| Serbian
Propaganda: A Closer Look
Global
Reporting
Network Publications -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Milica
Pesic, Director of the European Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, discussed
Serbian propaganda on April 12, 1999, on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note:
you can listen to this report at ATC's Website: http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/19990412.atc.16.ram
NATIONAL
PUBLIC RADIO
All Things Considered
April
12, 1999 Noah
Adams speaks with Serbian journalist Milica Pesic who has been studying Serb propaganda.
She discusses how the Serb government has used the media to manipulate public
opinion. (9:30) Analysis:
Serbian TV and newspapers NOAH
ADAMS, host: [BEGIN
TRANSCRIPT]
Yesterday afternoon in Serbia, in Belgrade, the capital city, an independent newspaper
publisher was killed on the street. The death of Slavko Curuvija was described
as an assassination. Curuvija founded the independent paper, the Daily Telegraph.
It stopped publication after the NATO air strikes began, but a pro-government
newspaper in Belgrade accused him of encouraging the NATO bombing campaign. The
independent media in the Yugoslav capital is now mostly quiet and hidden. The
reporting of the NATO strikes and the action in Kosovo under the control of the
Yugoslav government. Last Thursday at a NATO briefing in Brussels, the question
came up: Would Serb radio and television transmitters become a target? The answer
was possibly yes, but NATO military spokesman, Air Commodore David Wilby, offered
a deal.
Air Commodore DAVID WILBY (NATO Spokesman): Serb radio and TV is
an instrument of propaganda and repression. It has filled the airwaves with hate
and with lies over the years, and especially now. It is therefore a legitimate
target in this campaign. If President Milosevic would provide equal time for Western
news broadcasts in its programs without censorship, three hours a day between
noon and 1800 and three hours a day between 1800 and midnight, then his TV could
become an acceptable instrument of public information.
ADAMS: NATO spokesman
David Wilby. There's been no word of any response to demand for access to the
airwaves in Serbia.
Here's an example of what's running on Serbian television.
The theme from an old American TV series.
(Soundbite of music from "Mission
Impossible")
ADAMS: And graphics in English, `NATO attack, mission
impossible.' An aircraft is shown being blown up. A young girl is pictured with
a bull's-eye target on her head.
Last week, the cable channel MSNBC ran some
Serb TV video with English interpretation.
Unidentified Woman: Aggressor
NATO forces continue with their criminal attacks on the cities in Yugoslavia.
The number of the killed and wounded persons is not yet determined, but it is
assumed that tons of civilians died during the raids. The criminals attacked the
civilian ...(unintelligible) in the cities of Belgrade, Panchova(ph), Nis, Novi
Sad, Pristina, Sombor, Loznica and Aleksinac. Not even the just-born babies were
spared from the bombs while the framework and intensity of the last raids show
the main aim was to harm the civilians, besides the hundreds of victims. NATO
criminals most probably caused an ecological catastrophe as well because several
fuel depots and civilian chemical factories were hit.
ADAMS: A Serbian
television newscast from the cable channel MSNBC.
The European Center for
War, Peace and the News Media, based in London, has received word from Belgrade
that no pictures of mass Albanian refugees have been shown at all, and that the
Kosovo humanitarian catastrophe is only referred to as the one made up or overemphasized
by Western propaganda.
Also, and we quote from the report, "information
programs are designed to present the illegitimacy of a NATO aggression on Yugoslavia,
the unanimity of the Serbian people in resisting the enemy and Serbian invincibility.
All three aims are wrapped in a nationalistic code, `most powerful Western nations,
killers, death disseminators, fascists, dictators, criminals, villains, bandits,
vandals, barbarians, gangsters, vampires, cowards, perverts, lunatics, scum and
trash who want to destroy the small but honorable, dignified, freedom-loving Serbian
nation.'"
Milica Pesic worked for many years in Serbian television.
She is now the director of the Center for War, Peace and the News Media.
