“Most people around the world probably think that war
and media are separate. When there is a war, the media tell
us about it as objectively as they can under the often
difficult circumstances. But in today’s information society,
every war is two wars: that on the ground and that in the
media. Weapons communicate and communication is a weapon. We
must ask what interests determine what we are told and what
we are not told? The history of warfare makes one thing
abundantly clear,” says TFF director Jan Oberg, “namely that
we can safely assume that we are not told the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth. In NATO’s war with
Yugoslavia, there is reason to paraphrase Hamlet – ‘there is
something rotten in the state of the media.’
This is what you can read about the use by the United
States of information in times of war:
“Psychological operations (PSYOP) are operations planned
to convey selected information and indicators to foreign
audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective
reasoning, and ultimately the behaviour of foreign
governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. PSYOP
are a vital part of the broad range of US political,
military, economic, and informational activities. When
properly employed, PSYOP can lower the morale and reduce the
efficiency of enemy forces and could create dissidence and
disaffection within their ranks. There are four categories
of military PSYOP; strategic, operational, tactical, and
consolidation. PSYOP, which are used to establish and
reinforce foreign perceptions of US military, political, and
economic power and resolve.”
Other countries work with PSYOP, too. Let’s remember that
when we watch television. And let’s ask some questions when
we do:
• IS THERE A LARGER STORY BEHIND WHAT WE SEE ON THE SCREEN?
Balkan conflicts not only have a Balkan but also a world
order dimension. For instance, did you ever hear about the
National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 133 entitled
“United States Policy towards Yugoslavia” labelled
“SECRET SENSITIVE”? A censored version was
declassified in 1990 and largely confirmed NSDD 54 from 1982
the objective of which included “expanded efforts to promote
‘quiet revolution’ to overthrow Communist governments and
parties” while integrating the countries of Eastern Europe
into a market economy.
• WAR REPORTING – BUT NO CONFLICT JOURNALISM
Media tend to focus on today’s ‘story.’ But there is a
larger frame in which the events take place. To facilitate a
broader understanding – in contrast to simply justifying
what happens – we need a frame of reference in time and
space, analyses of the root causes behind the events. Any
conflict holds an incompatibility, some attitudes and some
behaviour. What you see on the screen is mainly behaviour.
What the conflict in Kosovo is about has been forgotten by
the media.
• WHO ARE VICTIMS OF WHAT? ARE SOME SUFFERING LEFT UNTOLD?
Conspicuously lacking from the media coverage is the
suffering of Serbs, Gorans, Turks, Montenegrins, Yugoslavs
and gypsies, the roughly 15% of Kosovo’s citizens who are
not Albanians. Likewise, we are given few opportunities to
empathize with the 8-9 million people whose country is being
devastated under NATO’s 6000 bombing sorties (as of April
14). We hear that the West is not at war with the people of
Yugoslavia and if civilian targets are hit, it’s a
deplorable mistake. It should be journalistically
interesting to learn how those at the receiving end see
it.
• WHAT IS A MILITARY TARGET AND WHAT IS A CIVILIAN TARGET?
This distinction is made repeatedly, but it’s a myth that
the two can be distinguished. Sure, when you bomb oil
depots, bridges or telecommunication facilities these are
objects that the military needs. But civilians need them
too. How far can we go in undermining a military machine
without actually destroying, slowly but surely, an entire
society?
• WHO SELECTS THE NEWS WE GET AND DON’T GET?
Given the use of very advanced intelligence technologies
and various types of human presence in the conflict area,
there is hardly any doubt that SOME people know much more
than we media consumers are told. What appears on the screen
is only the top of the information iceberg. For instance,
there have been constant rumours about NATO use of depleted
uranium bombs against tanks. If so, what are the effects on
human beings and the environment?
• PROPAGANDA IS STEPPED UP ON ALL SIDES IN TIMES OF WAR.
Could it be that there is a pattern to media events such
as these: the day after Albania declares that it is willing
to place all of the country at the disposal of NATO, news
reach us that Yugoslav troops have gone over the border. Was
that really the first time? If there was a serious loss of
lives on NATO’s side, would we be told immediately, given
the sensitivity surrounding the loss of Western
lives?
• WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF THE INFORMATION NATO DISSEMINATES?
Some Western leaders and NATO’s spokesman, Jamie Shea,
repeatedly refers to ‘information on the ground’ and tell us
that some of it comes from KLA leaders. Robin Cook just
repeats the number of refugees in Kosovo that he has been
told by KLA’s Jakub Krasniqi. At the same time, Western
media consistently do NOT publish information coming from
the Yugoslav government – for instance the very detailed
lists of civilian destruction – presumably because it is
considered non-reliable or controlled by Milosevic, or
serving particular political purposes. But can we really
exclude the possibility that the same applies to KLA-based
information and NATO’s public relation in this
situation?
• UNCONFIRMED NEWS FUELS DESIRED SUSPICION
Journalists now make extensive use of non-confirmed news
and even though they tell us that this or that is not
confirmed, their audiences are manipulated to think ‘there
is no smoke without a fire’ and they may not notice if, much
later, the ‘story’ or ‘the report’ are proved to have been
false.
