NOTES TOWARDS A TEXT ON THE 1999 BALKAN WAR & THE  MEDIA

There was a report half way through the war of an Italian refugee charity arriving at the border of  Kosovo with a camera crew and ambulance, and spiriting away an old woman refugee who’d collapsed - all of it faithfully filmed for Italian TV. It was the first time during the war the charity had done anything. It turned out that the woman had merely fainted - and, as a result of this dramatic intervention she became extremely upset, hardly surprising, since she’d been separated from her family who, in the meantime, had been shoved off to some other refugee camp, and no-one knew where they were. Once you enter this world of TV, of image, of the appearance of goodness, “care”, “charity” & “humanitarianism” are but masks for indifference: everything’s just a photo-opportunity. The more all-pervasive these role-bound relations are the more such functionalising of people appears as ‘natural’. The media is simply an arm of the State, making modern alienated spectacular relations seem reasonable and in­evitable.

An article from a former soldier in Bosnia said that when an American TV crew turned up at his base they asked to see a burnt-out village previously inhabited by Bosnian Muslims - which they were duly shown. When the UN soldiers asked if they wanted to take photos of a burnt-out village previously inhabited by Bosnian Serbs the journalists refused, saying it would confuse the issue: their viewers wanted clear ideas about what was going on. The soldier then went on to say that this was a typical American desire for black and white opinions. In fact, this American TV crew were merely being loyal servants of their masters, the US ruling class, loyal servants of dominant ideology, which is not simplisticly a lie, but a half-truth that omits any facts that contradict the official “truth”.

In this country it was left to Jamie Shea to present the official version of events. With a slight cockney accent, he had the common touch: reassuring, man next door, solid, reliable, relaxed sense of humour when dealing with the rare slightly awkward question; definitely very far from the   stiff upper lips of the Falkland war. The common touch didn’t extend to his choice of dissertation for his M.A.: there can’t be many people who have examined in great detail the role of journalists in the First World War. These are the people who invented the stories of German soldiers bayonetting Belgium women and babies in the first weeks of August 1914, a lie which won over the hearts and minds and lives of hundreds of thousands of young men to fight the savage hun. Of course, in Kosovo 1999, the refugees were very real – no need to invent there. But the aim of scum like Jamie Shea, and the media in general, is to make you interpret this reality along the lines most useful to justify “the lesser evil” and hide the real reasons behind the war, and for this aim he certainly found the research for his M.A. very useful.

In the Kosovo war the official ‘truth’ from NATO was easily the main one presented by the media — at least on TV and in the tabloids — and if there was any other ‘truth’ that was presented to the vast majority it was usually the Serb State’s version of events, Though this black and white so-called clarity is presented in a greyer, subtler light in this country than in the crude American Good-guys v. Bad-guys media, Such so-called clarity ironically leads to a greater confusion in many ways - since the apparently morally good intentions are so contradicted by the reality of what’s actually happened. So most people felt confused, and wished the whole thing would stop and ended up, in the absence of doing something, switching off the news: it’s all too perplexing. That’s why reporting of the war was often upstaged by far more vital matters, such as Sophie Rhys-Jones appearing slightly topless in The Sun. And that’s why there were fewer and fewer letters about it in the papers, and people wanted to talk about it less and less. So whether people felt ‘clear’ (for NATO) or confused - the important result was passivity.

In the’qualitv’ papers a greater diversity of opinions was presented, partly because it’s mainly the middle class who read them, a more crude propaganda being necessary for the working class. So you got A.N.Wilson in the Telegraph criticising the war from a kind of right-wing libertarian viewpoint. And Robert Fisk in The Independant, criticising the illegality of NATO, and calling for the UN to assert its authority. And, of course, there was John.Pilger endlessly pointing out the hypocrisy of the NATO countries. What all these diverse arguments do is set the parameters of what is regarded as “reasonable debate”. Nowhere is there any independent radical or revolutionary perspective expressed - surprise surprise: the furthest left-wing opinions people are allowed to hear are those of the SWP through, say, Mark Steel or Jeremy Hardy, professional comedians close to the SWP. A radical perspective is clearly off the spectrum - consi­dered bizarre, crazy, unrealistic, impossible. This is essentially because any ra­dical approach would have to subvert the division of labour between professional writers -intellectuals, journalists etc. - and. the vast majority of those who watch, listen to, read or ignore them – the working class. Those who make a career out of writing (often not merely resigned  to their specialism, but  positively valorising it) have no desire to threaten the material basis of that career, whether it be by offending those who pay them &/or by contributing to an independent movement that would make their reflections redundant. For them writing is an end in itself, not a means towards practice. Reporters merely report or comment on the war in various ways; if they have any desire to change it it’s only by influencing government policy, or by appealing to the UN (wnen we know how the UN has acted in Iraq and even, with their indictment of Milosevic for war crimes, contributed to the continuation of the Balkan war). Or Pilger - constantly revealing the hypocrisies of Blair & co. attacking Milosevic whilst supporting and arming Indonesia, without ever talking about the class struggle in Indonesia. Because he's not opposed to 'intervention' by various hierarchies as such - merely those who he deems to be very crudely hypocritical (ignoring the fact that hypocrisy is an inevitable aspect of all hierarchical behaviour) - there's even a remote chance that his revelations could unknowingly contribute to another war there - ostensibly a humanitarian mission to save the East Timorese.*