Ms. MILICA PESIC (Center for War, Peace and the News Media): Let's be honest,
people usually believe in what they see on television, not only in Serbia. I mean,
it's a magnetic sort of little books, which very dangerous sort of books. Even
when you are instructed how to see something even when you know that you are going
to see a lie. So, yes, people do believe in television, pictures are very powerful,
even when you don't want to believe there is something which goes like--you know,
were to influence your own subconscious.
ADAMS: In the rise of nationalism
and the rise of Slobodan Milosevic, did he figure out right away that he would
have to take control over state television and radio?
Ms. PESIC: Oh,
that's the very first thing he did, actually, because, you know, in a country
where written media are not very popular, either because they are very expensive
or because people are illiterate or because they're simply not accessible because,
you know, there has been never a distributed network for independent newspapers,
so only a distribution network for state-run papers. So it was really difficult
to buy, even if you wanted to buy independent papers in many parts of Serbia,
so the easiest has always been just to switch to television and watch it, and
television Serbia has been the only TV accessible in all parts of Serbia, in all
parts of Montenegro.
ADAMS: So before Milosevic spoke to the people
of Serbia in Kosovo and said, `You will never again be beaten,' before he took
up this cause of nationalism, how free, how independent was state radio and television?
Ms. PESIC: In Communism, of course you couldn't talk about independent
media, but last two or particularly the last decade of Communism before Tito died
and then decade after Tito died, we've learned certain rules, so there are sort
of taboos: don't touch Tito, don't touch self-management and don't touch Second
World War revolution and, you know, partisan movement. So if you didn't touch
those three taboos, you could have worked in a sort of professional way, but we
were hoping for the fall of Communism to get really independent media. There is
some as a symbol as our beginning of democracy. What we got after the--if I can
say that Communism has ever fallen in Serbia, what we got after the fall of Berlin
Wall, actually, was another very hard Communist Mr. Milosevic who learned during
Communism what was important, how to control media and how to use media. I think,
actually, he even has moved further up in using media.
ADAMS: So if
you're a farmer in Serbia...
Ms. PESIC: If you're a farmer in Serbia,
you are very often illiterate.
ADAMS: And you would have television?
Ms. PESIC: Of course.
ADAMS: You...
Ms. PESIC: Because
that's the very first thing you buy. You know, you buy television set and you
buy washing-up machine when you build your house.
ADAMS: And so you
would watch which program in the evening?
Ms. PESIC: You would watch
program first channel--news at 7:30. That's like--you know, when people say `I
saw it on tele last night,' that means television Belgrade, television Serbia,
Channel 1, 7:30 news time, prime-time news bulletin.
ADAMS: And would
you have any reason to be suspicious of what you're seeing coming from Belgrade,
the capital?
Ms. PESIC: Well, in Communism, we learned to read, as you
say, between lines. So like you receive some information, then you try to find
out what is behind that. But then since television is such a powerful medium and
since you have the same sort of discourse being repeated for years, from night
to night for months and years, then you are like sort of that frog from that Pavlov's
experiment which has been cooked without actually understanding that it has been
cooked. You gradually just, you know, raise the temperature of the water, the
poor frog is in it, but, you know, grade by grade, you cook the frog without really
letting frog understand that it has been cooked.
ADAMS: And in this
case, you do, indeed, have bombs falling on your home territory?
Ms.
PESIC: And that's what is really something which made people believing, you know,
that
they have actually turned towards, you know, whatever regime is their
government, because there was no support, no protection from outside. I'm talking
now about my colleagues, my friends, people who have been trying to build democracy
in Serbia, who have been trying to do some positive changes. They're now completely
abandoned from anyone. They are in a sort of limbo. There is no lull in Serbia.
There is not any support from any side and what people are supposed to do but
just to sit there and wait as, you know, what's happened to my colleague in Belgrade
yesterday. He was killed.
ADAMS: Ms. Pesic, thank you for talking with
us.
Ms. PESIC: My pleasure.
ADAMS: Milica Pesic, director
of the European Center for War, Peace and the News Media, talking with us from
London.
(Soundbite of music)
(Announcements)
(Soundbite of music)
[END TRANSCRIPT]
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