Patriotism Versus Professionalism
by Milica Pesic / June 1, 1999

Note: this is the original article, published in German Media magazine Message, No 1, July 1999.

"When you stand at the site of a massacre, two things happen. First, you wonder about the depths of the human spirit. And then you ask yourself how many lies can be told about it".

When Robert Fisk, the veteran war correspondent for The Independent newspaper in London, asked that question while investigating an atrocity in Kosovo, he wasn't thinking just about the opposing forces in the conflict. He was also challenging journalists who very often take sides in the conflict.

Why do we journalists lie in this type of situation?! Is our patriotism stronger then our professionalism? Is our ethnic background stronger than our duty to tell "the truth as best as we can establish it," as Clare Hollingworth put it in 1939 while covering the German invasion of Poland?

Are there different rules for journalists -- one set that applies during peacetime and another for war?

It seems that not much has changed since William Howard Russell of The Times, London, went to the Crimea in 1854 and became the first civilian war correspondent. Since then, the media has been struggling, and more often than not failing, to provide reports that, as Philip Knightley recently wrote in the Daily Mail, offer "ordinary citizens full, truthful and immediate information about what is being done in their name."

Two very different images of the current Kosovo conflict have emerged, depending on where in the world the events are being viewed.

In Serbia, things are simple. When the war started, the government introduced war rules covering the entire media. Patriotic rhetoric - introduced more than 10 years ago when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic first took power -- has intensified. Since the well-known independent B92 Radio was seized April 1, 1999, government-controlled outlets have dominated the media scene. Their news programs are designed only to "show the illegitimacy of NATO aggression on Yugoslavia, the unity of the Serbian people in resisting the enemy, and Serbian invincibility ." said a media expert in Belgrade whose name went unmentioned, ("War Propaganda in Serbia," Global Beat Syndicate, April 13, http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate).

The rules are simple: we are angels, they are devils. Or, to paraphrase an American general's comment about news reports following the attack on Pearl Harbor, "Tell people nothing until the war's over -- then tell them who won." In the case of Serbia, the rule would be "Tell the people lies until the war's over -- then tell them we won."

The sad truth is that many journalists have long been willing to comply with the wartime rules of coverage without questioning them. "There was no need for censorship of our dispatches, we were our own censors," Philip Gibbs, a Times correspondent, proudly admitted during World War I. More recently, John MacArthur, in his book on media coverage of the Gulf War, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda, quotes an American journalist covering the Gulf war saying that there was no need for censorship since he was "first an American, then a journalist."

Putting "patria" before "profesia" has long been the "holy duty" of many journalists. In the early 1990s, state-controlled TV Serbia fired more than 1300 of its 7000 employees who refused to take part in its war propaganda. But it easily managed to fill these TV jobs with new workers who were ready to be "brave and honoured servants of the fatherland."

During previous wars in the former Yugoslavia, TV Serbia had its own way of telling the truth. "The others, other ethnic groups, were 'evil-doers', 'cut-throats', 'ustashas', 'mujahedins', 'jihad warriors', 'commando-terrorist groups', 'Muslim extremists', 'Alija's wanton hordes', 'ustasha chauvinists', 'Islamic chauvinists' and 'Islamic fundamentalists'." On the other hand, Serbs were 'fighting for freedom', 'defending', 'guarding' and 'protecting' their 'native soil' and the 'brave and honest Serbian history'. " (Milica Pesic, Manipulations on TV Belgrade, MA Theses in International Journalism, City University, London, September 1994).

And TV Serbia is not the only Serbian medium promoting hate-speech. Recently, Dragos Kalajic, a Rome-based correspondent for Politika,a daily in Belgrade, accused some pacifists in Belgrade of being "traitors, fascists and NATO-followers." "Decently distanced from the battle-zone, Mr. Kalajic dares to criticize those who are in the middle of it", answered Vojin Dimitrijevic, one of those "indicted," although he knew there was little chance that Politika would publish his response.

Knightley, author of "The First Casualty", a history of war correspondents and propaganda widely used as a textbook on the subject for journalism students in the United Kingdom, argues that what the World War II American general advocated has always been the military's approach to the news during wartime.

"Only NATO and Serbia know what is really happening and neither is telling all"³, Knightly said in the April 17 edition of The Daily Mail. He argues that both sides actually benefit from the limited access Serbian authorities have provided to the battle zone in Kosovo. This forces correspondents to rely on briefings given by officers and civilians, who are, as Knightly pointed out 'skilled in handling journalists' and masters of the "Delphic phrase."

John Pilger, the author of several books on war correspondents and a long-time critic of war coverage in the West, argued in the Guardian on May 18 that, when compared to the Gibbs's reports during World War I, "silence is different now; there is the illusion of saturation coverage, but the reality is a sameness and repetition and, above all, political safety for the perpetrators."

