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REPORTS
ON NATO'S AIR STRIKES
I.
Yugoslav censors cut TV report from Belgrade.
The Russia TV channel announced during its evening news
bulletin “Vesti” on 30th April that Yugoslav
censors had removed footage from a report compiled by a
Russia TV correspondent in Belgrade on the effects of the
latest NATO bombings.
The “Vesti” presenter said the Yugoslav censors
could arbitrarily ban or erase footage from reports
filmed in Serbia by foreign correspondents.
After the announcement, Russia TV showed the report from
Belgrade, of which much of the video content was a blank
screen with the caption “Removed by Yugoslav
censors.”
Russia
TV, Moscow, April 30, 1999
II.
Media attitude to NATO strikes said “neutral.”
Thirty-six per cent of newspaper stories show a negative
attitude towards NATO strikes in Yugoslavia, compared to
23 per cent of broadcasts. Positive attitudes occur
in 11 per cent of the print stories and in 34 per cent of
the broadcasts, according to an 11-day survey by the
Bulgarian Media Coalition.
The monitoring involves a total of 4,000 stories, 2,768
newspaper reports and 1,265 broadcasts from 25th March to
4th April on national radio and television, New
Television, Radio Free Europe [RFE/RL] and 7 Days
Television.
The general attitude of the mass media is neutral, the
study shows.
“It is unacceptable for the National Television to
have a commentary show on the 20th day of the war,”
Vesela Tabakova of the Centre for Independent Journalism
said.
Mass media reports during the period varied significantly
in size. For the first time, newspaper stories
longer than 130 lines exceed shorter texts. The
situation is identical in the electronic media.
The Kosovo crisis has also affected the correlation
between news reports and analysis which used to be six or
eight to one before the war. At present, news
reports and commentaries account for respectively 56 and
21 per cent in the press and 64 and 20 per cent in
broadcasts.
BTA
news agency, Sofia, April 28, 1999
III.
Monitoring the media war.
With NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia continuing, the
propaganda war, aimed at weakening the enemy’s
resolve and at encouraging support within the NATO
countries, is in full swing.
An early move was independent radio B92 in Belgrade being
forced off the air and then brought under official
control.
NATO’s intervention was followed by Belgrade’s
decision, since revoked, to expel some 40 journalists
from those countries most involved in the
intervention. Subsequent reports from some
journalists, reporting civilian casualties and the mood
of the Serbian public, have been criticized for having a
negative impact on NATO’s war effort.
Belgrade’s own media compares NATO air strikes to
Nazi raids on Belgrade in 1941, and NATO leaders to Nazi
officials. It underlines the damage to the
country’s infrastructure and the suffering of (Serb)
civilians. The TV shows army programmes and archive
films from the second world war. It scored a hit
with film of a downed US Air Force Stealth jet but may
have provoked a backlash abroad by parading three
captured US soldiers.
Serbian TV, being relayed by the satellite channel RTS
SAT TV, is trying to strengthen national cohesion with
pictures of Serb monasteries and scenery. It airs
the daily Belgrade rock concert and the “human
shields” protecting bridges against attack.
However, footage of the mass of displaced ethnic
Albanians crossing into neighbouring countries is not
shown.
Belgrade also wants to control the media in neutral
Montenegro, where the Yugoslav army would like to stop
the rebroadcast of Western TV news.
NATO is conducting its own sophisticated media offensive
aimed at maintaining public support. News
management is seen as a major weapon and the Western
alliance places great importance on the media in this
campaign. Since the Vietnam war, when the US media
first enjoyed an unprecedented freedom to cover war, the
pictures shown “back home” have been a factor
in operational thinking.
News management has to balance often conflicting
political aims and military imperatives:
Politicians try to ensure maximum exposure of their
political aims, but the military must protect the secrets
of its operations.
For NATO, an alliance of 19 countries, news management is
difficult. Political and public support differs
between members. It requires extreme caution and
careful timing of announcements, so the daily NATO and
British Ministry of Defence press conferences are the
result. Serbia, on the other hand, can censor and
control its handful of outlets with ease.
NATO has been attacking radio and TV transmitters.
