The "Serbia Must Die " (Serbien muss sterbien), collection of texts on reporting on the war in the region of former Yugoslavia, recently published in Berlin by Klaus Bittermann, includes an item by the foreign editor of the Swiss Die Weltwoche weekly, Hanspeter Born. Last autumn Born decided to publish in this weekly a text by American journalist Peter Brock which initiated a debate on the extent to which the media were falsitying events in the region offormer Yugoslavia. Born describes the problems which he confronted atter publishing this article by the American journalist.
My colleague Elsbeth Sermia who, along with me, is responsible for the foreign-policy pages of Die Weltwoche, shared my opinion that Brock's article was an important and necessary element in the discussion on war reporting in fommer Yugoslavia. But the two of us found ourselves pressured by the editorial board, particularly when a group of some forty Bosnian refugees, organized by Swiss activists, started to demonstrate in front of the magazine's building.
Our capacity to judge and our moral opinions were brought into question. It was claimed that editor Bom had found this article published in a dubious extreme-right publication, which was actually amusing bearing in mind the progressive political stand of Foreign Policy magazine. Soon almost all the Swiss papers acted in concert against Brock's article. Sixteen correspondents of Swiss papers replied to the reproach of being one-sided, which was never addressed to them, by writing open letters. When the Neue Zurcher Zeitung published an attack against me, the editor-in-chief also made an appearance and phoned the editor-in-chief of Die Weltwoche to ask him what was actually going on. Even earlier, the representatives of our managing board were questioned by a member of the managing board of the Munich daily Suddeutsche Zeitung about whether they intended to ruin their paper by publishing texts such as those by Brock and Born. My superiors suggested it would be best if I did not go on writing about Bosnia. At the editorial meeting discussing the responses by Alexandra Stiglmayer and Roy Gutman, accused by Brock of being extremely one-sided, I found myself quite alone in my stand that Brock should also be given a chance to reply to those responses. Later I leamed that the management had been considering the possibility of relieving me of my post as editor of the foreign column, because of this controversy over Brock's article.
The debate started by this text was usefull. It showed the public that all reports from former Yugoslavia should be read with caution. Many journalists who often published unverified information without thinking have now become skeptic and more cautious. According to my subjective perceptions, television, radio and press in the German-speaking region are no longer so hasty in making conclusions and are more cautious regarding sources of information and their verification.
Ever since my grammar-school days I have harboured what I consider a healthy skepticism regarding generally accepted views and the conformist opinions of the majority. My skepticism has only been substantiated after more than 20 years in journalism. I remember meeting exactly seventeen years ago with the editor-in-chief of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. I asked how it happened that the press, which at first had almost unanimously glorified president Jimmy Carter, now had tumed almost entirely against him. He explained that shift using a comment he heard Lyndon Johnson make on some occasion. "Joumalists are like birds sitting on a telephone wire; when one flies off, all the others fly off to sit on the next wire."
There are abundant examples of such journalism. Let us just recollect how the press glorified Gorbachev for years, while current historians are only shaking their heads over him.
Regarding the reporting on former Yugoslavia, there is no doubt that we are dealing with the same type of journalism. Since the causes and roots of the Yugoslav wars, i.e. conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzogovina, are more then multi-layered and since many events cannot at all be understood without knowing their historical background, many correspondents found themselves in a situation they were not up to. Many found it easier to take over the thesis spread by certain press bellwethers about the Serb-communist aggression against the peoples of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia craving freedom. The obstinacy shown by Milosevic's regime and war crimes committed by Serb irregulars enhanced the diffusion of this thesis among joumalists and tumed it into a dogma. It is difficult for a journalist not to take sides in war conflicts, while advocating the cause of the weaker is looked upon as some kind of moral obligation. Since the Serbs were superior in the war in Croatia and Bosnia, and thereby majority of the victims were Muslims and Croats, many correspondents considered it their moral obligation to be against the Serbs.
How could a journalist reporting from Sarajevo remain impartial when constantly confronted with the sufferings of its inhabitants?. No one reproaches a joumalist for advocating a clear stand. But what is incompatible with joumalist ethics is the distortion of facts. Brock's thesis, which I regard as being correct, is that in the Yugoslav conflict journalists, correspondents and people from editorial boards, were continuously swallowing propaganda. False news was often given as the absolute truth. Occasionally journalists and editors made an additional contribution by embroidering unverified reports on atrocities or commenting on them as being the preconceived war tactics of the Serbs who had been demonized in the meantime. A typical example of harnessing the press to a propaganda campaign, in which Die Weltwoche had one of the leading roles, was the unbelievable hysteria about systematic mass rapes and rape camps.
No one denies that in the conflicts in Bosnia, much as in all other wars,
rapes took place, and that the majority of those rapes could be blamed on
the militarily superior Serbs; but it goes beyond the limits of
permissible speculations when known rape cases are used by the press to
establish a theory on rapes as a war strategy.
In 1991, I saw for myself how difficult it is to tell certain facts from
propaganda when I followed the outbreak of the conflict in Slovenia and
Croatia on-the-spot, and once again saw for myself how a correspondent is
tempted to take the side of the allegedly innocent. At the beginning of
August 1991, I spent a few days in Sisak, several kilometers from the
front line dividing the region under Croatian control from those occupied
by the Serbs. Insufficiently protected Croatian villages near the front
were exposed to shelling by Serb mortars. Their inhabitants faced the
nightly possibility of being attacked by the Serb forces. Innocent people
lived in constant fear that they might be expelled from their homes and
from their farms. How could a guest have not shown sympathy for these
people, and how could he not become upset about the cowardly night
attacks?"
Cologne, October 1, 1994