Multi-Ethnic Reporting In Macedonia

By Denise Hamilton

Denise Hamilton is a former Fulbright Fellow to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. She was a staff writer for The Los Angeles Times for 11 years. She has reported extensively from Central and Eastern Europe and Asia. She now freelances for The Times, Wired, Der Spiegel and other publications.

In June 1995, I traveled to the Macedonian capital or Skopje, where I spent the month helping a team of local Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish journalists conceptualize, report, write and edit a series of articles that would be published in the Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish language press. The aims were threefold: to expose journalists in Macedonia to Western-style reporting during an intensive, hands-on workshop. To create an environment, however brief, in which reporters of different ethnicities from different media could work cooperatively and forge bonds of respect, trust and professionalism. And lastly, to spark interest in future multi-ethnic collaborations that might continue after the project ended and I went home.

Experts agree that efforts to resolve ethnic conflict are especially crucial today in Macedonia, which has been known through history as the "tinderbox of the Balkans."
It was these concerns in mind that two U.S. foundations joined forces in 1994 to develop a journalism project that could address ethnic tensions. They were Search of Common Ground (SCG), a Washington-based non-governmental organization and the Center for War, Peace and the News Media, which is based at the New York University. After several workshops and study visits, it became clear that a more hands-on approach was needed to address two vital problems: ethnic segregation of the media and - at least from a Western perspective - basic journalistic shortcomings.

In Skopje, I was introduced to my team: two Macedonians, one Albanian and one Turkish reporter, corresponding roughly to the population breakdown in this nation of 2.3 million. The reporters had been selected by their editors.

Under my guidance, the team produced a series they labeled "How We Survive" that examined how ordinary citizens of all classes, ethnicities and religions were faring under tough economic conditions. We made a conscious decision to stay away from politics, to avoid inflaming nationalistic feelings. By contrast, we believed that concern over economic survival resonated universally in Macedonia. The team took to the project with gusto, interviewing ministry officials and street children, slum dwellers and millionaires. They documented the growing heroin trade and explosion in black market cigarettes. Along the way, they fought intensely among themselves, accused each other of partisan politics and worried privately that their own ethnic group would come out looking badly in the series. One reporter even threatened to quit.

As editor and advisor, I had to act quickly to defuse problems as they arose, meditate conflict and negotiate solutions that were acceptable to the group. But I quickly learned one thing: regardless of how much they distrusted each other initially, working cooperatively drew them together. They set to set aside their differences to get the job done, and since they were very excited about the project, they kept going.
The breadth and depth of our reporting - unusual for Macedonia - also forced them to confront and shatter stereotypes they might have held about the poor gypsy, the rich Albanian or the lazy Macedonian bureaucrat.

At one point Macedonian reporter Juliana Kocovska confided to me, "You know, I am a human being as well as reporter. I care about people here. And I realize that only if Albanians get along with Macedonians can we all stay at peace here."

In addition to Kocovska, who worked as an editor at the Macedonian language daily newspaper Nova Makedonija, the team consisted of Nazif Zejnullahu of Flake e Vellazerimit, the Albanian newspaper; Seyhan Kain of Birlik, the Turkish newspaper, and Biljana Bekova of Radio NoMa, a Macedonian language radio station.

On top of their regular salaries, the reporters received an honorarium for participating in the project, which undoubtedly whetted their enthusiasm. Regardless, within about three weeks, the team produced four main stories and five sidebars. They also took photos, designed a logo and wrote up an explanatory box to describe the project and its participants. The series began running in mid-July. One reporter even postponed her vacation to ensure that the stories sailed smoothly in to the print. Kocovska and Zejnullahu were so inspired that they asked their editors to undertake a joint investigative project into the country's growing heroin trade, a type of collaborative reporting across ethnic lines that was unheard of in Macedonia until our project.