   Before World War II workers, socialists, anarchists - even fascists - would speak in streets and parks up and down the country directly to the people around. With the increasing domestication of the post-war society of the spectacle, the essential function of the media has been to colonise people with the ruling ideas and keep them isolated and passive, whether as listeners, viewers or followers. That is, to discourage any practical and/or independent collective & individual opposition. The only practice the media encourage is writing letters to the papers, phoning phone-ins or getting people to ask a question on Question Time, or some other tightly-controlled debate. And even then they have a 15 second loop to ensure that everything remains within their control. Most of those who participate in these pseudo-dialogues almost invariably feel utterly frustrated and humiliated by them. Or else they feel contented with their 15 minutes of fame - an image of importance to compensate for an insignificant life.

   One of the essential functions of the media is to present the choices coming from different arguments within the ruling class as the only possible and the only realistic choices. So, if there seems to be a far greater diversity of opinions presented in this last war than, say, the Gulf War, that's partly because there are real divisions within ruling circles about the war - divisions between pro-US, pro-Europe and pro- Russian sections. But it's also because the Gulf War came shortly after the Poll Tax struggle: the necessity to present an image of national unity, and to therefore present a greater degree of ideological unity, as a way of suppressing any internal opposition, was more pressing then. Nowadays, with the class struggle utterly marginalised (the now distant memory of Poll Tax being still the last time there was any significant  national crisis for the ruling class*) the media can afford to voice real differences and arguments - within ruling ideas, of course - as the threat of significant practical opposition is virtually nil. Compare, for example, with France, where there have been important national crises for the bourgeoisie over the last few years: there the media is as totalitarian as it was during the Gulf War - virtually undiluted NATO propaganda, with hardly a murmur of mild dissent.

   The TV, radio and papers are essentially a closed one-way monologue of the ruling world which, at the same time, tries to involve the spectators in such a way as to give the illusion of dialogue, openness and balance. So a BBC radio programme reading out listeners letters will read one accusing them of being NATO's mouthpiece and another accusing them of putting out Serb propaganda. The media allows criticism of aspects of the State and of the commodity economy as long as there is no fundamental cnitique of the State and the commodity economy. This is not to suggest that those developing a fundamental critique should participate in the media: it would be utterly contradictory to do so. How can one criticise the absence of dialogue in this world by means that enforce this absence? How can one criticise hierarchy by hierarchical means? In a society which allows everything to be said (in its officially designated time and. place, of course) freedom of speech without practical consequences is paraded as the essence of democracy. "Complain all you want - but do as you're told", as Frederick the Great once said. Only the rulers have the freedom to enforce their ideas practically. The only worthwhile 'participation' in such media would be in order to practically sabotage it - physically subvert its form and content. This is not to say that mass "media" couldn't exist in a free society - but it would be used and controlled in an unmediated way - for example, to broadcast the different debates and decisions of mass popular assemblies of people transforming the world directly. But as things stand, people are permitted to criticise this or that detail because that can only help the system manipulate people better - but attacking the essential is forbidden. So, for example, everything in the mass media has said that NATO’s intentions were good — the debate was reduced to merely how the intentions were carried out. Even in the ‘serious’ papers it’s rare to hear criticisms of NATO’s intentions — and I’ve not seen any attempt to reveal their real intentions.

