Media in Serbia

War with Information

AIM Podgorica, 18 May, 1999

(By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

This week, NATO spokesman for civilian issues, Jamie Shea openly admitted at a press conference that NATO propaganda was beaten by Serb state media.

And God only knows that they have tried. First television and radio transmitters in Belgrade, Pristina, Novi Sad and inside Serbia were destroyed by bombs. From a special airplane transporter C 130 Lockead Hercules which in intervals between bombing which are growing shorter every day circles in the air space of Serbia and broadcasts NATO propagandist program for the citizens of Serbia in Serbian language with messages written in cyrillic script.

In case they still have intact roofs above their heads, electric power supply and that the channel of the flying TV program is heard at the location where they live, about three o'clock in the afternoon, a nameless and invisible announcer will first wish them good day: "This is the united voice of NATO - your station for information, which has prepared for you commentaries, news and the musical hit of the day...".

With commentaries accompanied on TV screens by pictures of natural beauty spots, NATO is disrupting Milosevic's propaganda in the media machinery whose doom has not been sealed even by two previous wars in the former Yugoslav space, with the story about perniciousness of communism, justifying its almost two-month long campaign by "destroying of the wicked system. Neocommunists will realize that NATO action is at this moment the only chance for the democratic community to free itself of the only remaining dictator in Europe..."

The initial reason for bombing - banished Albanians from Kosovo- is not mentioned any more. Therefore, according to the program of the Alliance, NATO is throwing bombs to destroy communism. It is throwing them equally on the Albanians and the Serbs. It is killing columns of refugees in Kosovo, and civilians around Serbia whom it after that addresses also from the sky with the story about the system "which has inflicted much evil to the humanity". The Serbs are then controversially warned that "by support to Slobodan Milosevic they are gathering under the wrong flag because they were not able to support sovereign leaders in earlier elections and because Milosevic nullified the latest elections, so they are now paying the bill because instead of them somebody else has decided to clean their own house...".

In bombing of Serbia, oppositionist cities like Nis, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, Pancevo, Cacak and Belgrade, have suffered the most, the citizens of which did not place trust in Milosevic in the past elections and fought for their stollen votes for three months in the streets two years ago.

For the tragedy of Kosovo Albanians in its propaganda NATO has left space on the leaflets which have covered Serbia like snow. In one of them, citizens of Serbia are warned about "ethnic cleansing of Kosovo cities and villages of the Albanians and crimes of Serb police and Milosevic himself". On the back of the leaflet NATO informs potential readers that it "will intensify its attacks as long as forces which participate in persecution of civilians in Kosovo and Metohija withdraw, as long as refugees are not permitted to safely return and as long as your leaders do not agree to fruitful negotiations". The leaflet is signed: "North Atlantic Council defends the unprotected".

Apart from NATO, the citizens of Serbia have the opportunity to watch on one of the channels - TV Kosava (owned by Marija Milosevic, daughter of the president of FRY) Chinese program without translation 24 hours a day. The people are literally in amnesia, partly because of bombs and partly because of television programs of all kinds. Belgraders are able to watch sessions of Chinese assembly, Chinese businessmen, they listen to Chinese news, all that in Chinese language.

Since the beginning of bombing, war laws refer to all the media in Serbia. The few remaining independent media are also subject to them. When state printed and electronic media are concerned, their profile and editorial policy have not significantly changed. Patriotic rhetoric has just intensified. They convey the stand of the ruling parties, army and state leadership, insist on the story about firmness of the Serb people, unity, and "domestic traitors and foreign mercenaries who in these difficult moments for the Serb people

• like Zoran Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party and Milo Djukanovic, president of Montenegro negotiate with aggressors from the West". State media regularly also report about destruction caused by NATO bombs and support from the world. All television stations carry only information, broadcast films and propandist messages about the army of Yugoslavia and about collecting donations for the spring sowing.

Due to destruction of its buildings and transmitters, Radio-Television Serbia, concerning its viewership (it cannot reach at least half of the citizens of serbia) is in the worst position. The program of other television stations could never be seen on the whole territory of the Republic. It is compulsory for all those still broadcasting programs to carry the central one-hour daily news program of RTS.

In the technically shattered information space of Serbia made uniform by censorship, the privilege to watch satellite programs of SKY NEWS and BBC WORLD was, for instance, given even to the citizens of Belgrade who do not have satallite antennas. The chaos is complete, you turn on your TV set, tune it to a domestic TV station, but what you see and hear is either NATO or another foreign station. Even when you hope that you will hear a different information, the broadcat program either cannot be heard or seen. Channels and programs on local tv stations are switched on and off as they please. Everybody who broadcasts a program jams the program of others. So you can never know who will succeed to get through.

Regardless of the force and both the propaganda war from the air and the one from the ground, "reliable" information are dispersed by word of mouth, as customary under the rule of war laws and bombs. Indeed, the logic of war prevailed over professional information which for many yers in Serbia depended only on personal courage of individuals, their dignity and defence of the profession.

In the current conflict of the propaganda from the sky with propaganda from the ground in which the former explains to the people why it is showering it with bombs and the latter that despite more than one thousand persons killed, several thousand wounded and crippled, nobody can harm them, in the war with confused objectives in which for the sake of destroying Milosevic, killed civilians in Yugoslavia are registered only as "collateral damage", the ones and the others are forgetting that the citizens over here do not believe even the domestic media least of all foreign, especially those from the countries whose bombs have been destroying their homes, killing them, and demolishing their country for almost two months. Maybe one should be reminded that in the past ten years all big rebellions in Serbia against the current regime were provoked by untruth produced by state television or press.

Spomenka Lazic

(AIM)