in European history: President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright branded him a "Hitler" and compared the killing and expulsion of Kosovar Albanians with the Nazi Holocaust. The symbols helped market the story, and were repeated in the media liberally and often uncritically. Some, such as The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, went on to liken Milosevic to Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein and Libyan dictator Muammar Ghadafi, thereby establishing his credibility in the pantheon of contemporary evil. Unluckily for the Serb refugees, they can’t point to a "Hitler" as the cause of their agony. Being the adversaries of Milosevic's adversaries, they tend to be seen by the media as partisans of Milosevic, even though they are among the guinea pigs of his bloody experiment for a "pluralist" state. In fact, the whole business of judging good and evil in the Balkans is confusing, partly because the conflicts pitch pluralism against freedom. Ironically, Milosevic staked out a very "American" position. He wanted to keep Yugoslavia together in a federal, pluralist democracy, arguing that if hundreds of ethnic groups can live in the United States, a dozen of them must be able to do so in Yugoslavia. His military campaign against separatist ethnic groups was an attempt to "save" the old Yugoslav federation, and at one point he compared it to the American Civil War. He should have known that the peoples of the old Yugoslavia, unlike most Americans, cherish their ethnic cultures more than their pocketbook. And with the Serbs being the largest ethnic community, ethnic minorities feared that a majority-ruled democratic Yugoslavia would mean their "legal subjugation." Hence, the Croats, Slovenes and Macedonians seceded relatively peacefully to set up their own ethnic "nation states." Only the creation of the Bosnian state and the secession movement in the Serbian province of Kosovo triggered Milosevic’s "ethnic cleansing" operation. But the complexity of the Balkan story is fundamentally at odds with the changed nature of the news business. Sound bites trump analysis, and reporters are pressed to make news consumer-friendly. As former Wall Street Journal writer Conrad C. Fink advised: "Look for facts through your readers’ eyes." And the eyes of a busy public, so the media’s thinking goes, will only respond to a foreign story if it has "blood and guts." It’s time for the media to get on with the story of humanity’s ordeal in the Serbian and Montenegrin refugee ghettos. One out of every nine people in those two republics is a refugee. Except for the meager relief doled out by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Doctors Without Borders, The International Committee of the Red Cross and a few other groups, international relief agencies have turned their backs on them. It’s marketable news. Who in the Balkans today can tell a more gripping story than 900,000 forgotten victims of the Balkans’ "ethnic cleansing" nightmare? Mustafa Malik, a Washington-based journalist, has conducted extensive field research on ethnic and religious ferment in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. His op-eds have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer and many other papers. All articles are copyright of www.NewsWatch.org {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Universal Declaration of Human Rights + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." Ernest Hemingway + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
