February 23, 2010
Reprinted on Serbian websites Dear Online Panel: Today I received your email requesting my participation and opinion in your Online Panel. I have nothing but contempt for such Chutpzah! For the entire decade of the 1990's The Los Angeles Times followed the lead of the New York Times by refusing to publish one single article regarding the dismemberment wars in the Balkans written by a Serbian journalist, author, scholar or political leader. The late Dr. Alex Dragnich, recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award for Outstanding Scholarship at Vanderbilt University wrote 12 books on Balkan history and politics. He submitted over 40 articles to the New York Times in the 1990s and not a single one was published. You both deserve to burn in hell! The Serbs in this community were treated to racist and hateful journalism at its finest... now you want my opinion on your newspaper and your articles? You have demonstrated a disgusting cesspool of partisan reporting followed by some of the ugliest muzzling tactics against Serbian views in this nation. Shame on your editorial staff for exposing the depth to which they continue to stoop in their bias politics. "Freedom of the Press"? ... what a joke. The Times' record clearly demonstrates that you believe only in freedom for those who own the printing press. Over the past decade I have submitted more than 60 letters to the editor... 3 were printed in ten years while the Times printed over 35 articles written by a rabid Croatian Serbophobe from Orange county. She became a regular contributor of hate speech in your letters section as you muzzled Serbian views. In 1999 on the day bombing began in former Yugoslavia your news desk editor asked me to write an article from the Serbian perspective. I obliged immediately and was told that my article "was not strident enough" ... in other words, I did not call President Clinton a bastard for going to war without a Act of Congress or a vote by the United Nations. Clinton violated the UN Charter, the NATO Treaty, the Helsinki Final Act and the Geneva Conventions. I sent the article to the Washington Times who found it plenty strident and published it two days later in their Sunday edition. You have proven time and again that you do not deserve the trust of your readers. Your hideous record of contempt for facts, truth or opposing views has been immoral. The repulsive transgressions by your Balkans correspondents included outright fabrications, widespread use of dubious secondhand sources, photographs of Serbian victims deliberately misidentified as Muslim victims and blatantly one-sided accounts full of racists terminology toward the Serbian people. Collective guilt was and continues to be your method of Balkan reporting. That is not journalism, this is pure propaganda. I pray that the Los Angeles Times continues to have difficult financial times and that this rag will eventually fail. The citizens of this city deserve an honest press, not a deceptive one. William Dorich Author of Serbian Genocide 1941-45 (1991); Kosovo (1992); The Suppressed Serbian Voice and the Free Press in America (1994); A Brief History of Serbian Music (1995) and Hilandar Octocentenry (1996). Recipient of The Order of St. Sava, the highest recognition given to a layperson by the Holy Synod of Serbian Orthodox Bishops, An Award of Merit from the Serbian Bar Association of America and The White Dove Award by an international Serbian organization.
