BY MEASURE OF POWER WIELDERS
Investigation: Human Rights and the Press in Serbia
Journalists in Serbia do not experience human rights as a value in itself. In everyday painting of the picture of reality, they rarely define phenomena and events they report about from the aspect of exercising human rights and freedoms. For journalists, human rights are not an acute social problem and therefore, they are not treated as a topical subject. The number of texts devoted to these problems, their customary presentation in a journal, and graphical appearance classify them quite low on the list of priority social issues - it is concluded by Jovanka Matic, M.A., in an investigation of presentation of the issue of human rights in media
AIM Belgrade, 16 January, 1997
Human rights are an "ideological weapon for establishment of the new world system". Under the veil of concern of the world for human rights in Serbia, "hypocrisy" is concealed which "exceeds the limits of good taste". The problem of human rights was "fabricated" by the great powers. International institutions are doing nothing to protect "Serb human rights": they are "fussing with their hypocritical story" about monitoring events concerning human rights in former Yugoslavia, while at the same time, "with American assistance, almost all western Serbs in a terrible exodus" were thrown out of Croatia.
These are just a few examples of interpretation of the concept of human rights, with which Vecernje novosti, it seems in harmony with its advertising slogan "This can be done only by Novosti", this journal has been feeding its readers in the past several years which are presented in Comparative Analysis of Media Presentation of Human Rights in Vecernje novosti and Nasa Borba made by Jovanka Matic, associate of Belgrade Institute of Social Sciences. Results of the investigation were presented in a discussion titled Human Rights as a Topic in Public, which was organized by Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and Centre for Anti-War Action.
In a society in which aversion to the idea of human rights has been cherished for decades, it is only normal that there is no awareness about human rights and that there is still plenty of prejudice about them. That is, probably, the reason why the reading public of Novosti can stomach all the stories about "world tricks" about human rights served by state-controlled media. The very idea of human rights is traditionally unpopular in this space, unfortunately even among lawyers, who consider it to be too "politicized", says Vojin Dimitrijevic, professor of Law School in Belgrade.
Jovanka Matic tried to offer a part of the answer to the question to what extent human rights are nowadays presented in public and what is the attitude of media to this problem in Serbia (FRY) in her analysis of contents of samples taken from two dailies - Vecernje novosti and Nasa Borba. Texts directly or indirectly referring to human rights and freedoms were chosen for the analysis - the total of 145 texts from Vecernje novosti and 148 texts from Nasa Borba, all published in the course of April 1996. The objective of the investigation was to determine how problems of human rights are formulated by the media, to what extent they are present in everyday contents of these journals, on what occasions are they discussed, which are the dominant topics in this sphere, who their most frequent actors are, and how they are asssessed.
These two journals were chosen for the analysis, says the author of the investigation, as journals on opposite extremes of the variegated scene of printed media, under the presumption that differences in treatment of human rights in the press would best be revealed in a comparative analysis of a tabloid and a political daily with different editorial concepts. Vecernje novosti, the author of the investigation assesses, is characterized by the editorial policy directed towards uncritical promotion and strengthening of the official versions of reality. This journal explicitly supported nationalistic and war policy of the regime and justified all moves of current authorities by the existence of an international conspiracy against the Serb nation and state. The discourse of this journal, although it followed the regime in its shift to peace-loving policy in the region, still bears scars of the inimical attitude towards the surroundings and towards the international community because of its anti-Serb stance.
The editorial concept of Nasa Borba is characterized, as Jovanka Matic believes, by openness to alternative views of social developments. In the course of the past several years, this journal was distinguished by pronounced anti-war orientation and insisting on civil, and not national concept of the society. Although the journal Nasa Borba is often attacked as being close to the opposition, it maintains an independent editorial platform which is based on the belief that change of the current authoritarian regime is a condition for development of democracy in Serbia.
Treating the topics of human rights in Vecernje novosti takes place on two levels. On one, instruments of media symbolization support official assessments that in Serbia (FRY) there are no "flagrant violations of human rights", and minimize and condemn the opposite assessments; on the other, discrimination against the Serbs in neighbouring countries is stressed as the main problem of violation of human rights, as well as discrimination against the Serbs by the international community. According to interpretation of Vecernje novosti, the problem of human rights was "fabricated" by great powers which "ever since the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis have abused the problems of human rights for the sake of exerting political pressure on only one party - the Serbs"; they (foreign powers) consciously ignore the fact that the Serbs are not those who violate rights of others, but the party whose rights are persistently violated. However, facts, as journalists of this journal stress, "do not oblige world politics".