This move, initially announced as aiming to deprive
Belgrade of its propaganda tool, was swiftly relaunched
as a broader strategy of targeting dual military-civilian
installations. NATO’s attacks on 19 different
radio and TV transmitter sites have since deprived many
areas of state and private radio and TV. In one
attack on the Belgrade offices of Milosevic’s ruling
party, five stations, TV and Radio Pink, TV and Radio
Kosava and BK TV, were blown off air.
Meanwhile, the US is beaming TV and radio at Yugoslavia
via a US Air Force aircraft, capable of jamming
broadcasts and of transmitting radio and TV
signals. Western international broadcasters, the
BBC, Deutsche Welle, RFI, RFE/RL, and VOA, have increased
output to the region. VOA is to add FM transmitters
along the Serbian border. The Voice of
Russia’s special Kosovo service is reflecting the
official Russian view.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Congress on
20th April that Belgrade has jammed most of the
broadcasts the United States and its allies have beamed
into the former Yugoslavia over the past month. US
officials say at least two messages from President
Clinton were blocked. BBC Monitoring sources have
not been able to confirm these reports of jamming.
The official NATO line is that it is not at war with the
Serbian people. That message has been largely lost
on the Serbian people who appear to have rallied around
Milosevic in a way they never did during peacetime.
In this conflict, as in previous ones, the propaganda
battle is a major part of the war. However, its
effect on the outcome may never be fully known.
BBC
Monitoring Research, April 22, 1999
IV.
Serbs not winning the propaganda war—Draskovic.
In an interview for the Belgrade weekly ‘Nin,’
the Yugoslav deputy prime minister, Vuk Draskovic, has
said that Yugoslavia was not well prepared to fight the
propaganda war with NATO countries. Television
channels broadcast only for domestic audiences and the
country still has an “unsuitable, obsolete communist
propaganda that cannot break through to the different
ears of the Western world,” he said.
Furthermore, Draskovic added, “Albanians play the
role of victims wonderfully, whereas we, thanks to our
national mentality are ashamed of the role of
victim.” The following are excerpts from
Draskovic’s interview published by ‘Nin’
on 15th April; subheadings inserted editorially:
There is no doubt that Yugoslav Deputy Premier Vuk
Draskovic has become a frequent guest on leading world
radio and television shows. This is not only
because he speaks English, but because Vuk Draskovic
speaks so that everyone understands. He knows very
well what we can do and how much we can do in this war
against the big powers, and he makes no secret of this
either at home or abroad.
Today Vuk Draskovic speaks for ‘Nin,’ where for
years he worked as a young journalist. . . .
[Draskovic]
. . . One should view the situation of the public in the
aggressor countries realistically. It is mainly
passive, or follows the propaganda machinery of these
countries, while our state television has no reason to
announce rallies of Serbs who live in those countries and
rallies of local communists and extreme leftists.
The mainstream of Western public opinion that could
destroy the local government is not on our side, apart
from individuals and intellectuals.
The Western world has a desire to be humane because it
lives in a computer reality, an inhumane reality.
Albanians,
unlike Serbs, play the role of victims wonderfully
[‘Nin’]
Alienated?
[A]
An alienated reality, and so the scenes of the suffering
of the Albanian refugees come as a tranquilliser for
their own conscience, of which we must be careful,
too. At the same time, we did not prepare our
propaganda for the role of the victim, so that we could
appeal, as a victim, an innocent victim, to the feelings
of the Western public. That is the problem.
Our state television made a decision to have five
identical programmes within the country. It would
have been better had it decided, after Rambouillet, to
broadcast five programmes in five world languages.
We do not have that even now. Albanians play the
role of the victim wonderfully, whereas we, thanks to our
national mentality, are ashamed of the role of the
victim.
[Q]
We rejoice?
[A]
No, not that. A victim with pride is stronger than
a victim without pride. We would win more support
from the western public that way. Where are the
leading cameras and the leading reporters of the western
media today? In the ruins in Pristina, Kursumlija,
Novi Sad, Pancevo and Kragujevac. When the bombs
start falling, there should be cameras and immediate
links via Serbian television and local televisions in
Kragujevac, Pristina and Novi Sad, showing an image of
the crime against the nation, broadcast the world
over. These images would gain upon the suffering of
the Albanian refugees, which is largely directed by NATO,
or in any event is the direct consequence of the NATO
bombing.
