Nowy Eurodialog

When I made my first journalistic trip to the lands of the former Yugoslavia that were caught up in nationalistic madness, I was trying to understand why it had happened, why a war that could by no stretch of the imagination be called civil had broken out there. I sought an answer to that question in two years of journeying through Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Kossovo and Bosnia. I spoke to simple people, villagers, soldiers and children, to journalists from Belgrade, Croatia and Oslobodjenia of Sarajevo.

The result of these discussions was a collection of reportage that I published under the title Epitafium dla Jugoslawii (An Epitaph for Yugoslavia). I wrote what I wrote because I found myself growing increasingly critical of the way the media were presenting the conflict in the Balkans. If I had believed the media, the idea of travelling to the war zone would probably never have entered my head. I understood there that the media and politicians had confronted the residents of the various republics of the former Yugoslavia with a fait accompli: they demanded that they define themselves ethnically, and denied them any real chance to choose. I saw how the media had turned out to be helpless at conveying the complex truth about the Balkan conflict, and how they were being used to antagonize the national groups living there. I observed the mechanisms for inciting mutual hatred and constructing the basis of racial intolerance. I quickly understood that in our Europe, crippled by two world wars, it was easier to create a nationalist dictatorship than a stable democracy on the ruins of communist systems. All it took was replacing the red flag with the national colors and the concept of socialism with the idea of a Greater Serbia, Croatia, or an Islamic state. The rest could remain the same; there was no need painstakingly to renovate the whole philosophy of ruling the country or change the mental habits of its residents...

Using force and psychological and physical terror, communism in postwar East- Central Europe froze all the national conflicts that had been festering for years. The very idea of nationalism was forbidden under Marxist doctrine. Yet communist dictators sometimes used nationalism as a tool to achieve their political aims. Nicolae Ceausescu did this in Rumania, for example, and so did Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. Polish communists like Boleslaw Bierut, Wladyslaw Gomulka, Edward Gierek and Wojciech Jaruzelski also used nationalist rhetoric to win public support.

Nationalism, a term calumniated by communist propaganda in favor of the ideal of internationalism, should be contrasted for purposes of analysis with the concept of patriotism. Patriotism can be defined as the useful form of nationalism that mostly occurs among nations that are oppressed or subjugated to others, in opposition to such extreme nationalist positions as chauvinism, fascism ("national socialism") or racism. These latter positions rarely occurred in a pure form (as happened in Nazi Germany), and the patriotic strain was often intermixed with more radical forms of nationalism, or fostered them. It also bears emphasizing that nationalism contributed significantly to the dismantling of the communist system. Unresolved, exacerbated national conflicts and unfulfilled national ideas and yearnings had been frozen by communism. Now, after the toppling of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, they all came alive. Complexes and problems that had seemed to be historic folklore began to shape the political scene in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. Yugoslavia was the first victim of this process. Russia, inevitably, will be the next. Nationalism of increasing radicalism is becoming a significant political factor in other countries including those of Western Europe. We should treat the case of Yugoslavia as a final warning against a domino effect that threatens Europe.

If someone had told us ten years ago that a war could break out in Yugoslavia, we would have reacted with incredulous laughter. We might have answered, "No, that's impossible. That can't happen in postwar Europe." And so, how did it happen? Let us ask a very concrete question: Why did the media in the former Yugoslavia begin this war?

There is more than one answer. As in other communist countries, journalists were subject to the authorities. When communist politicians like Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia or Franjo Tudjman in Croatia wanted to hold on to power, they dressed up in nationalist costume. Wanting to keep their jobs, the majority of journalists executed the same maneuver. Instead of producing communist propaganda, the media began promoting nationalist ideas. The rhetoric and means remained the same; only the ends changed. Nationalist ideology forbidden in the times of Tito was all the more attractive to people because it offered them something new (or at least a new packaging for basically the same totalitarianism). Inciting people to hatred and preparing them for war and for killing each other, the media whipped up nationalist moods.

The press, radio and television all covered stories from the perspective of the individual republics. There was no objectivity, not even any attempt at a wider comparison of facts. As a result, different "truths" came into being: Serbian, Croatian, Muslim, Albanian. Each excluded the others. When the war started, the Serbian media called the Croats "Ushtashe" (the Croatian underground independence movement with a history of terrorism and support for the Nazis), the Muslims became "Islamic Fundamentalists" and the Albanians "Fascists." The Croatian and Bosnian media turned the Serbs into "Chetniks" (the nationalistic Serbian partisan movement accused of cooperating with the fascists during World War II). Journalists began using the terminology of the Second World War to evoke old images. Yugoslavia moved backwards in time. Young boys turned into Chetniks or Ushtashe and, like their fathers and grandfathers, started a partisan war in the mountains of Bosnia. Among the Muslims, the idea of a holy war against the Orthodox Christian Serbs was revived. It looked like a replay of history, going back as far as medieval times. Today's Berlin, where two hostile worlds stare at each other across a wall, is to be found in the Serbian and Albanian districts of the Kossovo capital Prishtina or in divided Sarajevo.

