07-13-2006, 02:04 PM
(Still Kosovo war)
<b>The Media invents Serbian atrocities: </b>
The non-factual basis of Serbian "systematic rape policies", "mass graves", and "death camps".
The Media's War Against the Serbs, Antiwar.Com - Jan 15, 2001
It discusses many things, including the non-existing massgraves that US papers flaunted.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On 6 August 1998, the Washington Times featured "stringer" Philip Smucker's exclusive front page headline read: "Kosovar bodies bulldozed to dump; Serbs deny massacre, but evidence [not "alleged," or "thought-to-be], but "evidence impossible to avoid of mass graves containing the bodies of 567." He also claimed that at least half of the bodies were those of women and children although, to that point, the alleged bodies had not been exhumed.
...
However, on the very same day, the Guardian [UK] of 6 August 1998, reported,
"<b>European Union (EU) observers found no evidence of mass graves </b>reported in the town of Orahovac, the teams' Austrian leader, Walter Ebenberger, said."
In contrast to the front page coverage given to Mr. Smucker's intended shock-attention report on Serb atrocities, the following day the Washington Times carried a small, barely noticeable item hidden on page A15 (World Scene, 7 August 1998), which stated,
"<b>NATO Chief [Secretary-General Javier Solana] dismissed mass graves in Kosovo</b>."
...the role of Bosnian Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, about whom a Deutsche Presse Agentur dispatch of June 6, 1996 wrote,
"For the first time, a senior UN official has admitted the existence of a <b>secret UN report that blames the Bosnian Moslems for the February 1994 massacre of Moslems at a Sarajevo [Markale] market, the excuse the US used to bomb the Bosnian Serbs</b>."
The report continues that the Moslems fired on their own people
"in order to create international sympathy and get the West to fight on their side against the Serbs."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
About the media's stories on the Serbs' "systematic rape policies" and "death camps", and the non-reporting of others' crimes:
Seeing Yugoslavia Through a Dark Glass: Politics, Media And the Ideology of Globalization - GlobalPolicy.Org, March 1998.
By Diana Johnstone, press officer of the Green group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->As the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina got under way in mid-1992, <b>American journalists who repeated unconfirmed stories of Serbian atrocities </b>could count on getting published with a chance of a Pulitzer Prize. Indeed, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting was shared between the two authors of the most sensational "Serb atrocity stories" of the year: Roy Gutman of "Newsday" and John Bums of the "New York Times". In both cases, the prize-winning articles were based on hearsay evidence of dubious credibility. Gutman's articles, mostly based on accounts by Muslim refugees in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, were collected in a book rather misleadingly entitled "A Witness to Genocide", although in fact he had been a "witness" to nothing of the sort. His <b>allegations that Serbs were running "death camps"</b> were picked up by Ruder Finn and widely diffused, notably to Jewish organizations. Burns's story was <b>no more than an interview with a mentally deranged prisoner in a Sarajevo jail, who confessed to crimes some of which have been since proved never to have been committed. </b>
On the other hand, there was <b>no market for stories by a journalist who discovered that reported Serbian "rape camps" did not exist (German TV reporter Martin Lettmayer), or who included information about Muslim or Croat crimes against Serbs (Belgian journalist Georges Berghezan for one). </b>It became increasingly impossible to challenge the dominant interpretation in major media. Editors naturally prefer to keep the story simple: one villain, and as much blood as possible. Moreover, after the German government forced the early recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence, other Western powers lined up opportunistically with the anti-Serb position. The United States soon moved aggressively into the game by picking its own client state - Muslim Bosnia - out of the ruins.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>The Media invents Serbian atrocities: </b>
The non-factual basis of Serbian "systematic rape policies", "mass graves", and "death camps".
The Media's War Against the Serbs, Antiwar.Com - Jan 15, 2001
It discusses many things, including the non-existing massgraves that US papers flaunted.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On 6 August 1998, the Washington Times featured "stringer" Philip Smucker's exclusive front page headline read: "Kosovar bodies bulldozed to dump; Serbs deny massacre, but evidence [not "alleged," or "thought-to-be], but "evidence impossible to avoid of mass graves containing the bodies of 567." He also claimed that at least half of the bodies were those of women and children although, to that point, the alleged bodies had not been exhumed.
...
However, on the very same day, the Guardian [UK] of 6 August 1998, reported,
"<b>European Union (EU) observers found no evidence of mass graves </b>reported in the town of Orahovac, the teams' Austrian leader, Walter Ebenberger, said."
In contrast to the front page coverage given to Mr. Smucker's intended shock-attention report on Serb atrocities, the following day the Washington Times carried a small, barely noticeable item hidden on page A15 (World Scene, 7 August 1998), which stated,
"<b>NATO Chief [Secretary-General Javier Solana] dismissed mass graves in Kosovo</b>."
...the role of Bosnian Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, about whom a Deutsche Presse Agentur dispatch of June 6, 1996 wrote,
"For the first time, a senior UN official has admitted the existence of a <b>secret UN report that blames the Bosnian Moslems for the February 1994 massacre of Moslems at a Sarajevo [Markale] market, the excuse the US used to bomb the Bosnian Serbs</b>."
The report continues that the Moslems fired on their own people
"in order to create international sympathy and get the West to fight on their side against the Serbs."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
About the media's stories on the Serbs' "systematic rape policies" and "death camps", and the non-reporting of others' crimes:
Seeing Yugoslavia Through a Dark Glass: Politics, Media And the Ideology of Globalization - GlobalPolicy.Org, March 1998.
By Diana Johnstone, press officer of the Green group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->As the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina got under way in mid-1992, <b>American journalists who repeated unconfirmed stories of Serbian atrocities </b>could count on getting published with a chance of a Pulitzer Prize. Indeed, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting was shared between the two authors of the most sensational "Serb atrocity stories" of the year: Roy Gutman of "Newsday" and John Bums of the "New York Times". In both cases, the prize-winning articles were based on hearsay evidence of dubious credibility. Gutman's articles, mostly based on accounts by Muslim refugees in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, were collected in a book rather misleadingly entitled "A Witness to Genocide", although in fact he had been a "witness" to nothing of the sort. His <b>allegations that Serbs were running "death camps"</b> were picked up by Ruder Finn and widely diffused, notably to Jewish organizations. Burns's story was <b>no more than an interview with a mentally deranged prisoner in a Sarajevo jail, who confessed to crimes some of which have been since proved never to have been committed. </b>
On the other hand, there was <b>no market for stories by a journalist who discovered that reported Serbian "rape camps" did not exist (German TV reporter Martin Lettmayer), or who included information about Muslim or Croat crimes against Serbs (Belgian journalist Georges Berghezan for one). </b>It became increasingly impossible to challenge the dominant interpretation in major media. Editors naturally prefer to keep the story simple: one villain, and as much blood as possible. Moreover, after the German government forced the early recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence, other Western powers lined up opportunistically with the anti-Serb position. The United States soon moved aggressively into the game by picking its own client state - Muslim Bosnia - out of the ruins.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->