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Degraded
Capability
Phil England
Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis
Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, eds £14.99 ISBN 0-7453-1631-X
Pluto Press
"While the role of the journalist is to present the world in all
its complexity, giving the public as much information as possible in order
to facilitate a democratic debate, the propagandist simplifies the world
in order to mobilise the public behind a common goal."1
The conclusion to be drawn from Degraded Capability is that during NATO's
78-day bombing of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro from March 24th-June 10th
1999 the media overwhelmingly acted in effect as a propaganda machine.
As a collection of writings by a variety of experts, Degraded Capability
provides a necessarily patchwork look at the coverage of the war and a
good deal of cross-referencing is necessary. It is nevertheless a major
contribution to understanding the truth behind the many fictions of the
war and how these were maintained. In conjunction with a reading of Phillip
Knightley's chapter on Kosovo (provocatively titled "The Military's
Final Victory") in his classic history of the war correspondent,
"The First Casualty",2 a picture
starts to emerge of the mechanics of media management: blanket coverage
of NATO sourced news, lack of investigation and contextualisation, large
scale omission and the plain old peddling of lies. Whilst Knightley provides
a roller coaster of a ride through the British media's coverage of
the war, Hammond and Herman provide the back-up detail and context in
a way that is rigorously researched and referenced and also look at how
the war was covered in the US, other NATO countries, Russia and India.
The illusion of saturation coverage
"The British Ministry of Defence has a manual, updated after every
war, which serves to guide the way it will handle its relationship with
the media in wartime... It follows basic principles: Appear open, transparent,
and eager to help; never go in for summary repression or control; nullify
rather than conceal undesirable news; control emphasis rather than facts;
balance bad news with good; and lie directly only when certain that the
lie will not be found out during the course of the war."3
The military's apparent openness is operated in conjunction with
the principle of 'security at source' - exactly what information
is released is strictly controlled.4 For
the British media there were three main sources of news: NATO spokesman
Jamie Shea in Brussels; Defence Secretary George Robertson and ministers
such as Robin Cook; and Tony Blair's press secretary, Alistair Campbell.5
"It was vital to try to hold the public's interest on our terms,"
Campbell said reiterating one of the MoD's cornerstone principles.6
So when Newsnight's Kirsty Wark interviewed NATO Commander, General
Wesley Clark on the day NATO attacked the train at Varvarin, for example,
"(she) failed to ask a single question about civilian casualties.
Instead she appeared to be egging him on to commit ground troops."7
When Campbell was called in to overhaul NATO's "Media Operations
Centre" (MOC) three weeks into the war he insured that, "The
reporting of every correspondent writing about Kosovo was monitored and
if necessary instantly rebutted. NATO's line on every likely aspect
of the war was developed, polished and rehearsed. There was even a section
of the MOC which spent its time dreaming up pithy phrases for Shea to
insert into his briefings with the hope that they would appeal to the
headline writers and to television producers looking for a good sound
bite."8
It seemed to work. In a post-war assessment report Jamie Shea declared
his pride at the way NATO was able to "occupy the media space",
so that "nobody in the world who was a regular TV viewer could escape
the NATO message."9
NATO proved to be one of the least reliable sources of information. Henry
Porter in The Observer (4/7/99) described "an almost universal concern
among editors about the level of accuracy of NATO briefings... It became
clear about four weeks into the war that NATO high command was either
concealing the truth or, despite its sophisticated intelligence gathering
equipment, had little idea of what was happening on the ground... There
seemed to be a pattern of obfuscation that was supported in moments of
embarrassment by a flow of artfully drafted semi-admissions." Yet
NATO continued to enjoy virtually blanket and predominantly uncritical
exposure.