General situation of human rights in Serbia (FRY) is a legitimate problem for journalists of Nasa Borba, it is stated in the analysis. Selection criteria of this daily are fully open to unfavourable assessments of the situation concerning human rights which originate both from specialized domestic and international organizations, insisting on comparison with world standards. Nevertheless, Jovanka Matic stresses that journalists of this journal are not inclined to carry out their own investigations of the problem and cannot distinguish it from other social problems, especially in treatment of "Kosovo" or the "Sandzak knot". Only 37.2 per cent of thsee texts in Vecernje novosti, and 35.1 per cent in Nasa Borba were directly inspired by current, daily development.
In interpretation of Vecernje novosti, the concept of human rights takes the shape of "Serb human rights", says Jovanka Matic. Using the nationalistic idiom developed in the past several years, this journal is still presenting Serbia as a national community opposed to other national communities, and it considers the state to be the most important gurantor of rights of members of the nation. In Serbia (FRY), according to the view of journalists of this daily, the problem of acutely threatened human rights simply does not exist. Contrary to this, there is the problem of "allegedly threatened human rights", that is, the intention of the "tailors of the new political map of the world" to manipulate the problem of human rights in order to satisfy its own interests. Under the veil of concern for human rights, they interfere in internal affairs of Serbia and Yugoslavia, in order to weaken them, while at the same time they are keeping the true humanitarian problem secret - discrimination of the Serbs, which is taking place in the immediate environment and legal institutions of the internationl community.
"Serb human rights" are threatened the most, according to Vecernje novosti in "Tudjman's forcible creation". The situation is not any better in B&H, in "the green formation of Alija Izetbegovic", which is "swearing time and again that it is civil, multi-cultural, multi-religious", but which has in fact "retreated not one iota from the dismal rules prescribed by Koran". Problems in connection with rights of refugees, banished, disappeared, imprisoned, and other war-affected people, exist for journalists of Vecernje novosti only as problems which affect people of Serb nationality. Vecernje novosti devoted 70.9 per cent of all texts on human rights to these topics.
On the other extreme of this effort to homogenize the readers' public concerning endangered Serbs in other regions which has persisted for almost a whole decade, is reinforcement of the official stance that "Serbia is truly a civic state in which all nations and national minorities, regardless of their ethnic origin and creed, enjoy full and equal rights". This is, on the one hand, done by giving great publicity to state officials, representatives of political parties, but also other, even insignificant political actors who state this assessment, and on the other, by being completely closed to contrary stances, both of foreign and even more of domestic origin or by denying that they are founded.
Nasa Borba, according to the investigation, treats the problem in a completely different way. In it, the problem of human rights figures as the component of a democratic political regime and as a condition for normalization of relations of Serbia and FRY with the international organizations and the immediate environment.
According to the views of journalists of this daily, Serbia is characterized by "a sad situation of human and civil rights"; in it, there is only the "law of police and the state" which threatens the "fundamental rights of all citizens". Legal protection of rights is by far below international standards, and among people, conviction prevails that they have rights "given by the legislator and the Constitution-giver and that these can change their mind and withdraw these rights". Minority rights are violated most fragrantly, primarily those of the Albanians in Kosovo and Muslims in Sandzak, but also political and trade-union rights of citizens and rights of refugees.
The position of the Albanians in Kosovo was persented through the "policy of discrimination" and "systematic police repression" by the authorities against members of this ethnic group. Not sparing the regime of criticism concerning relations to the "Kosovo knot", journalists of this daily are quite openly in favour of a dialogue in Kosovo and about Kosovo.
The problem of the position of the Muslims in Sandzak was treated in the similar manner as the problem of the Albanians. Political organizations of this ethnic group are relevant political subjects for journalists of Nasa Borba, and their stances concerning court litigations against the Muslims as a "political manipulation of the regime" and "political bargaining with destinies of innocent people" are treated as legitimate political views.
Nasa Borba speaks about the position of the Serbs in Croatia and B&H with measured, unconflicting rhetoric, referring to authentic sources and with the stress on authoritarian nature of these regimes which do not differ much from the Serbian. About refugees and their problems, as well as about prisoners, disappeared persons, this journal writes without pathos, supported by documentary evidence, and without bias, in order to make the public face the tragic balance sheet of the war in the former Yugoslav space.
In the country in which citizens are used to having their destiny most frequently depending on arbitrary judgement of certain power wielders who have weighed out their rights, it is not unusual that human rights have such treatment in the press nor that the people have not even been interested in their rights nor that they have believed that they have only as much rights as they have managed to wheedle out from a power-wielder. Current developments going on in cities of Serbia announce that citizens in this space have realized that they enjoy the right to human rights.
(AIM) Vesna Bjekic