Pilger, an Australian who has lived in the United Kingdom for years, blames the British media for "minimizing the culpability of the British state" and for failing to report on the appendix to the Rambuillet accords, which showed that "NATO's agenda was to occupy not just Kosovo, but all of Yugoslavia". ("Acts of murder," Guardian, May 18). The Guardian's Ian Black rejected these claims in the next day's edition, noting that the Rambuillet appendix "was for weeks on the Guardian's and other websites." True enough -- it was on the websites but it was still not reported in the papers. Black also says, quite rightly, that this accord is a "standard status of forces agreement of the sort accepted by Milosevic in Dayton as it then suited him to do so."

Right again. But both writers fail to address a broader question - why have the media, at least in the UK, failed to report on and criticize crucial elements of both the Dayton and Rambuillet agreements?

The Pilger-Black exchange shows how easy it is to play with the facts, and how news "consumers" can be seduced by those facts and prevented from learning whether their governments are doing the right thing in their names.

"If it bleeds, it leads"
"Kosovo leaders executed," read the headline on the front page of Western newspapers on March 29, 1999. But while attributing the report to "reliable NATO sources," no one bothered to question how "reliable" these sources actually were.

Adhering to the principle that "if it bleeds, it leads," UK media "competed" for days to report the bloodiest details of the alleged murders. But when it was discovered the "executed" leaders were actually still alive, few rushed to report the news on their front pages. Even the appearance of Baton Haxhiu, the "executed" editor-in-chief of Koha Ditore, Kosovo's most Prominent daily, at a press conference in London with British Foreign Minister Robin Cooke, was not worth a report in the liberal Guardian newspaper.

Why is good news given a low priority? Is the situation unique to this war? Who determines what news is: readers, editors, Media-owners, outside authorities?

In a letter from Belgrade, published in the Guardian (May 5), Veran Matic, head of the seized Radio B92, argued that "the news that someone is actually alive never provokes the same sensation as previous reports about that person's alleged murder." Matic believes that "Western media dictates this hectic pace and these news values".

Certainly this is true in this particular situation. 'Tabloidisation' of broad sheet media in the UK is showing its face. But, generally speaking uppression of good news, especially when it comes from the enemy, has always been a 'war speciality'.

During the First World War, journalists were absorbed into the military. They wore uniforms; some were subsequently knighted for their cooperation. It was only after the war that the British public learned about the real atrocities of the fighting.

For journalists during the Second World War, evil was easy to identify. Allied generals didn't instruct journalists on how to report the war. Journalists were eager to take sides. "But, let's not glorify our role. We were cheerleaders. It was not good journalism. It was not journalism at all", later admitted Charles Lynch of Reuters, one of those who took a side (As quoted by Knightley, Daily Mail, April 17).

The war in Vietnam provided a breakthrough for journalism. Since the United States had not formally declared war on Vietnam, journalists were free to go where they wanted and report what they saw. They showed the American public the real face and the real price of the war. Much of the American public eventually withdrew their support for the war.

During Britain¹s war in the Falklands in 1982, the media's role again came into question. A member of the Ministry of Defense, Brigadier F. G. Caldwell, asked directly: "Are we going to let the television cameras loose on the battlefield?" (as quoted by P. Knightley, Ibid.).

In other words, since the British army could control access to the war zone, correspondents went there exclusively with the military. They reported what they were allowed to see and what they were told by the military. Censorship was total and unavoidable.

Knightley argues that American journalists did a more professional job in the Falklands since they were generally "more robust in defense of free speech." However, it's more likely that Americans were freer to do their job professionally because the United States was not directly involved in the war and therefore had no direct role in imposing censorship in its media.

The recent wars in the former Yugoslavia -- and especially the current Conflict between Serbia and NATO -- confirm one sad fact: The further removed a conflict is from "their countries," the more professionally the media can cover it. As Knightley has written, in war, the first casualty is the truth. A more cynical version comes from America: "The first casualty of war is not truth but the availability of ice in hotels." The fact that this version is preferred in the Balkans speaks volumes about the quality of war-reporting there.

Since military controls worked well in the Falklands, the same type of censorship was applied during U.S. military actions in Granada and in the Gulf war. During this latter conflict, alliance generals maintained near total control of news reports through the creation of media pools. They dispensed information either at press conferences or at carefully chosen sites on the battlefield. The effect of this managed coverage led Richard Keeble from City University, London, to claim provocatively there was no Gulf war, only a media war.

The only correspondents who managed to send first-hand stories from the front lines were so-called "reporters sauvages," freelance journalists, mostly young and inexperienced, who somehow escaped the pools. Their reports saved journalism's dignity, although many obviously pursued fame and success as ardently as they pursued their stories. Among more established journalists, only a very few, such as John Simpson of the BBC, can be proud of their work.

Is the Kosovo War different?
While it may seem on the surface that coverage of the current war differs little from what's gone on before, there are several important distinctions that need to be explored.