Editorial control - the myth of a liberal media
All the British newspapers except the Independent on Sunday (whose editor,
Kim Fletcher, was replaced shortly after the war by Janet Street Porter - an
ex-columnist and TV presenter/ producer without any background in news
reporting) took a pro-war stance in their editorial columns. As Hammond
asserts, the fact that this included the liberal press is one of the things
that distinguished Kosovo from previous military campaigns. Whilst the
conservative papers supported the war, at least they voiced some doubts
about the wisdom of the action. The Guardian and The Independent, on the
other hand, seemed sold on the moral purpose of the devastating air campaign.10
This was in spite of the fact that throughout the war The Guardian received
around 100 letters a day about the bombing campaign, the overwhelming
majority of which were against it.11
Evidently it was considered important to neutralise what might be a significant
site of opposition. How was this achieved? John Pilger claims that at
the beginning of the Kosovo campaign, "Editors were called to the
Ministry of Defence [MoD] and handed their guidelines" though he
gives no source or grounds for this remarkable assertion.12
Even in the absence of such direct control, Knightley reasons that "in
wartime (the media) considers its commercial and political interests lie
in supporting the government of the day."13
Then there is the ongoing compromise brought about by the media's
all-too-cosy relationship with power. Eve Ann Prentice of The Times, for
example, says that foreign editors are too close to the Foreign Office,
that they dine together etc.14
Guardian staff were certainly acting as NATO apologists through their
control of emphasis. In an interview with BBC Radio Scotland, Hammond
gave the following example of a report on the bombing of a bridge in Varvarin
in Serbia. "The Reuters report from the scene was headlined '
NATO Bombing Wreaks Carnage on Serbian Town Bridge.' But by the time
that same report appeared in the following day's Guardian newspaper
the headline had subtly changed to 'Planes Buzzed Overhead and then
Death Came.' The Guardian had shifted from an active to a passive
sentence construction and any sense of NATO bombing wreaking carnage had
disappeared. Instead there were innocuously buzzing planes and death appearing
somehow out of the blue."15
The fact that even John Pilger, a highly respected, award-winning journalist,
had difficulty getting published during the war16
suggests that voices of opposition were being stifled. The day after he
finally had a piece published in The Guardian his factually accurate work
was rubbished by the paper's diplomatic editor, Ian Black.17
Broadcasters who failed to follow the NATO script were subject to personal
attacks from politicians. BBC Radio 4's John Humphries, for example
was criticised for asking awkward questions during the war. His suggestion
that NATO had replaced one type of ethnic cleansing with another in February
this year brought him up for criticism again. BBC governors upheld the
complaint by NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson and concluded that
"The tone of his questioning was inappropriate at times, and the
frequency of interruption was ill-judged."18
Hammond, though, suggests that this is largely a ritual and that, in the
words of the BBC's first Director General, Lord Reith, "they
know that they can trust us not to be really impartial."19
Sheep, frothers, cheerleaders and veterans
Robert Fisk of the Independent identified two types of journalists during
the war - the "sheep" and the "frothers." The sheep
were in the main a flock of young, ambitious, and often freelance reporters
who faithfully reproduced the NATO line. The frothers were more likely
to be staff writers who often became "cheerleaders and advocates"
for the war. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, for example: "Every
week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back
by pulverising you," Friedman said. "You want 1950, we can do
1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too."20
Such emotive writing raises the disturbing question of to what extent
the media coverage not only ensured domestic support for the war (and
stifled opposition) but also influenced the course of the war itself?
Disturbingly, a UN survey of officials with experience in the Yugoslav
area found that 75% believed the media had played a part in determining
the course of the war.21
News of the carnage, destruction and havoc wreaked by the NATO bombing - and
celebrated by the frothers - was strictly unwelcome. Veterans that
stayed in Belgrade to find out what was happening on the ground were criticised
for being dupes for Serbian propaganda. The BBC's John Simpson was
singled out for criticism by Clare Short. "I said what I bloody well
wanted," he said in The Guardian by way of response. "I find
it ludicrous and offensive to suggest that I was this glove puppet for
Milosevic."22
"We were aware that those pictures would come back and there would
be an instinctive sympathy for the victims of the campaign," said
Tony Blair explaining why NATO had bombed the Yugoslavian TV station,
RTS killing 16 and wounding 16 more in an incident that Amnesty International
has identified as a war crime.23
"What was hidden was almost everything on the receiving end ... the
hatred it inflamed in Kosovo, the fear and trauma of the civilians in
Serbian cities and towns, the despair and confusion, the destruction of
people's jobs, hopes and future."24
Atrocities
"Although all the right is seldom on one side, the media will present
the war in stark terms of good and evil. The evil side will be demonised,
its leader depicted as mad, bloodthirsty, and subhuman, a modern day Hitler."25
Knightley's history of the war correspondent shows that demonisation
of the enemy is common to all wars. It's a process which allows for
critical debate to be silenced, awkward facts to be overlooked and provides
a clear justification for military action.
Atrocity stories provided the rationale for NATO's massive scale
military intervention in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro. Seth Ackerman
and Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) note how
the conflict in Kosovo was characterised as being entirely one sided.
