Balkan Academic Book Review 7/2000
_______________________________________

Goff, Peter ed. The Kosovo News and Propaganda War. Vienna: International Press Institute, 1999. 584 pp. USD 30 (paperback).
Reviewed by Snjezana Bokulic (Southeast European Studies, Central European University, Budapest)
______________________________________

Truth is the first casualty of war, it is often said of news reporting during wartime, the underlying assumption being that under such circumstances truth perishes and all that is left is propaganda serving the purposes of the various parties to the conflict. The wars in former Yugoslavia have been in the spotlight of the world media attention for a decade now, yet never to such an extent, it seems, as during the first NATO military intervention in Kosovo in the spring of 1999. The media coverage of the Kosovo War outdid even that of the Gulf War, during which, according to the then CNN White House Correspondent Wolf Blitzer, both the U.S. and the Iraqi Presidents turned to CNN for the latest developments before they were briefed by their own sources. At the same time, it raised numerous questions related to the behavior of the media during the war and their adherence to the principles of Western-style news reporting. Published in September 1999, only three months after the end of the NATO intervention, The Kosovo News and Propaganda War is one of the first books dealing with the issue of the media coverage of the Kosovo war.
The book consists of a series of analyses of the media coverage of the war contributed by journalists and experts from about two dozen countries ranging from the United Kingdom and the United States to South Africa and Israel. The authors presented their views of the media coverage of the NATO intervention in their respective countries, or, in the second part of the book offered their personal insight on covering the war from the ground. Contributors include the MIT professor, Noam Chomsky, Dusan Reljic of the European Institute for the Media, the CNN reporter Brent Sadler, BBC’s John Simpson, and Dejan Anastasijevic of Time.
Although the editor, Peter Goff, sets a highly accusatory tone in the introduction, blaming NATO for disseminating propaganda and restricting the work of journalists, and the Western mainstream media for playing along without questioning the NATO rules of the game, this slant is by and large absent from the rest of the book. Most authors engage in a kind of self-praise, assessing how the coverage of the Kosovo War in their countries, aside from a few minor mistakes, has been quite satisfactory. The book is nevertheless successful in addressing a range of issues pertaining to the journalistic profession, which have arisen in the course of the war. Some of the issues discussed include the inability to cover the war from the ground and the consequent exclusive reliance on NATO and Western governments as sources of information, the use of the refugees as sources and the balancing of their plight against. the impossibility to check their facts, and coverage under the constraints of the authoritarian Milosevic regime.
Personal accounts from reporters and editors on the matter thus constitute some of the most valuable insights this book has offered, yet The Kosovo News and Propaganda War is not an academic book. Among the most interesting chapters are those describing the media situation in Serbia and Montenegro, and Kosovo. The Association of Independent Media presents the media scene in FR Yugoslavia, including the governmental intrusion and the restrictions under which the independent media are forced to operate, as well as the impact of the different political situations in Serbia and Montenegro on the respective media. While ANEM’s account provides the reader with useful details and a good overall picture, the legitimacy of labeling all non-government controlled media in Serbia as independent remains questionable. Discussing the independent electronic media reporting, ANEM focused on three, as it called them, independent broadcasters: RTV Pancevo, an ANEM member, TV Soko, “ruled by people close to Vuk Draskovic’s Serbian Renewal Movement,” and TV Palma Plus, “owned by a person near to the alleged war criminal Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan and his Party of Serbian Unity.”  The media scene in Serbia reflects, no doubt, the complexity of the political scene. Yet to present the media associated with such notorious figures as Draskovic and Arkan as “independent” is at the very least misleading, since independent journalism implies not only journalism that is out of the reach of governmental control, but also professional, balanced and objective, the more so since the report itself stated that these two stations were “not very sympathetic” toward the plight of the Kosovo Albanians. Likewise, the report by the Kosovo Albanian journalists provided a valuable perspective on the Kosovo media, yet their position was somewhat undermined by the overly emotional tone of the article. Both of these instances seem to be a weakness in editing, which could have probably been avoided had the deadline not been so tight. Indeed, the impression is that some contributions were written still as the NATO bombing was going on.
Given the broad range of contributors to The Kosovo News and Propaganda War and their backgrounds, the articles vary in quality and adequacy. Sometimes the comments seemed excessive. For instance, on numerous occasions NATO and its spokesperson have been charged, rightfully so it seems, with disseminating propaganda. Yet the at least two references to Jamie Shea’s cockney accent in this context make the criticism sound intellectually snobbish rather than legitimate.   The book abounds with language mistakes, misspelled names and typographical errors, which made the reading cumbersome and annoying at times. The historical overview of the Balkans at the end of the book is too sloppy and superficial, and its factual mistakes make it too unreliable to be used as a reference. Tighter editing would have probably improved its quality. Nevertheless, The Kosovo News and Propaganda War constitutes recommended reading for those interested in this topic.
______________________________________________________

The Book can be ordered through: www.freemedia.at, http://www.freemedia.at/kosovoB_1.htm
______________________________________________________

© 2000 Balkan Academic News.

This review may be distributed and reproduced electronically, if credit is given to Balkan Academic News and the author. For permission for re-printing, contact Balkan Academic News.