In this war, one side, the Serbian government, lies consistently. The people of Serbia will learn what has been done in their name only after the war is over -- and then only if this proves to be Milosevic's last war. If he stays in power and is allowed to create new conflicts following his decade-long pattern ("when you lose one war start another to keep people from asking what you did previously"), - the "victory discourse" will again dominate the Serbian media agenda.

The other side, NATO, lies some of the time in a confusing fashion. And the more it lies, the more it looks like Milosevic. That's why some observers call the resulting information the "Slobidisation of NATO media." Each time there is "collateral damage" due to an air strike, NATO allies first deny but then later admit the destruction. This damages NATO's credibility.

Meanwhile, Milosevic has never really cared what the so-called international community thinks about his activities. His propaganda is created for internal purposes - to convince Serbs that the wars are inevitable and necessary to protect Serbian national interests.

NATO propaganda is designed to serve both domestic and international purposes. In the UK , there's been no national opinion poll on the war published since April 30, so one cannot know whether its propaganda efforts are working and the general public is happy with their government¹s conduct of the war.

But the longer the war lasts, the more people in the West question its initial goals. For now, some of the loudest critics of the war are the old Leftists, such as Noam Chomsky, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In interviews with CBC Radio on April 16, and in the Guardian on May 17, Chomsky worried about the creation of a "new world order" and the role the media play in creating it. He called coverage of the war by European and American media "not inaccurate but ludicrous." They present the war as a humanitarian endeavor, said Chomsky, but "if anything is obvious, it's the opposite."

What Chomsky fails to recognize, however, is that journalists are being prevented from reaching Kosovo directly. The Serbian government simply does not allow them to report freely from there. The media is left with no choice but to turn to other sources. Journalists are left to interview experts on the conflict, no matter how biased their opinions, or to choose other sources of information, such as humanitarian or NGO organizations which do have at least limited access to the area, but carry their own biases as well.

Still, the question remains: do most journalists today defend their "fatherland" or their profession?

Or perhaps the problem is even more basic. Susan Moeller, the author of "Compassion Fatigue" wrote recently, "Milosevic's control of the images coming out of Yugoslavia may limit the coverage of that crisis, but what is the excuse for the lack of coverage of the myriad other debacles around the globe". (Christian Science Monitor, May 20).

It's the media, not the public, that suffers from "compassion fatigue," Moeller argues. "Editors don't assign stories that they believe will not appeal to their readers and viewers. So for stories such as the almost daily skirmishes in the no-fly-zone over Iraq or the continued Turkish fighting against the Kurds or the ongoing disaster in Sierra Leone, no news is not good news. No news is oblivion."

At present, Kosovo is "in." At least for the time being. Another unique feature of this war is identifying the media as a legitimate target for military attack. This "very dangerous precedent," according to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, will be long-remembered in the history of journalism. "NATO has made an original contribution to World Press Freedom Day," wrote Jonathan Steele of the Guardian (Global Beat Syndicate, May 1, http://nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate). "Even if Serbian TV did not produce anything remotely describable as journalism," says Steele, "the bombing cannot be justified. One person's truth is another person's propaganda, and once you start on the road of shooting other people's messengers you abandon any right to call yourself a defender of free speech."

Robert Fisk of the Independent concluded his piece on April 4: "Once you kill people because you don't like what they say, you change the rules of war."

Though few journalists dispute NATO's claim that TV Serbia is controlled by Milosevic and broadcasts nothing but propaganda, NATO's bombing of its broadcast headquarters was widely denounced by international journalists and journalism organizations. They argued that NATO had endangered the lives of journalists with an attack that was not even effective in military terms.

The International Federation of Journalists, based in Brussels, warned: "Governments who attack the media, whether in the Balkans, in central Africa or central Asia, will now feel justified in making journalists and all who work with them legitimate targets." Similar protests came from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the London-based Index on Censorship, and the European Broadcasting Union.

But others disagree. John Spellar, the British Under Secretary of State for Defense argued that "propaganda is an integral part of the war machine, this is why the studios were a legitimate targets".

And Professor Robert Manoff, director of the New York University Center for War, Peace, and the News Media argued for intellectual consistency. It's acceptable to be opposed to the attack on the media, Manoff argues, if you're also opposed the the entire military intervention effort. But Manoff contends that, given the vital role the media long played in support of the Milosevic regime, they are indeed a legitimate target for NATO strikes.

Obviously the issue of making the media a military target will be debated for a long time. And unfortunately, the current war threatens to go on nearly as long at the media debate.

And yet there may be one basic answer to the question of how journalists should conduct themselves in times of war. As the BBC's John Humphrys puts it, "In times of peace it is our job to question politicians vigorously, with the hope that they will answer the questions in the listeners' heads. So long as we do not stray into operational areas and jeopardize our servicemen and servicewomen, I cannot for the life of me see why it should be different in times of war." (Observer, Ibid.)