The politicians and obedient media forced the inhabitants of the former Yugoslav republics to declare their ethnic allegiance. Then they sealed their fates by mapping out borders and articulating territorial claims supported by the wave of hatred that they had provoked. Journalists who did not declare their ethnicity were fired. No one will be able to negotiate a true peace until the media stop acting as agitators.

Let me illustrate this with a few examples:
1. The well-known Croat journalist Dunia Ujevic came right out and said it: "I am prepared to lie for Croatia." Other Croat reporters voluntarily shared her view.
2. Zmaj od Bosni (The Bosnian Dragon), a fundamentalist Islamic newspaper published in Tuzla, printed an article calling on every good Muslim to choose the Serb whom he would kill. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the UN Special Investigator, quoted this article in one of his reports.
3. Serbian and Croatian television showed the same images of the bodies of massacred civilians. Only the commentary differed. The Serbs accused the Croats of the crime, while the Croats stated that it had been committed by the Serbs.
4. Government-controlled Serbian television greeted the August 1991 putsch in Moscow with enthusiasm. The reporter Bronislav Canak reported objectively on events in Russia. He was later informed that viewers had written "a great many disapproving letters." When Canak asked to see these letters on his return to Belgrade, it turned out that there was not a single one. Then he was fired. As Canak wrote in an article for the western quarterly Uncaptive Minds, "Propaganda has reached a level of cultural and ideological madness."

It should in fairness be remarked that independent media also functioned in the republics of the former Yugoslavia, with dedicated, courageous reporters. They were often denounced as traitors and agents of foreign interests by the press, radio and television that supported the authorities. The abyss between the two groups was as deep as the political situation was extreme. There were media totally dependent on the government or political parties, and then there were small-circulation newspapers and low-power radio stations that maintained total independence while facing enormous financial and production problems. Several of these deserve mention.

Radio B92, whose broadcasting range covers only the city of Belgrade, won enormous popularity in the Serbian capital. It was more than a radio station. A mass movement developed to protect B92 from the authorities. It could function because it was no threat to Milosevic. His supporters lived in the provinces. The small-circulation weekly Vremia, the main opposition journal, was also published in Belgrade.

An independent newspaper "opposed to all politicians," The Feral Tribune was published in Croatia. Now printed as an independent weekly, it started as a satirical supplement to the mass daily Slobodna Dalmacja (Free Dalmatia), which was later taken over by the governing party. Various political parties and members of the government lodged complaints for libel against The Feral Tribune. The independent STINA press agency functioned in Split.

The newspaper Oslobodjenie (Liberation) was a legend of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. The first journalist to be shot dead in Bosnia was its correspondent in Zwornik. The newspaper ignored more and more subjects since the reality of Sarajevo was difficult to express in words.

The freedom of action for the independent media was strictly limited. The government-controlled privatization process put the mass media in the hands of people connected with the ruling parties. Television was state-owned and broadcast nationalist propaganda. Journalists who tried to behave in an ethical way were dismissed and either charged with espionage or conscripted and sent to the front. Many of the people I spoke to said that nationalism had become entrenched and was stronger than at the beginning of the conflict.

It should be emphasized that the free media of the western world also contributed to the destabilization of the Balkan situation. Contemporary journalism uses the most modern technology and boasts of its objective reporting. We all watched the CNN coverage of the Gulf War. Technology allows journalists to do what was unimaginable only a few years ago. They could broadcast live from Sarajevo under bombardment, show people being murdered and in agony, send thousands of reports by satellite. Yet they still had frequent difficulties in the task -- daunting, it must be said -- of covering events in the Balkans objectively. Below, I will point out the main errors committed by western reporters in coverage of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia:

. Chasing the sensational -- as they travel from one world hot spot to another, reporters concentrate on finding sensational images that explain nothing to viewers. Such a reporter flew in to Sarajevo, wearing a bullet-proof vest, unable to speak the language and ignorant of the history of the region. He regarded himself as a professional. He hunted for attractive pictures of civilians who had been shot and filmed puddles of blood on the sidewalk and homes shattered by shellfire. Konstanty Gebert, a reporter for the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza, recalled how some of his western colleagues paid Serbian soldiers in Pale to shell a designated building at a given time. They got "great material" for the evening news in this way. The question of why the war started in the first place was irrelevant for them.

2. Oversimplification -- especially at the beginning of the conflict. Journalists saw everything in black-and-white terms. The Serbs, hard-line communists and aggressors to boot, were stigmatized with every possible evil while first the Croats and later the Muslims were noble warriors for the great cause of freedom. Reports from these journalists remained partisan and fueled the conflict. The Polish media committed this very mistake. Feeling that they were being discriminated against by the world media, the Serbs began treating foreign reporters as enemies. They simply fired on them. On the other hand, frustrated by the failure of repeated western mediation efforts, the Bosnian Muslims accused journalists of cynically exploiting the sufferings of the Bosnians and using the blood they shed for cheap sensationalism. Foreign correspondents quickly lost the respect and trust of all sides in the Balkan conflict; some of them also lost their lives.