• WHO INTERPRET THE EVENTS FOR US? WHO ARE THE EXPERTS?
Predominantly military expertise, statesmen, ministers
and diplomats – from NATO countries. Fewer political
experts, Balkan experts, and virtually no psychologists,
peace and conflict researchers, professional mediators and
never independent intellectuals. American think tank
scholars are invited to comment on American foreign policy.
No media has provided Yugoslav think tanks or scholars an
opportunity to participate in a dialogue.
• THE QUESTIONS ASKED ARE VERY POLITICALLY CORRECT
The typical press conference or briefing goes like this:
a spokesman runs the show, selects the questions, give them
a ready-made answer – they are NEVER taken by surprise and
have eloquent formulations about everything – and says:
Next! Since March 24 the general representatives of the free
press have NOT questioned the content of the Rambouillet
Dictate, they have NOT challenged the morality of NATO’s
policy, they have NOT highlighted its destabilizing effects,
they have NOT highlighted the discrepancies between the
stated goals and the consequences of NATO’s policies. They
are shown photos and videos of targets bombed and told that
this is a tank or this is an ammunition storage – and NONE
of them asks: I can’t see that it is, how can we be sure?
Others raise directly helpful questions such as: how can the
West prevent Yugoslavia from importing oil?
• 90% OF ALL INFORMATION COMES FROM MILITARY SOURCES
Military authorities have a virtual monopoly over virtual
reality. Pictures from Aviano base and interviews with brave
pilots are more frequent than coverage of the civil
destruction. Beyond CNN, there are surprisingly few
independent journalists in the region. The uniformity of
their ‘stories’ is staggering to come from a press that
should be free to have many angles and many different
stories.
• VIOLENCE AS SUCH IS NOT PROBLEMATIZED
When a black-and-white image of the parties has been
established, media promote the view that there is a ‘good’
violence combating an ‘evil’ violence. The West’s moral
justification was that, over one year, 2000 people had been
killed, 250.000 people displaced and that 45 people were
killed in Racak. After three weeks of bombing, at least 350
civilians have been killed, an additional 500.000 have fled
and NATO remains ‘determined’ to reduce the welfare of 8-10
million Yugoslavia citizens for years.
• THE WORDS THEY USE
Judge for yourself: Was Rambouillet ‘negotiations’? Was
the document a ‘peace’ plan? When civilians are killed it is
called ‘collateral damage.’ To ‘neutralize’ or ‘take out’ an
object means to destroy it. Belgrade’s media are ‘censored’
or ‘controlled,’ours are not.
• WHAT YOU DON’T HEAR A WORD ABOUT IN THE MAIN(STREAM) MEDIA
1. The economic costs and who will pay
Remember how you heard again and again that the United
Nations was so expensive and could not make peace in Croatia
and Bosnia? American investment bank, Lehman Brothers,
calculates one month of bombing to 3 US bn $, Financial
Times quotes sources that estimate 20 bn US $ to be closer
to reality. That is, the sheer military costs. Add to that
the price of the destruction in human and material terms –
and what it will cost to reconstruct the region later – and
care for refugees, compensate neighbouring states etc.
Probably we are talking about 1-2 bn $ per day – not to
speak of ‘opportunity’ costs: what welfare could have been
purchased for that sum instead?
2. The interests of the military-industrial
complex
Huge economic interests are at stake. War is another way
of doing research and testing weapons and strategies.
Capitalism’s productive overcapacity is absorbed through the
destruction-reconstruction cycles that wars go
through.
3. The role of intelligence services and their infiltration in various ‘civilian’ missions and NGOs.
4. Whether there could be more NATO casualties and
more NATO planes shot down than we have been told up till
now (6000 sorties implies a certain risk).
5. The independent peace proposals
They proliferate from experienced peace and other civil
society organizations such as the International Peace
Bureau, from peace and conflict research networks such as
Transcend or TFF. You will see few and short reports from
the hundreds of demonstrations for peace and Stop the
Bombing around the Western world. But you will hear about it
when EU/Germany presents a ‘peace’ plan (April 14) which is
cobbled together of what NATO can accept does not address
the roots causes, is unacceptable to Belgrade and otherwise
devoid of creativity. So why is it highlighted? Because it
comes from governments, from the same circles that
simultaneously need to legitimate the air campaign: “We
actually hate to bomb, but we do it for peace…”
“The Soviet leadership consistently deceived its own
people and allies about the dangers of nuclearism, about
‘real’ socialism and its consequences and about its
activities in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Somalia,
Afghanistan and Chechenya. And only later were KGB’s murky
activities confirmed.
The American leadership consistently deceives its own
people and allies about nuclearism, ‘real’ capitalism and
its consequences for the poor of the world and about its
activities in Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, the Filippines,
Iran, Haiti, Panama, and Iraq. And only later are CIA’s
activities confirmed. I don’t think for a moment that NATO’s
war against Yugoslavia will be any different. What is at
stake now for the West in the Balkans is MUCH bigger than
what was at stake in the above-mentioned conflicts. Thus,
the media warfare, the perception management and the PSYOPs,
will be much more massive,” ends Jan Oberg.
© TFF 1999
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