| If
the Western press covered this from Macedonia...
PressInfo # 128
August
28, 2001
By Jan Oberg, TFF director
Few citizens can go to conflict regions to develop an understanding
and form an opinion. Most of us rely on the dailies, the radio and
television. So, the media stand between the events and each of us.
What we obtain is not necessarily reality but an image of it, a part
of it, some aspects and angles rather than others. In principle, it
can hardly be otherwise.
But what if the coverage is systematically biased and what if there
is a tendency in what is not covered?
Once again there is a Balkan crisis and once again some of us who
have been on the ground for about ten years ask: do we have a free
press on which those at home can safely rely?
Here follow some 20 examples of what could have featured
prominently in the headlines about Macedonia the last few months. Most
citizens are likely not to have heard much about them in the
mainstream media and may, therefore, not have thought of these events
and their implications:
- the story of Americans working with KLA/NLA and investigate why
NATO, in contravention of its mandate in Macedonia, evacuated KLA/NLA
soldiers with American advisers and equipment out of Aracinovo…
- why NATO/KFOR and the UN in Kosovo turned a blind eye to KLA/NLA
operations in the American sector and the demilitarised zone…
- which governments, agencies, mercenary companies and arms dealers
have supplied KLA/NLA with weapons since 1993…
- what kind of misinformation and propaganda campaigns the press
itself is the object of by NATO and others, e.g. why it suddenly
begins to call Macedonians "Slavs" or "Slav
Macedonians," something they have never been called before. Or
why Macedonians are frequently called "nationalists" while
you never hear that word about Albanians with guns in their hands…
- the suffering and socio-economic deprivation of Macedonians and
not only the Albanians…
- the question of whether EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana,
the S-G of NATO at the time when it bombed Yugoslavia, and NATO S-G
Lord Robertson, then British secretary of defence, are personally
responsible for the de-stabilisation of Macedonia…
- why we get no conflict journalism but only war reporting and
whether there was any ethnic hatred in Macedonia that could have
sparked off a war had Western countries not meddled in the affairs of
Macedonia…
- the story of why one of the best missions in the history of the
United Nations, UNPREDEP, was forced out of Macedonia in 1999 to allow
NATO to (mis)use the country for its own "peaceful" aims…
- why the UN's Mr. Haekkerup in Pristina, the highest authority in
Kosovo, has not been asked why 46,000 NATO/KFOR soldiers in Kosovo did
not actually disarm the KLA in spite of the fact that it was stated
officially in autumn 1999 that it was disarmed and declared illegal…
- how European politicians feel about the fact that the August 13
Ohrid "Peace" Agreement is completely one-sided, demands no
guarantees or obligations of the Albanians (except handing in some of
their weapons) and rewards only the Albanian extremists who
unilaterally turned the conflict into war…
- the issue of how better human rights can be promoted by KLA/NLA
killing, ethnically cleaning villages and refusing for months to meet
with the press until its political leader in front of cameras declared
himself pro-peace sitting under NATO, US, EU and Albanian flags…
- why KLA/NLA has been permitted to commit two international
aggressions, one into Southern Serbia and the one into Macedonia, and
are called 'armed thugs' by NATO and EU and maintain de facto Western
support and have been a negotiations partner of NATO and are being be
offered amnesty…
- why the EU, NATO and the United States have worked together to
prevent the state of Macedonia from exercising its right to self-defence,
according the Charter of the United Nations Article 51, by threatening
to withdraw economic aid if it fought back
"disproportionately" when KLA occupied the country bit by
bit…
- the fact that Macedonia was never paid any compensation for
putting up with ten years of Western sanctions against its main trade
partner, Yugoslavia, and was also never compensated for NATO's turning
it into a combined refugee camp and military base…
- why KLA/NLA's leadership has not simply been arrested by NATO and
the UN long ago - they have the authority to do so - and why Albanian
leaders are seldom mentioned in relation to the Hague Tribunal…
- the relations between certain hard-line Albanian leaders and the
trade in drugs, women, cigarettes and other black market dealings that
supply customers in the region, including international staff, and
other European markets, and provides most of the cash with which KLA/NLA
obtains its arms…
- the wider (real) interests of Western countries in the Balkans,
such as oil in the Caucasus, geo-strategic issues, the US Bondsteel
base and its function in Kosovo, the containment of Russia, the
violent spreading of the market economy, expansion of NATO - rather
than just printing the noble human rights-democracy-peace-stabilisation
gobbledygook of powerful people…
- how Mr. Haekkerup, former Danish minister of defence and
responsible for his country's actual bombing of Yugoslavia, could be
given the top position as peacemaker in Kosovo (having had no
international mission before) and why it is a Danish general, Gunnar
Lange, who now heads NATO's "Essential Harvest" mission in
spite of the fact that Denmark contributes no troops to it…
- why General Lange grossly underestimates the military strength of
the KLA/NLA by requesting it to hand in only 3,300 weapons to be
"disarmed" and "disbanded"…
- how it comes that NATO, after two days in Macedonia, sides with
the KLA/NLA, the aggressor, when it comes to the estimate of their
numbers of weapons - and not with the legitimate government of the
country (whose estimate is at least 60,000)…
- the reasons that General Lange and NATO spokesman, Daniel
Speckard, suddenly state again and again that if the Macedonian
government does not accept what NATO says and does, "the
alternative is clear: the alternative is war" - an argument for
which there is only two appropriate words: untruth and blackmail…
- why a West (media and decision-makers) that allegedly cares so
much for minorities and refugees does virtually nothing to focus on
and help 600,000 refugees in Yugoslavia, innocent ordinary citizens of
Serb origin driven out of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo…
- the real reasons why the United Nations has not been involved in
the last six months in Macedonia; it is a classical case for the UN
Security Council, and the UN is the organisation that knows this
country best. Why did Kofi Annan keep quiet? Why was the issue of
Macedonia not taken up in the Security Council? Why has no one
mentioned the perfectly obvious idea of setting up a UN peace-keeping
mission in Macedonia?
If the major media generally do not address issue like these, can
we say they are free in this case?
Should we see them as complicit in power politics, as servile and
politically correct?
Do Western media manage to preserve their integrity and critical
investigative capacities when their own governments go to make peace
but in reality make war?
Does 'free media' in reality mean that you can be as biased as you
please - or have been advised to be by powerful circles?
The usual argument is that there are individual journalists,
reporters, columnists and editors who actually address issues like
these. That is true. But unfortunately they remain a tiny minority in
the margins of the generalised media picture on the basis of which the
great majority of citizens form their opinions.
© TFF 2001
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