Any discussion of Albanian nationalists' violence as early as 1982
or later KLA actions which provoked the repression by the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia was ignored by the press.26
Edward Herman and David Peterson cast doubt on one of the key events that
prompted the "international community" into action - the
Racak massacre in January 1999. The head of the OSCE verification team
in Kosovo (whose history brings his objectivity seriously into question)
described it as "a massacre ... a crime against humanity" and
his report went via CNN around the world. But forensic studies revealed
that the dead were more likely to have been KLA - rather than civilians
killed - in "exchanges of small-arms fire and 'savage fighting'"
which were in fact filmed by an invited Associated Press film crew.27
During the war Knightley says: "The pressure on the media in NATO
countries to produce atrocity stories was intense." Yet many such
reports turned out to be false. Up to 700 bodies were said to have been
buried in a mass grave at the Trepca mine. "Trepca - the name
will live alongside those of Belsen, Auschwitz and Treblinka," said
The Mirror in June 1999. One month later the UN International Criminal
Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced that investigations had
revealed that there were no bodies in the mines.28
Widely reported claims by American Defence Secretary William Cohen (CBS,
16/5/00) that over 100,000 "may have been murdered" turned out
to be unfounded. By November 1999 the number of bodies exhumed by the
twenty forensic teams who were brought in to provide body counts had reached
2,108 including KLA as well as civilians.29
Massacres after the bombing campaign by the KLA were downplayed by the
media.
Democracy,
justice and NATO War Crimes
Another example of "omission on a grand scale" is the unreported
fact that the NATO bombing campaign against Kosovo was illegal. This is
now widely recognised (again, even the British government's own Foreign
Affairs Select Committee has found this to be the case30).
It broke numerous international laws and agreements including the Geneva
Conventions, the UN Charter and NATO's own constitution, and flagrantly
over-rode the authority of the UN. Furthermore it was undemocratic in
that, for example, Tony Blair did not consult Parliament before committing
Britain to the NATO action.31
There is uncertainty about the final number of people that NATO killed.
NATO officials have said that Human Rights Watch's (and the Yugoslavian
government's) estimates of around 500 civilians killed by NATO were
reasonable.32 However General Joseph W. Ralston,
Vice Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that the estimate
of civilians dead was "less than 1,500."33
The FRY government estimates a total of 1,002 army and police killed or
missing34 and the UN says that another 10-15,000
civilians were wounded.35
General Wesley Clark admitted to the BBC's Mark Urban that NATO was
targeting civilians. In a campaign which involved over 38,000 combat sorties
and 10,484 strike sorties, NATO deliberately destroyed infrastructure
(bridges, roads, railways, water lines, communication facilities, factories,
industry), health care, education, agriculture and the environment, as
well as sites of historic and cultural importance.
The use of Depleted Uranium has left an enduring legacy of environmental
contamination along with that wreaked by the destruction of oil refineries,
petrochemical plants, chemical fertilizer factories, fuel storage tanks
and power plants.36
Shortly after the war a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
study of the situation in Kosovo found that "forty per cent of Kosovo's
water supply is of poor quality - 'polluted by a range of materials
including human, as well as animal corpses.' Only 12 per cent of
the health facilities that existed before the NATO bombing still exist,
and 60 per cent of the schools have been damaged or destroyed."37
Despite NATO withholding information necessary to make a full assessment,
Amnesty International has recently issued a report accusing NATO of war
crimes. It recommends that the victims should be given adequate redress
and that those responsible should be brought to justice.38
There have also been a number of independent legal actions which have
gone almost entirely unreported in the press. These include a comprehensive
indictment prepared by US Former Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, for the
Independent Action Center detailing 19 separate charges of war crimes,
crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.39
And in England the Cambridge-based Movement for the Advancement of International
Criminal Law has presented a 150 page dossier based on 1,000 eyewitness
testimonies to the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal
for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and asked for Tony Blair, Robin Cook and
George Robertson to be indicted for war crimes. The report is currently
being read by the ICTY Chief Prosecutor.40
The ICTY comes under the microscope in a chapter by Mirjana Skoco and
William Woodger, which allows Hammond and Herman to conclude that in its
funding, choice of personnel and actions the ICTY has served as an arm
of NATO.41 The ICTY relies on NATO for its
evidence so that NATO's own war crimes and the massacres committed
by the Croatian Army with the covert support of the US in Krajina and
the KLA's subsequent massacre of Serbs, Romas and others are unlikely
to be tried.
Context
One of the main things missing throughout the media coverage of the campaign
was context. Here Degraded Capability excels by bringing this to light.