Initially the reporters were suspicious of each other and of me. They were afraid to suggest their own stories, to critique the suggestions of others or to contradict anything I said. This was a cultural hurdle: Macedonians find it rude to disagree or speak directly. (You have to ask everything three times before you get a real answer. I would ask them. "Would you like to take a coffee break now?" They would say no and would go on with our discussion. Meanwhile, they would be seething inside, dying for a smoke and a coffee and waiting for me to ask them again.) For an American used to a robust exchange of ideas, frank talk and fast planning, this could be frustrating.

They would have been much more comfortable had I laid out the game plan for them and assigned them topics. But I felt it crucial to the project's success that they generate the stories and feel responsible for executing them.

The reporters were fervent believers in the"one-source, one-story" approach and were shocked that I expected them to interview about 50 people of various classes, ethnicities and professions during the course of their research. I also urged them to look creatively at stories, such as to consider spending a night at the border to chronicle the black market trade or to track a crop from soil to market to show the difficulties faced by farmers.

To my delight, the reporters were game. Our Albanian journalist volunteered to hang out at the border and returned with all sorts of great quotes and anecdotes. And our Turkish journalist helped put us in touch with farmers and producers of tobacco. Yet although they developed many sources and leads for future stories, we found it difficult do groundbreaking journalism in the time we had, especially with the level of skills and resources we had.

For instance, our refined and ladylike Turkish reporter, Seyhan Kain, was unequipped by training, temperament or culture for aggressive, Western-style reporting. "Haven't we done enough interviews yet," she asked me, after completing three. (At her paper Seyhan wrote political commentary after watching Turkish TV and reading Istanbul newspapers). But we finally settled on the following stories: 1) an economic overview and introduction; 2) how women are faring in the tough economy; 3) the exploitative cycle of tobacco and lastly, 4) the plight of young people today.

Macedonian customs and culture slowed our work place. Phone interviews are rare here. Instead interviews are usually done in person, last three hours and unfold over numerous cigarettes and Turkish coffees.

But their concerns bring up a point that needs to be addressed for the success of future projects. Most East Bloc journalists I've met have a terrible inferiority complex coupled with a mighty sense of superiority. After attending endless workshops and conferences in recent years sponsored by well-meaning Western organizations, they are understandably prickly about being lectured to by another American journalist. As the editor of Nova Makedonija told me: "You know, our reporters are experienced professionals, they have been abroad, they have reported from Paris and London, and while people in the West may think they are 'regime reporters' and not real journalists, they are just as competent as you and it annoys us when Westerners come over here and tell us how to work."

By American journalism standards, many stories lacked structure, displayed poor development of ideas, used page long quotes and failed to give examples to back up general statements. Additionally, some reporters inserted editorial and political commentary into their articles. However, since I attended many of the interviews and debriefed reporters daily, it was relatively simple to excise the politics, add context and structure and find better quotes to illustrate their points. It only took time and patience. And because we had been in the trenches together, the reporters found my editing more palatable.

But we had plenty of heated discussions along the way. As we got into the project, I discovered that they were enamored of statistics and official government sources. They bridled at being asked to do street reporting and found it hard to believe that veteran reporters in the U.S. often drop in without appointments of just show up at cafes or villages to do interviews.

"This is work for young, inexperienced reporters. We are veteran reporters and should be doing analysis and commentary," Kocovska told me. All of them pointed out to me that it would be a waste of time to interview average workers or peasants since they knew nothing about economy. True, I responded. But ask them how many times a month they eat meat, if they can afford their own apartment or if their factory pays them cash or script redeemable only at the overpriced company store.

Eventually, the journalists grew to like street reporting. They would descend like locusts on some unsuspecting suburban apartment dweller or café denizen and start firing questions and writing down every word, shocked and intrigued by what they found. They developed a little preamble of introduction and found people pleased and eager to talk to them. They also realized that as a team, they gained access to people and places that would have been off-limits to them as individuals because of language or cultural barriers. For instance, the Macedonian reporters were able to interview 10-year old Albanian boys and girls selling cigarettes at the bazaar because they had an Albanian reporter along.