3. Concentrating on politicians -- who do not care about the interests of the people who live in the Balkans, but rather about holding on to power. When I travelled around the former Yugoslavian republics I talked with simple people in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Skopje, Prishtina, Uzhica and Split, and I asked them all the same question: "Who are you? What nationality are you?" In many cases, especially in Sarajevo, I was told, "We used to think that we are Yugoslavians. Now I have no idea. I feel like a citizen of this city (Sarajevo)." People who answered in this way were afraid. They had lost their homeland, and now any one of the warring sides could declare them to be traitors. They had been drawn into the hell of war against their will. Few journalists took any interest in this phenomenon.

4. Ignorance -- few reporters took the trouble to prepare for this difficult assignment. Most knew nothing about the historical origins of the conflict. They did not know, for instance, that approximately twenty percent of the Serbian residents of Bosnia had been murdered by the Croatian Ushtashe and their Muslim allies during the Second World War, or that the Croats living in Bosnia had more readily joined the Ushtashe than the Croats in Croatia itself, or that the partisans who fought the fascists had mainly been Serbs. Nor did they know that the Albanians living in Serbia had supported the fascist Albanian puppet state created by Mussolini. They were unfamiliar with the history of the establishment of the Yugoslavian state following World War I. In Bosnia, I met a reporter from a generally respected Polish newspaper who asked me who was fighting whom in this country, because he couldn't figure it out.

5. Fragmentarization -- showing particular images unconnected with each other and not placed in any overall context. This made it easier for journalists to practice manipulation and to evoke sympathy for one side in the conflict. A reporter could thus supply his audience with a whole range of various bits of information which were like pieces of a big jigsaw puzzle. The audience had no chance of fitting them together and understanding the whole context.

6. Overusing the Sarajevo perspective -- the simplest thing to do, obviously, was to fly to Sarajevo in a UN plane and file reports from there. This was far safer than, for instance, driving to Pazaricia or some other Muslim village lying on the other side of Mount Igman. It was necessary, however, to bear in mind that life in Sarajevo looked far different than in other parts of Muslim-controlled Bosnia. Sarajevo was under special UN protection. The image of the Bosnian conflict as seen exclusively from the perspective of Sarajevo was only a part of a much greater whole.

It must unfortunately be admitted that the reporting on the Balkan conflict by the international media was a defeat for contemporary journalism. Despite access to the most up-to-date equipment, the media failed the test. The result was that we began perceiving the Balkans as a far-off territory that might as well be called, say, the Realm of the Barbarians. This Realm of the Barbarians lay not a day and a half's drive by car from the Polish border, but somewhere at the dark crossroads of the world on the borders of our mythical Europe -- which we would much rather conceive of as having the secure dimensions of our own living room. The television screen reinforced our conviction that we are better, ever-so-civilized, in contrast to these Balkan barbarians who "have always murdered each other and will go on murdering each other until they kill each other off entirely" (I am quoting a view that was repeatedly whispered in my ear by my fellow Poles who regard themselves as intellectuals and good Catholics).

How can we prevent the spread of such attitudes? How can we prevent the spread of the Balkan syndrome? No one in their right mind would doubt that this problem needs to be dealt with immediately and effectively, by taking advantage of the peace accords so laboriously negotiated after the NATO attacks in Bosnia.

In the first place, there can be no question of building a unified Europe without solving the Balkan problem. If the republics of the former Yugoslavia (and the former Soviet Union) are left out of the process of European integration, then the vision of a common Europe will remain a pathetic caricature. Feeling excluded from the family of European nations, these countries have reacted with increasingly xenophobic and chauvinistic attitudes. This can only lead to the intensification of conflicts in this part of the world and, in consequence, to the destabilization of Europe.

Second, every means -- financial and moral -- must be used to support all worthwhile civic and community initiatives (including free media) that stand up to nationalism and advocate peace and democracy. Special attention must be paid to education and work with the younger generation. Positive examples (German post-World-War-II reconciliation with France, Denmark and Poland) might convince people that peace is more profitable than conflict.

Third, journalists should cover the peace process, the drudgery of creating domains of normality, and the struggles of the former Yugoslavian republics to cast off dictatorships and safeguard their economies and spiritual values, as energetically as they covered the war in Bosnia. Positive news from the former Yugoslavia in the world media can help further the desired changes. Finally we should all do whatever we can each day to enlarge the realm of hope. At the end of this century, after the collapse of communism, the world has a unique chance to create a new and just global order. For war-ravaged Europe, the dawn of the new millennium can and should be a harbinger of peace. It is the duty of the media to make people aware that such hopes depend on each and every one of us.

This year, I took part in a meeting organized by the International Communications Forum, an international organization of media people. The Forum has a program to integrate journalists in the former Yugoslavia. The meeting took place in Caux, Switzerland. Journalists from Serbia and Croatia took part. Earlier, an ICF mission visited Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo. Together with our colleagues from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, we agreed that each of us should do what we can in the name of reconciliation. The project will be continued.