In Serbia, the State media use the “Big Lie” technique of Goebells (“the bigger the lie, the more it is believed”). So, ethnic cleansing did not exist, the only reason Kosovars fled was because of NATO’s bombing. and Serbia won the war. The media here broadcast Serb propaganda to show how open they are in comoarison. It would be too crude to state this explicitly, of course - instead it’s hinted at implicitly, to give the spectator the feeling that they’re working things out for themselves, that they’ve got a mind of their own. But this apparent comparative openness is essential as a screen to hide the secret manoeuvres and machinations of the various factions that make up NATO. Just as a crudely overtly lying autho­ritarian individual is less likely to get what he or she wants than a subtly manipulative one, so the crude use of the Big Lie is more likely to he met with a healthy scepticism than the confusion reaped by those who con people with all the appearance of being open to critioism and dissent. Thus John Humprhrys on the radio can aggressively criticise Robin Cook for excessive bombing of Serb factories: it gives the appeararance of freedom of expression whilst, of course, the function of these “excessive” bombings is never spoken about. In fact, such interviewers are always playing “devil’s advocate” as a kind of pretension to dia­lectical critique (whilst never looking beneath the surface, which is the essence of dialectics). Given this, the listener can ignore even any minor worthwhile point made because, after all, the interviewer’s just playing a role, doing his banal job, playing, as usual, at polemical political discourse, and, therefore not to be taken seriously*. The essential impression given, though, is the idea of the BBC’s independence from Government policy. And that’s probably why New Labour chas­tised John Simpson’s reports from Belgrade — it helped reinforce the image of the BBC’s apparent freedom from State control. So that when, for instance, Simpson faithfully reported the official lie that Milosevic’s acceptance of the June 3rd peace agreement was abject surrender to the terms of the Rambouillet Accord it could be accepted that this was “objective truth “ and not NATO spin. Just as an individual who constantly lies is never believed, so the media lies sparingly  - all the better to con people with a Big Lie.

Sure, there have been a few “small” lies in this war — but the media were careful to quote others as reporting these lies. For example, the story of the rounding up of Kosovars to imprison them in a stadium, when there was no stadium. Or Robin Cook quoting sources from a village in Kosovo which said that 20 teachers from the village had been killed, when the village only had one teacher. But then these are later admitted to be “mistakes”, rather like the killing of civilians. The belated admission to certain factual mistakes (usually muted and long after their propaganda value has served its purpose) serves a similar function to the admission of military “mistakes”: if you apologise you can always get away with so much more. Compare with Serb State propaganda: simple denial of obvious facts, no apologies. Saying sorry makes hierarchy.seem “human” — well, we all make mistakes - as if such “mistakes”, unlike those mistakes we all make, aren’t the inevitable result of both indifference to factual truth and to ‘ordinary’ people’s lives. For the powers-that-be, facts, like the lives of you and me, are merely a function of their hierarchical use. Same with admitting that they got it wrong: it takes the wind out of the opposition, and. allows them to continue to get away with more of the same.

“Freedom of expression” in this society is mostly reserved for those who make a profession out of “expressing themselves”. For the rest – well, we take our chances. Thus a demonstration in April in Brussels against NATO was banned by the Town Council, as were any leaflets or posters. And the few demonstrators who turned up were beaten brutally by the police, with many of them being arrested, and the non-Belgians being ejected from the country. This repressed attempt at “free expression” was not reported in the media here, despite the fact that a journalist cameraman was also beaten up when he refused to hand his camera over to the cops. Likewise, for the most part, independent opposition in other countries throughout the world was hardly reported, and, then virtually only in the “quality” papers. However, in other respects, outright censorship was not normally employed, unlike in Serbia. Instead, facts were mentioned very sparingly— for instance, the bombing, of Montenegro’s main airport a month into the war was mentioned for a couple of hours on TV, but hardly anywhere else, and then apparently forgotten about: what they wanted to emphasise was Serbia’s military manipulation of Montenegro. Likewise, incubators being turned off in a Belgrade hospital as a result of NATO bombing of electricity plants was shown on TV just twice and without comment - compare that to how much the lie about Iraqui soldiers turning off the incubators in Kuwait in 1990 was constantly repeated. These casual mentions give the feeling that everything is talked about, that nothing is censored — but often, it’s rather like mentioning that the world comes to an end tomorrow in a half inch small printed column on page 21. Essential facts are often not censored, but are buried under a welter of largely irrelevant details.

Equally, the totality of this world is presented by the media under separate categories which are meant to be completely unconnected. So, for example, the fact that Alan Greenspan, head of the Bank of America, said, a few weeks ago, that the US economy is extremely weak, and has nowhere to go but down, despite the fact that the DOW shot through not just the 10000 mark but also the 11000 mark since the war began — all this is kept separate from the news of the devastation of Serbia’s infrastructure. To connect these 2 facts may be considered too dangerous an allusion.

                           Nick, June 1999.

P.S. During this war a kind of friend of mine said over the phone that he’d bumped into Jon Snow – the mildly liberal mildly lefty TV journalist – and that Snow had mentioned the bombing of Iraq during the Baltic war. My kind of friend suggested he report this bombing on TV, and Snow said he would (in fact, he never did). Why do people try to impress with such name-dropping? Somehow it makes them feel significant – like collecting autographs: connecting to celebrity in some way is like having a little entry into the world of Power, a proxy claim to fame. And that, basically, is what the media is: a window onto the dominant world that constantly entices you in, and into a polite dialogue with it. But refusing all that cynical shit is the only way to have some margin of dignity, some sense of self-worth and honesty, and some degree of clarity. If you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and not lie to yourself, then just say fuck off to all that crap.

Most of this was written in June 1999, but little bits were added to it since.