To obtain the broadest cross-pollination, I split the reporters into bi-ethnic teams of two to conduct interviews whenever possible. Each was responsible for writing one story with feeds from the others. We spent a lot of time discussing how to balance out stories to include voices from each ethnic group and class and to avoid stereotyping. It paid off. By the project's end, they were coming to me to point out passages in their stories they feared would be insensitive or offensive to another ethnic group.

Our road trips also forged bonds. I asked each reporter to organize a day trip so we could travel and talk to people outside Skopje. One day, we were gone from 8 a.m. until midnight, hitting a Turkish tobacco farming village, a tobacco processing factory and a city near the Bulgarian border known for its wealthy businessmen. At the village, our Turkish reporter arranged interviews with tobacco farmers who treated us to a delicious home-cooked lunch and then led us out into the fields where they labor under horribly primitive conditions for 11 months out of the year. After meeting a smart young village girl who couldn't go to university for lack of money, one or our Macedonian reporters took it upon herself to try to help the young Turkish woman get a scholarship. Likewise, our Albanian and Macedonian reporters were so horrified after interviewing 12-year-old heroin addicts spawned by the burgeoning heroin trade in Macedonia that they proposed series of joint articles on drug smuggling. Drug addiction is a new plague for the nation that is striking young Macedonians and Albanians with equal force.

While the reporters agreed with the wisdom of setting politics aside during the project, minor ethnic tensions surfaced from time to time. If not addressed, these could quickly turn experienced professional reporters into pouty, suspicious nationalists. Words assumed ominous political proportions-for instance using the word "illegal" to describe a squatter settlement outside Skopje populated mainly by poor Muslims. Since the city had installed water and electrical lines to this settlement, giving it tacit permission to exist, our Turkish and Albanian journalists bridled at calling the settlement "illegal", which connoted that its Muslim residents were lawbreakers.

So words were a mined thicket through which we all stumbled. As soon as I got hints of grumbling I pulled aside the reporter, found out what was wrong, then raised those concerns with the group so we could get at least a grudging consensus on how to proceed. Oftentimes, the problems could be corrected quickly. For instance, Zejnullahu, our Albanian reporter, complained that we had profiled a Turkish and a Macedonian millionaire but not an Albanian one, so I asked him to find us an Albanian millionaire to write about, which he did.

In general, whenever the reporters got into political debates that threatened to derail the project, I reminded them of our agreement to stay neutral but urged them to continue investigating these issues after the project ended.

Indeed, for most of the reporters, the project was the first time they had worked and socialized with people outside their ethnic groups and they found it an eye-opening experience. Kocovska told me numerous times how much she enjoyed working with Zejnullahu and what a good journalist he was. Eventually she became the project's most staunch ally and even made a presentation to her editorial board urging more collaborations between Nova Makedonija and Flaka.

I left Macedonia before the stories started running. So I only know from anecdotal experience that the series was well - read and that many people were intrigued by the chatty Western format, the sizable number of sources and facts presented and the personal anecdotes in each story. Some said they were especially shocked by the blunt article about drug use among the youth of Macedonia.

More importantly, the success of the Macedonia Journalism Project shows the potential of such programs to improve understanding across ethnic lines while teaching solid journalism skills. While our initial effort involved only a handful of reporters, it created a ripple effect, since those four returned to their newsrooms with knowledge and ideas to pass on to others.

The Macedonian Journalism Project also has great potential as a teaching and conflict resolution tool in countries with multi-ethnic populations outside the South Balkans. The project could be easily adapted to suit specific needs from Burundi to Israel. It is clear that one month of intensive work with four local journalists cannot turn around distrust honed over centuries of conflict. Nonetheless, the project is helpful in developing a fact-based, independent press and in training reporters who can move fluidly across ethnic lines. And in many parts of the world today, including our own United States, that in itself is an accomplishment.