NATO spokespersons have justified the bombing of Serbian TV
and radio on the grounds that these broadcasters are an "instrument
of state propaganda," tell lies, spew forth hatred, provide no
"balance" in their offerings, and thus help prolong the war. In an
April 8th news briefing NATO Air Commodore David Wilby
explained: "Serb radio is an instrument of propaganda and
repression. It has filled the airwaves with hate and with lies over the
years, and especially now. It is therefore a legitimate target in this
campaign. If President Milosevic would provide equal time for
Western news broadcasts in his programs without censorship...then
his TV would become an acceptable instrument of public
information."
The mainstream U.S. media have accepted this NATO rationale for
silencing the Serbian media, viewing themselves as truth-tellers and
supporters of just policies against the evil enemy. But this is the
long-standing self-deception of people whose propaganda service is
as complete as that of Serbian state broadcasters. Just as they did
during the Persian Gulf war, the mainstream media once again serve
as cheer-leaders and propagandists for "our" side. And as the brief
review below shows, on NATO principles the Times et al. are
eminently bombable.
--Balance. The Serbian media is bombable, says Wilby, because it
has not provided "equal time" to western broadcasters. This
ludicrous criterion is far better met by the Serbian media than by
those of the U.S. (or Britain). An estimated one-third or more of
Belgrade residents watch western TV news broadcasts (including
CNN, BBC, and Britain's Sky News), and many Serbs watch CNN
for advance warning of bombing raids. This greatly exceeds the
proportion of U.S. citizens who have access to dissident foreign
messages, and domestic dissent here is marginalized. FAIR's May 5
study "Slanted Sources in Newshour and Nightline Kosovo
Coverage" showed that only 8 percent of its participants were
critical of the bombing campaign, far below the Wilby standard for
Serbia.
--Spewing hatred. The demonization of Milosevic, the shameless
use of of the plight of Albanian refugees to stoke hatred and justify
NATO violence, and the near-reflexive use of words like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" surely competes with anything
that the "state-controlled" Serbian media have served up. As with
the earlier demonization of Saddam Hussein, Newsweek placed
Milosevic on its cover titled "The Face of Evil" (April 19), while
Time showed the demon's face with an assassin's crosshairs
centered between his eyes (April 5). A State Department official
has acknowledged that "the demonization of Milosevic is necessary
to maintain the air attacks" (San Francisco Chronicle, March 30,
1999), and the media have responded. Times Foreign Affairs
columnist Thomas Friedman has repeatedly called for the direct
killing of Serbian civilians--"less than surgical bombing" and
"sustained unreasonable bombing"--as a means of putting pressure
on the Yugoslavian government (April 6, 9, 23, May 4 and 11),
which amounts to urging NATO to commit war crimes. If Serb
broadcasters were openly calling for slaughtering Kosovo Albanians
the media would surely regard this as proving Serb barbarism.
--Evading or suppressing inconvenient facts and issues. Because the
NATO attack is in violation of the UN Charter, the mainstream
media have set this issue aside, although in 1990, when George
Bush could mobilize a Security Council vote for his war, he stated
that he acted on behalf of a world "where the rule of law supplants
the rule of the jungle." In 1990 it was awkward that Bush had
appeased Saddam Hussein before his invasion of Kuwait, so the
media buried that fact; in 1999 the media rarely mention that
Clinton supported the massive Croatian ethnic cleansing of Serbs in
1995 or that he has consistently ignored Turkey's repression of
Kurds (with Turkey actually providing bases for NATO bombing
attacks on Yugoslavia).
--The Big Lie of NATO's humanitarian aim. That this is a lie is
demonstrated by the terrible effects of NATO policy on the
purported beneficiaries; by the fact that these negative
consequences were seen as likely by intelligence and military
officials, which didn't affect their willingness to "take a chance"; by
NATO's continuation of the policy even as evidence of its
catastrophic effects mounted; by NATO's methods, which have
included the destruction of the Serb's civilian infrastructure and the
use of delayed action cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells
that could make Kosovo uninhabitable; and by NATO's failure to
prepare for the induced refugee crisis and its unwillingness to
accept more than nominal numbers of refugees.
NATO's offical responses to repeated civilian casualties from its
bombing attacks have been notably lacking in human sympathy.
British journalist Robert Fisk was appalled by a NATO press
conference of May 14, the day after 87 ethnic Albanians were "ripped apart" by NATO bombs at Korisa. NATO spokesmen Jamie
Shea and Major-General Walter Jertz "informed us 'It was another
very effective day of operations'." There was "not a single bloody
word of astonishment or compassion." (The Independent [London],
May 15, 1999). This response of NATO officials was not
mentioned, let alone featured, in the U.S. media.
Thanks to the scale of the refugee crisis, the U.S. media have been
unable to avoid reporting that the NATO bombing has been
followed by catastrophic effects. But while some commentators
have declared the policy a failure and have castigated the
administration for it, most have followed the official line of blaming
all of these nasty developments on Milosevic. They have focused
intently and uncritically on alleged Serb abuses, all allegedly "deliberate," whereas NATO killings and damage are slighted, and
when unavoidably reported are allowed to be "errors."
--The Big Lie about the "failure" of diplomacy. As with Kosovo,
during the Persian Gulf war experience the media accepted that the
enemy has refused to negotiate, thus compelling military action.
Although Bush himself stated repeatedly that there would be no
negotiations--"no reward for aggression"--and that Iraq must
surrender, the media pretended that the U.S. was laboring to "go
the extra mile for peace," while they suppressed information on
numerous rejected peace offers. Thomas Friedman, after
acknowledging that Bush strove to block off diplomacy lest
negotiations "defuse the crisis" (Aug. 22, 1990), subsequently
reported that "diplomacy has failed and it has come to war" (Jan.
20, 1991), without mentioning that the diplomatic failure was
intentional.
In the case of the NATO war on Yugoslavia, the official position is
that Yugoslavia refused NATO's reasonable offer at Rambouillet,
and that Milosevic's intransigence thus forced NATO to bomb. This
is a Big Lie--NATO's offer was never reasonable, requiring
Yugoslavia to accept not only full occupying power rights by
NATO in Kosovo--a part of Yugoslavia--but also NATO's right to "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access" throughout
Yugoslavia. The Serbs had indicated a definite willingness to allow
a military presence in Kosovo, but not by NATO and certainly not
with NATO authority to occupy all of Yugoslavia. NATO would
not negotiate on these matters and issued an ultimatum to
Yugoslavia that no sovereign state could accept.
As in the Persian Gulf war case, however, the mainstream U.S.
media accepted the official line that the bombing resulted from a
Serbian refusal of a reasonable offer after "extensive and repeated
efforts to obtain a peaceful solution" (Clinton). The Serb position
and the continued Serb willingness to negotiate on who would be
included in the occupying forces was essentially ignored or deemed
unreasonable; the ultimatum aspect of the process was considered
of no importance; and the fact that the ultimatum required
Yugoslavia to agree to virtual occupation of the entire state by
NATO was suppressed. The NATO position, as the Bush position
in the Persian Gulf war, was surrender, not negotiate. And the
media today, as then, pretend that we are eager to negotiate with a
mulish enemy.
In sum, the propaganda service of the mainstream U.S. media to the
Kosovo war would be hard to surpass, and on NATO principles the
New York Times and its confreres are eminently bombable. But as
usual, for the U.S. and NATO powers international law and moral
principles apply only to others. To the Godfather and his flunkies,
an entirely different set of principles applies.
Published in Z Magazine
Edward S. Herman is Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
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