In recent years a new method of waging war has evolved. It is cynical, amoral, and dangerous, because it is capable of mobilizing and influencing millions of people. It is called media war. The masters of this new type of warfare are experts in communications and visual images; they work out of sterile offices thousands of kilometres away from the battlefield. Their weapons are computers, fax machines, an updated card index with addresses, good contacts in the biggest TV networks and newspapers and among politicians of the party in power. The operators using this new methodology are called public relations agencies.
Their operational technique is based on the exploitation of any news of media significance, regardless of whether it is unverified, which is fed to news agencies by fax machine. When the tension caused by the rivers of paper and obsessive television pictures begins to dissipate, a new story is served up to arouse public indignation once more. The consequences are truly catastrophic because the true drama, the cruelty of the three sides fighting in Bosnia and their intemal conflicts, as shown by the recent clashes between the Muslims in Bihac, is supplanted by a make-believe drama. And all this has very serious consequences: international public opinion and UN member countries have already suffered from the negative effects. The TV media and the press have responded with enthusiasm to the stimuli provided by these communications experts, often casting aside professional scruples in favour of sensationalism. The first example is the war in the Gulf. Kuwait hired a large agency from Washington, which skillfully created the image of its client as victim and revealed the perfidy of Iraq's satraps. The United Nations imposed sanctions and a high-tech war, all with international approval.
James Harff, director of Ruder & Finn Global Public Affairs, in an interview with French journalist Jacques Merlino which was published in his book, "Les Verites Yougoslaves ne sont pas toutes bonnes en dire" (Albin Michel, Paris, 1994), talked about his new clients and his strategy for success. According to Harff: "Between August 2nd and 5th, 1992, the New York Newsday came out with a lead story on (Serbian) camps. We jumped at the opportunity and immediately distributed it to three major Jewish organizations - the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress.... The engagement of Jewish organizations on the side of the Bosnians was a superb poker play. Immediately thereafter, we were able to associate the Serbs and the Nazis in the public's mind.... It is not our job to verify information.... Our job is to accelerate the circulation of news items which are favourable to us.... We are not paid to moralize...."
New and Far Between
Journalists wanting to get to the bottom of news reports are few and far between. One such journalist is Bernard Volker of the French TV channel TF1. After the massacre of 5 February 1994, at the Sarajevo marketplace Markale, which preceded a UN ultimatum to the Serbs and threats of intervention hy the West, this tv reporter was made privy to "confidential" UN information. Two days before the expiry of the ultimatum, on February 11th, Volker stated on television that he had learned from reliable sources that the cause of the massacre was a mortar fired from Muslim lines.He specified that the news had been the subject of a report sent to Lord Owen and the presidency of the CSCE, and circulated to the foreign ministers of the European Union. A day later, the United Nations and the French government, both in confusion, published denials. According to the official version, this information was a quote from the tanjug news agency of Belgrade carried without the quotation marks. Even though it later transpired that the Tanjug item was published a day after the official version, Volker was forced to make a retraction, after the intervention of the Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel. He cited the official sources but insisted on the quality of the source of his information and the veracity of the news item. In any case, this same information was broadcast by Misha Glenny (author of the most important book to date about the war in former Yugoslavia, " The Fall of Yugoslavia", Penguin, 1993), on the BBC World Service. According to him, the shell was fired from territory within the Muslim lines.
Jacques Merlino, deputy editor-in-chief of France's Antenne 2 network, after writing about Timisoara and the Gulf War, pointed to the same oversimplifications and exaggerations in the conflict in former Yugoslavia. With great objectivity he brought to light the deliveries of arms to the Croats and Muslims from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the Vatican, and publicly stated some truths about the rapes and the bread queue massacre in Vasa Miskin street in Sarajevo (ascribed "confidentially" to the Muslims themselves, a claim also made by the British newspaper,"The Independent). The new director, Jean Pierre El Kabasch, without any explanation removed him from his position as special correspondent. At the same time, unidentified humanitarian organizations demonstrated in front of Antenne 2, shouting: "Merlino, the people are after your hide ! "
Scoops and the Pulitzer Prize
The Zurich weekly, Die Weltwoche, received the same treatment, the same attacks and threats, after publishing on January 20th an abridged version of the article by Peter Brock which appeared in the American periodical Foreign Policy in Decemter 1993. The author, among other things, pointed out the superficiality of journalists who control information just in order to make a scoop, and in particular he targeted two Pulitzer Prize winners, Roy Gutman and John Burns, for irresponsible reporting and sensationalism, specifically about "death camps" and "systematic rape" in Bosnia. In June, those same pictures and articles were carried by Time Magazine (20 June 1994) in that week of great uncertainty. Roy Gutman, as indeed many others, was known for writing his articles about Bosnia from Zagreb.
Martin Lettmayer, a reporter for Stem TV, covered the war in former Yugoslavia for various intemational networks and was moved by the imprecisions and gaps in media stories to begin his own investigations. On 10 March 1994, Die Weltwoche published a testimony under the caption, "We simply believed, without questioning," whish revealed, among other things, how some of the author's prominent colleagues, such as the celebrated Alexandra Stiglmayer, used infommation on such gruesome themes as the "war rapes," gathered from sources which could not be verified or were non-existent. Once again there was a loud outcry from the Swiss press. In conclusion, here is a case all its own. Vladimir Cerkov arrived in Belgrade in August 1993 to make a documentary about the situation in Yugoslavia, and he showed in a dispassionate and objective manner the historical and human reasons which motivated all three sides. The film was aired by the TV station of the canton of Ticino and set off a heated debate on the objectivity of its contents; nevertheless, the Swiss television network broadcast it at the scheduled time.
A debate was organized with Sergio Romano, who had advised Cerkov to
approach RAI with his film. RAI 3 tumed it down. Giovanni Minoli accepted
it for RAI 2, but nothing ever came of it. Afterwards, the documentary
was sent to Arte TV Nova, a TV network with head offices in Bonn and
Paris. Here, too, the film was rejected after it had been viewed by a
committee which included among its members Bernard-Henri Levy, author of
some of the most brutal propaganda documentaries about the war in Bosnia.
It would be natural to ask ourselves: Is there still any genuine freedom
of the press left? Who will protect the public from media manipulation?