Diana Johnstone and Richard Keeble put Yugoslavia into the context of
the United States' ongoing imperial 'globalisation' project,
that is the expansion of free trade and the eradication of anything that
stands in its way. Yugoslavia's transformation from "a medium-sized
independent state, with a unique reputation in the region for resistance
to foreign empires, into a series of ethnic statelets whose economic assets
can be easily expropriated,"42 is, according
to US foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, just part of an ongoing
political strategy for the US. Johnstone writes that "This involves
creating a 'geopolitical framework' around NATO that will initially
include Ukraine and exclude Russia. This will establish the geostrategic
basis for controlling conflict in what Brzezinski calls 'the Eurassian
Balkans', the huge area between the Eastern shore of the Black Sea
to China, which includes the Caspian Sea and its petroleum resources,
a top priority for US foreign policy."43
David Chandler lays out the history of Western intervention in Yugoslavia
over the last decade. Up until 1989 the US actively supported Yugoslavia's
"unity, independence and territorial integrity," because her
"brand of market communism was an example to the rest of the Soviet
Bloc to leave the constraints of the Soviet Union and open up to Western
influence." But the tide of international relations turned with the
so-called end of the Cold War when the credits for its IMF-friendly, economic
reform programme stopped coming and Yugoslavia suddenly found itself isolated
diplomatically within Europe.44
Chandler's focus is the diplomatic context. By taking sides with
the separatists, encouraging and prematurely recognising their independence,
Europe and the United States have "undermined the democratic state
institutions necessary to cohere and integrate society and maintain law
and order," he argues. "The breakdown of inter-ethnic co-operation
in Bosnia was a direct consequence of external pressures on the political
mechanisms holding the republic together within a federal framework, as
opposed to the product of external invasion or a resurgence of ethnic
hatreds. With US encouragement, the Muslim-led government decided to seek
international recognition for independence against the wishes of the Serb
community."45
He's best on Bosnia, but stops short of any discussion of the IMF's
role prior to 1989; or any treatment of the West's funding and training
of military groups in Yugoslavia.46
NATO rising - the
US in Europe
Whilst the US undertook 80% of the air strikes, 90% of the electronic
warfare missions, firing over 80% of the guided air weapons and launched
over 95% of the cruise missiles,47 it was
important that the operation was seen to be under the auspices of NATO.
"After the collapse of communism, the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact
and the break-up of the Soviet Union itself, the official reason for the
existence of NATO no longer existed."48
But recently, and almost un-noticed, NATO has undergone a period of expansion
with Albania, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Finland, Poland, Sweden,
Switzerland, Macedonia and Slovenia all becoming new members, something
which the former US ambassador to Russia has called "the biggest
political mistake of the post Cold-War period." The poor Eastern
European members are expected to spend £22 billion on American and
British military equipment to bring their arsenals up to required standards.
At a time when Chirac and other European leaders have been pushing for
an independent defence force for the EU,49
it was necessary to "assert United States domination over the still
embryonic 'Foreign and Security Policy' of the European Union,"50
"... testing
US capacity to lead in European politics by maintaining cohesion of its
subordinate allies."51 Johnstone and
Peter Gowan argue that this was a major reason for the war. And what a
blood-curdling irony to discover that at the height of the bombing NATO
was celebrating its 50th birthday at a $8 million party paid for by private
US corporations.52
The next time
Even though the media glare has moved elsewhere, the campaign against
Yugoslavia continues. NATO states have imposed economic sanctions against
the country; opposition movements are being funded; and the Montenegrin
leadership is being encouraged to threaten to break away.53
Disturbing moves are now afoot to amend the principle of national sovereignty
which underpins international law to legalise further such 'humanitarian
interventions.'54
If there are any lessons to be drawn from Knightley's study (other
than his own bleak prediction that the media has lost and things can only
get worse) it's that an identifiable pattern has emerged over the
years for ensuring domestic compliance during wartime. In the future we
must remain sceptical and not get drawn in by the media's emotive
cheerleading and be prepared to dig a little deeper. Official sources
must be challenged and investigative journalism encouraged. Ongoing situations
outside the media glare must be monitored.
Degraded Capability opens a window on suppressed truths and the complex
reality of a particular crisis. It suggests that we can't rely on
the mass media to provide the "reasonably objective information that
would contribute to public debate", and that therefore "the
mainstream media of the 'democratic' West are failing to meet
the informational needs of a genuinely democratic order."55
If Kosovo was indeed the "most secret campaign in living memory"
as historian Alistair Horne has commented56
then Degraded Capability is an important milestone in the project to ascertain
and assert the truth and to bring those responsible for NATO war crimes
to justice.
