The other widely recognized case of manipulation and abuse of the media in an effort to promote conflict comes from the Balkan region, which was mired in conflict for much of the 1990s. The manipulation was spearheaded by Slobodan Milosevic, who in 1986 ascended to the leadership of the Serbian League of Communists on the heels of the publication of a document known as the Memorandum, a long list of Serb grievances that complained of discrimination against Serbs while bolstering Serb nationalism. Milosevic first set his sights on the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Responding to claims by Serbs living in Kosovo of discrimination against them, he sought to annex the province to Serbia, and after some fighting Milosevic succeeded in convincing the Kosovar assembly to formalize Kosovo’s loss of autonomy to Serbia. Then in June 1991 Slovenia and Croatia issued their declarations of independence and both descended into war; the conflict in Slovenia was brief but the war in Croatia lasted much longer. In 1992 war spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which proved to be the site of the most bitter and prolonged conflict in the region.

A shrewd and experienced politician, Milosevic fully understood the power of media and the importance of exerting control over it. According to Warren Zimmerman, the last American Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Milosevic met with the head of Belgrade Radio-Television every day. ^[1] His abuse of Serb state-owned media is well-documented:

Exploiting control over the airwaves and printing presses in Serbia, Milosevic’s media machine sought to persuade ethnic Serbs that they faced imminent danger from their fellow citizens in other former Yugoslav republics and provinces. Incessant chauvinistic demands broadcast by the media undermined the principles of national equality cultivated for decades by Marshal Tito. The hysteric nationalist mythology churned out by the Serbian media after 1987 fuelled nationalist sentiment among other ethnic and religious communities. ^[2]

This strategy is similar to that employed by RTLM, as Serb media outlets were used to create the impression that Serbs were endangered by people of different ethnicities from neighboring provinces and that preemptive action was the only realistic means of self-preservation. Legitimizing these threats in the minds of many Serbs was the fact that conflict and ethnic tensions in the former Yugoslavia have frequently been portrayed in the media and elsewhere as the consequence of ancient hatreds (or “ghosts” in the words of Robert Kaplan) between ethnic groups that refuse to subside, ^[3] much like the Rwandan genocide was supposedly the result of age-old animosities between Hutu and Tutsis that were impossible to overcome. The message spread in some quarters was that such “primordial identities” made cohabitation of different Yugoslav ethnic groups impossible and conflict inevitable. Milosevic and others intent on inciting conflict seized upon this myth, twisted it, and used their control over the media to propagate it. Thus, according to the newspaper Odgovor, they succeeded in “legitimizing the war (through political propaganda) as the only possible solution of the profound Yugoslav crisis” ^[4]

Viewing conflict in the former Yugoslavia as the gruesome result of these primordial animosities is misguided. Conflict, according to Bennett, “is a tale not of ‘ancient hatreds,’ centuries of ethnic strife and inevitable conflict, but of very modern nationalist hysteria which was deliberately generated in the media.” ^[5] But for the consumers of mass media it is often difficult to recognize and account for such manipulation, as many people assume that what they read and hear in the media is accurate and they rarely question the source. Thus some citizens inevitably succumb to the hateful messages being preached. Such propaganda can be quite powerful; Metzl notes that “neo-tribal messages transmit very nicely by microwave link.” ^[6] Most important, they succeeded in instilling fear in people throughout the region. According to Marco Altherr, former head of the International Committee for the Red Cross in Yugoslavia, the conflict there was “the first time I’ve seen such strong and effective propaganda on both sides. When you’re talking to either side, they’re absolutely convinced they’ll be slaughtered by the other side.” ^[7]

Serbian media were also used to “convince their audience that the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia were, above all, dispersed members of a Serbian ‘national entity.’” ^[8] The effort to create this sense of a “Greater Serbia” was particularly strong in Kosovo, where:

the media campaign became the cornerstone of this revolution, forging a language and style which dissolved the boundaries between political, social and cultural issues. Its aim was to mobilize a people disenchanted with politics an the political class by convincing them that, as Slobodan Milosevic told the executives of the League of Communists of Serbia on returning to Kosovo in 1987, ‘what we are discussing here can no longer be called politics, it is a question of our fatherland.’” ^[9]

By using media to elevate the Kosovo question above “politics,” Milosevic and others were able to play on Serbs’ sense of community and unity in an effort to convince Serbians living in Serbia that they were part of the same “entity” as Serbians living in Kosovo and vice versa. Consequently, Serbs were given the impression that they had a responsibility to aid in the liberation of their fellow Serbs in Kosovo.

One particularly effective strategy of media manipulation used in the region was making frequent reference to past conflicts and atrocities. In the early 1990s some Serb television stations regularly aired footage from World War II and other conflicts; after observing a group of young Serbs watch footage of the Jasenovac death camp being liberated by Partisan forces, Davis observed “you didn’t need Serbo-Croatian to know this was a none-too-subtle lesson in hate. Footage from the end of one war was being used to precipitate the start of another.” Dire Strait’s “Brothers in Arms” played in the background, and Davis wrote that “while the dubbing of a Dire Straits song over frontline footage does not fully qualify as hate speech, given the context, it was certainly understood by all who saw it as a direct call to arms.” ^[10]

Several years later television footage from World War II was used in a similar fashion, this time to discredit the NATO intervention. In the summer of 1997 “the Pale-based Serb Radio Television, loyal to Bosnian Serb leader and indicted was crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, began an anti-NATO campaign, mixing footage of NATO soldiers what that of Nazis in World War II.” ^[11] These images gave the impression that NATO’s intentions were as deplorable as those of the Nazis and acted as a silent but potent call-to-arms for many Serbs. Pressured by NATO, Serb authorities eventually shut the station down.

Footnotes:

^[1] Warren Zimmerman, “The Captive Mind,” The New York Review of Books, February 2, 1995, reprinted in Mark Thompson, Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Luton: University of Luton Press, 1999) p. 324.
^[2]Ahmed Buric, “The Media War and Peace in Bosnia,” in Alan Davis (ed.), Regional Media in Conflict, (London: Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 2000) p. 64.
^[3]See, for example, Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts (New York: Random House, 1994).
^[4]Odgovor, May 1995, quoted in Mark Thompson, Forging War, p. 292.
^[5]C. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences (London: Hurst, 1995) quoted in Mark Thompson, Forging War p. 298.
^[6]Thompson, Forging War, p. 304.
^[7]I. Traynor, “Yugoslavia’s Brutal Television War,” International Press Institute Report 41:2, February 1992, p. 17, quoted in Francoise Hampson, “Incitement and the Media,” Papers in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights No 3, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, 1993.
^[8]Thompson, Forging War, p. 51.
^[9] Ibid., p. 53.
^[10]Davis, Regional Media in Conflict, p. 5.
^[11]Jamie F. Metzl, “Information Intervention: When Switching Channels Isn’t Enough,” Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 1997) p. 17.

Media in Conflict - main page | Case Study - Yugoslavia