For these things, let us not blame Madeleine Albright, or
Clinton, or Blair, or anyone else. Our propaganda
is still directed at the public at home and not
abroad.
[Q]
So, you do not blame the foreign reporters?
[A]
There is no foreign reporter, even if he has intimate
anti-Serb feelings, who could justify the killing of
children, buildings razed to the ground, crippled people,
a horror that not even the Germans perpetrated.
Besides, those reporters also hear the sirens as we
do. They are mentally, psychologically and
physically a possible target of the aggressor, which
brings them closer to indignation over the
aggression.
“Obsolete
communist propaganda”
[Q]
Why is it always, whenever something happens in our
country, why is there talk afterward that we always lose
the media campaign?
[A]
Because we have an unsuitable, obsolete communist
propaganda that cannot break through to the different
ears of the Western world. It cannot. We have
so many clever people, but they are unemployed.
When the F-117 was downed, the poster that said Sorry, we
didn’t know it was invisible reached the world like
a flash and won sympathies for the Serb side.
‘Nin,’
Belgrade, April 15, 1999
V.
Analysis: Radio B92 returns to air under government
control.
The previously independent Belgrade-based Radio B92 radio
resumed broadcasting at 1045 gmt on 12th April for the
first time since it was banned and taken off the air by
the Serbian authorities on 2nd April.
The station had been broadcasting on satellite via the
BBC, the EU’s Europe by Satellite radio and TV
agency and also via the Internet since 24th March, when
Serbian authorities closed the station’s sole
Belgrade FM transmitter. The reason given was that
the station had exceeded its permitted power. The
returned Radio B92 is not being relayed by the BBC,
Austrian radio or the EU radio service, which assisted
B92 before its closure on 2nd April.
The newly returned B92, while retaining familiar radio
identification jingles and the same 92.5 FM slot, has
abandoned its former selection of US and Western European
pop music for Yugoslavian music. The news
broadcasts reportedly consist solely of reports from the
official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug.
Radio B92’s web site [http://www.b92.net ] does not
appear to have come under the control of the new
management. When checked at 1200 gmt on 14th April,
the web site still carried recorded announcements,
reports and statements by the station’s former
director Sasa Mirkovic about the station’s closure
by the Serbian authorities on 2nd April. The B92
staff appear to have kept the station’s web site,
stored on the servers of the XS4ALL internet provider in
the Netherlands, under their control. A news
release on the Help B92 web site
[http://helpb92.xs4all.nl] says the B92 web site will not
be updated until the radio is returned to its
staff.
The Help B92 web site, which appears to be the only
B92-related web site that is being updated, carries a
news release dated 13th April headlined “Will the
real Radio B92 please stand up,” which gives an
insight to the situation in Belgrade. It
says: “Radio B92 has traditionally been a
rallying-point for the Belgrade public. Under
normal circumstances we would call on that public to
defend the radio they trust, the radio which rates number
one in Belgrade. However, thanks to the war and the
critical situation in the country, the closure and
takeover of the station have gone unreported in most
media.
The report continues: “The most radical
manifestation so far of Serbia’s Draconian
repression of its independent media was the murder, just
two days ago [11th April], of Slavko Curuvija, the owner
and editor-in-chief of the independent daily ‘Dnevni
Telegraf.’ . . . This appalling crime has made
it almost impossible to guarantee safety and normal
working conditions for independent media and journalists.
. . . The primary aim of B92’s leadership is
now to protect all staff members from blackmail, arrest,
satanisation and libellous accusations of espionage and
fifth columnism. . . . .”
The Help B92 campaign, which is based in Amsterdam, the
Netherlands, said on 24th March that it would establish a
fund-raising campaign, a web site and an interest audio
service. Its web site says the new Radio B92
management was appointed by the Belgrade Youth Council,
which claims that Radio B92 is its subsidiary.
Radio Netherlands’ web site reports that Aleksandar
Nikacevic is the new director of the radio and that he
gave the original staff the choice of resuming work or
resigning. The staff have reportedly refused to
cooperate with this policy, have not resigned and are
seeking alternative accommodation.
