Syndicate: Re: kosovo reporting

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

From:          Bill Weinberg <billw@echonyc.com>
Subject:       kosovo

Is it just my imagination, or has it occurred to others that all the
photos that the world media run every day from Kosovo look staged and
contrived? You never see anything that looks positively ghastly, like you
did from Bosnia. You never see any grisly wounds or troops in combat. You
see gutted buildings, but never shots of them actually burning. Even the
refugees hiding out in the woods look clean and well-fed. Finally, I've
gotten so paranoid, that the corpse pictured surrounded by wailing women
on page 10 of today's Times doesn't look REAL to me. I can't shake the
sense that photo was posed!

Does anyone else here suspect some Wag-The-Dog conspiracy at work? Which
isn't to say that atrocities AREN'T taking place, because in that
case there wouldn't be so many refugees fleeing Kosovo--but maybe the
photographers aren't getting through to where they are actually happening,
and some intelligence agency or PR firm is insisiting on fabircating the
shots which are unavailable...

I would appreciate any feedback on this.

Bill Weinberg

___------------->>>>

I agree with my friend: there is something wrong with pictures coming 
from Kosovo. They all look like United Colors of Benetton does civil 
war to promote its Fall collection. Maybe the big media do not want 
you to see the "real" pictures. Remember - they showed you everything 
in Bosnia, and what happened? Western governments had to commit tens 
of thousands of troops to Bosnia - which is a very costly endeavor. 
Therefore, this time the pictures would not be that graphic, maybe. 
Also, it is a different situation on the ground. In Croatia and in 
Bosnia a western journalist could come from Croatian coast or through 
some other friendly way. To come to Kosovo westerners HAVE to go 
through Serbia (one of the first things Yugoslav Army did in Kosovo 
is to secure Yugoslav-Albanian border against illegal crossings) - 
there is no other way. Milosevic's people, after Bosnia's media 
experience, are simply refusing visas to western journalists, thus 
making reporting very difficult. Second, Yugoslav Army has better 
control on ground than it had in Bosnia, and it is able to more 
succesfully restrict journalists to after-the-fact pictures. Which is 
all very frustrating for journalists who do, sometimes, stage their 
own war event - like it was produced in the Wag The Dog picture - 
just to make some spotlight (three German TV journalists were 
expelled from Serbia some months ago for doing that; their employer 
never refuted that they were trying to fabricate a story...). But 
that does not mean that situation in Kosovo is any better than it was 
in Bosnia. We just moved to a new era - where reporting is primarily 
done by case workers from human rights organizations, rather than 
journalists. Because of their different status, and sometimes because 
of their personal connections, they have both less trouble obtaining 
visas and accessing information on ground. Third, authoritarian 
regimes (like Serbian) are more comfortable with organizations with 
clear mandate and guidelines doing the reporting, than with 
free-lance journalists, who are generally viewed as anti-christs and 
anarchists who would write anything just to make themselves a name. 
As for example, I urge you to check out the gallery of pictures from 
Kosovo put up by the Human Rights Watch - http://www.hrw.org - go to 
Kosovo Crisis and then to pictures.

ivo