Notes:
1. Degraded Capability, p.97
2. Philip Knightley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero
and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo (London: Prion, 2000)
3. Knightley, p.484
4. Degraded Capability, p.83
5. More covert operations are hinted at. The US embassy in Britain offered
newspapers pre-written stories on the war for free, "emphasising
that although the US government owned the copyright to the articles, there
was no need for the newspapers to tell their readers this." (Knightley
pp.503-504). Richard Swift writing in The New Internationalist pointed
out that The KLA, The Yugoslavian government and the state of Montenegro
all had contracts with PR firms. (Richard Swift - Lies and the Laptop
Bombardiers, New Internationalist, July 99. <http://www.newint.org>).
Projects Censored (an alternative news project based at Sonoma State University,
California) also noted the US government's use of private public
relations consultants to "spin and distort stories" but more
importantly claimed that the US government had set up the International
Public Information Group to "squelch or limit uncomplimentary stories
regarding US activities and policies as reported in the foreign press
... that may reach the American public." (Knightley, p.504; <http://www.projectscensored.org>.
6. Knightley, p.513
7. Degraded Capability, p.133
8. Knightley, 512-513
9. Degraded Capability, p.85
10. ibid, p124
11. The Media Guide 2000, Edited by Paul Fisher and Steve Peak, Fourth
Estate, London 1999
12. Introduction to Knightley, p.xii
13. Knightley, p.526
14. Prentice speaking at a Campaign for Peace in the Balkans conference,
10/6/00
15. Interview with Phillip Hammond, Lesley Riddoch show, BBC Radio Scotland,
17/7/00
16. Degraded Capability, p.134
17. ibid, p.138
18. Guardian 2/8/00
19. Degraded Capability, p.124
20. ibid, p.106
21. ibid, p.7
22. There were also a handful of journalists actually in Kosovo during
the bombing. These included Eve Ann Prentice of The Times (who wrote a
book about her experiences, One Woman's War, Duck Editions, London,
2000), Paul Watson, a Canadian reporter who was working for the Los Angeles
Times and some Greek television crews.
23. Tony Blair interviewed for Moral Combat - NATO at War, BBC2, 12/3/00.
Interesting to note also that Hammond, in an interview with BBC Radio
Scotland, says that: "NATO initially issued an ultimatum to RTS saying
that they must carry six hours a day of Western news or else be bombed.
RTS said well, okay, we will carry the six hours if you carry six minutes
of our programming, called their bluff in other words. So NATO went ahead
and bombed them." Lesley Riddoch show, BBC Radio Scotland, 17/7/00
24. Degraded Capability, p.11
25. Phillip Knightley in a speech to the Freedom Forum, London 23/3/00
26. Degraded Capability, p 97-99
27. ibid, 117-119
28. Knightley, p.521-524; Degraded Capability, p.129-130
29. Knightley, p.523
30. Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Fourth Report: Kosovo "Report
and Proceedings of the Committee" 7/6/00
31. Knightley, p.505
32. Amnesty International - "Collateral Damage" or Unlawful
Killings - Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied
Force, Amnesty International, June 2000; see also NATO Crimes in Yugoslavia
(The White Book), published by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Ministry
of Foreign Affairs which Amnesty International describes as the most detailed
official account of the damage caused by the NATO bombing.
33. Quoted in Amnesty International, ibid.
34. Reuters, 23/3/00 quoted in AI, ibid
35. UNDP report quoted in Knightley, p.505
36. Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate US/ NATO War Crimes
Against the People of Yugoslavia, International Action Center, <http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/research.htm>;
<http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/index.htm>
37. Paul Watson, San Francisco Chronicle 14/5/99
38. Amesty International, ibid
39. IAC - see note 36
40. <http://ban.joh.cam.ac.uk/~maicl/>
41. Degraded Capability, p.206
42. ibid, p.13
43. ibid, p.13
44. ibid, p.21
45. ibid, p.24
46. See for example Michel Chossudovsky "NATO's Reign of Terror
in Kosovo" in Variant Vol 2, Number 10, Spring 2000
47. Degraded Capability, p.39
48. ibid, p.8
49. ibid, p.53
50. ibid, p.16
51. ibid, p.39
52. ibid, p.8
53. ibid, p.39
54. Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Fourth Report: Kosovo "Report
and Proceedings of the Committee" 7/6/00
55. Degraded Capability, p.208
56. Knightley, p.501
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