A news release of 13th April attributed to “the real
B92 staff,” says the leaders of the B92 team are
under constant surveillance. It explains that while
the NATO bombing, a lack of accommodation, petrol
shortages and the breakdown of communication systems
continues it is practically impossible to establish any
serious action to return Radio B92 to its staff, but that
they will attempt to take legal action.
BBC
Monitoring Research, April 14, 1999
VI.
Serbia limits media coverage of bombing damage.
In the period up to 31st March, Serbian TV, radio and
news agency coverage of the impact of the NATO air
strikes—the damage inflicted and casualties
caused—became increasingly restricted.
The Belgrade authorities even ordered citizens not to
discuss by mobile phone “details connected to the
aggression against our country, the consequences of the
aggression, the effects of enemy activities or the
positions of the defence forces,” Belgrade-based
Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) said.
Similarly, earlier in the week Montenegrin TV journalists
were taken into custody by the Yugoslav army and warned
against revealing the impact of NATO strikes on military
targets.
However, on 31st March independent B92 Radio quoted the
head of the Belgrade military hospital, Lt-Gen Aco
Jovicic, as saying that eight people had died in the air
strikes on the capital.
“Most of them were brought to the hospital already
dead, for identification purposes. Among the dead
are both members of security forces and civilians. . .
. So far 22 soldiers, policemen and civilians have
been admitted for treatment to this hospital,” the
report said.
The radio also reported that NATO air strikes targeted
military installations around Belgrade and nearby
Pancevo, to the north of Belgrade as well as Pristina in
Kosovo.
“So far there are no reports of possible victims or
damage caused,” it said, adding that air raid sirens
were sounded on the 30th in Nis, Podgorica and Novi
Sad—but there were no reports of air strikes on
these towns.
Tanjug—the state-run news agency—said NATO
attacked Urosevac in Kosovo. It said NATO aircraft
hit targets around Pec in western Kosovo on the 31 but
there were no reports of casualties.
“Six aggressor planes dropped cluster bombs, banned
under international laws of war. Soon afterwards,
two missiles fell near the village of Gracanica,” it
said.
More media emphasis is being placed on upbeat reports,
with Tanjug quoting Internal Trade Minister Slobodan
Nenadovic as saying that food shops were well supplied
and no shortages expected. In a similar vein,
Economy Minister Rade Filipovic declared that the economy
was functioning at a satisfactory level despite the
continuing attacks.
Serbia’s Information Ministry has urged all
journalists in the world “to speak the language of
truth. . . . and to put an end to the campaign of
lies on an alleged humanitarian disaster in Serbia’s
Kosovo-Metohija province,” Tanjug said.
State media in Montenegro meanwhile have been ordered by
politicians to be “more selective and more careful
in carrying foreign media reports on the current events
in the FRY,” the Belgrade news agency Beta
said. On the 31st, TV Montenegro reduced its direct
transmission of CNN and Sky News to a minimum.
Little coverage has been given to the issue of refugees,
but an English-language bulletin on Serbian TV showed
footage of the Serbian-Macedonian border with commentary
saying that “there were far more journalists than
refugees.”
The TV interviewed Kosovo Albanians who spoke of fleeing
NATO bombing. “We had to go away with our
small children . . . . Everything is burning from
bombs,” one said. The TV has also supplemented
its short English-language broadcasts with a summary of
the main news in Albanian.
Russian
mediation efforts, including Russian Prime Minister
Yevgeniy Primakov’s visit to Belgrade and Bonn,
continued to dominate news bulletins on Serbian TV on the
31st.
As on previous days, the TV news bulletins also continued
to be interspersed with entertainment shows, footage of
the Yugoslav armed forces, clips from old anti-Nazi films
and documentaries on Serbian cultural heritage in an
effort to boost morale.
Serbian TV has continued to give extensive coverage to
anti-NATO protests both in Yugoslavia and abroad,
including a rally in Belgrade on the 30th under the motto
“Truth versus aggression” in support of the
“fight for truth and against Western media
fabrications being spread above all by the lie industries
of CNN and Sky.”
BBC Monitoring Research, March 31,
1999
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