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Telltale Truths
Essay on Propaganda and the Kosovo war
by An Dieu Pham
Once upon a time a war was essentially the survival of the fittest, but it seems as though as human civilization advances, war becomes a battle of Truths for the survival of a desired reality. Truth, here, is not some abstract philosophical virtue, but rather the telling of a story from a certain perspective. The accuracy of facts and information that make up these stories is irrelevant, because it is Truth if one believes it as such. The shaping of these Truths constructs a Reality, a frame of reference to build other truths and realities. The Kosovo conflicts and war have historical roots, but the intensity of its destruction stems from the propaganda of myths and truths. This paper will examine how propaganda was crucial in cultivating truths that pitted the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs against one other, which eventually led to a military war. I will begin with some background information on Kosovo and the events preamble to the war. Then the dominant views and conclusions about this war according to the international media will be presented. Also, the use of propaganda and its goal in regards to the Kosovo war will be discussed. Finally, to conclude my paper, I will reflect on how propaganda has affected my views on the Kosovo war, on the necessity of propaganda during times of war, and on the relationship/role of journalism in the dispensing of Truths.
"Balkans history in modern times has been a sequence of battles and wars, instigated by outside powers and internal interest groups deliberately exploiting nationalism and outright chauvinism. Differences of language and religious tradition and custom have been emphasized. The victims of this process have invariably been the Balkan peoples…" Both the Serbs and Albanians have ancient claims to the land in the Balkans.
Click here for a summary of events of the Kosovo conflict
From reading the various press clippings about the war, we can easily discern the good and bad guys. Some articles from the American newspapers, though written as a news piece, have a tendency to let the journalist's personal opinion seep in. The article headlined Give war a chance, from the New York Times, is an example of journalists who taking sides rather than simply reporting the story.
There are some articles which are slightly critical about what the U.S government and NATO were doing in Kosovo, including bombing civilians by accident, but they were few and the criticism somehow becomes in the end an explanation/justification for what had been done. For example, one article points out that no one came to the rescue when a war was breaking out in Rwanda or Sudan because they are not European countries and are not a threat to American national interests. So in the end, despite the critical tone, such article still leaves the reader with a sense that this involvement in Kosovo was a necessary evil.
The North American press in general, also often neglects to explain the root of the conflict. Most articles reduce this conflict to a story about a group of brutes who violently chase an ethnic minority away from a region of their country. The ethnic Albanians are the defenceless victims, the Serbs the perpetrators, and NATO the rescuers. No article, not even the one that attempts to provide a background on the Kosovo problem, ever mentions any of the myths and distortion of information that could explain how the origins of this war are deeply rooted in Serbian and ethnic Albanians culture, collective memory, and history. By over-simplifying the Kosovo conflicts, the public cannot see the power dynamics behind the war, and the reasons for the behaviours of those involved in it. In a way, it makes the bombing casualties that killed civilians less tragic. These stories give readers the feeling that to preserve human rights, it's all right to sacrifice a few lives here and there.
Also when Serbs are featured as the perpetrators, it generalizes and includes all Serbs as ruthless killers. When in fact, those who carry out the ethnic cleansing are actually the Serbian police and military troops. It's probable that the other Serbian civilians are victims of the war too, but that is not highlighted anywhere. We only read about the ethnic Albanians' suffering. Regardless of who is right or wrong in this war, this kind of press coverage is far from being fair or balanced. This limited coverage is not absolute censorship or state controlled as is the case with the Yugoslav press, where the media is nothing more than the informational extension of the government. But still, in order to really understand a conflict, readers need to go beyond the press accounts, because they are deliberately limited.
Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky contends that "propaganda is to democracy what violence is to a dictatorship. We live entangled in webs of endless deceit…we live in a highly indoctrinated society where elementary truths are easily buried."
The Kosovo war, as author Julie Mertus demonstrates through her work Kosovo, how myths and truths started a war, is a historical example of how propaganda can be dangerous. "In an atmosphere of economic and political insecurity, the victimization ideology begun in Kosovo caught on quickly. Kosovo was an abstraction, a set of national myths in the popular imagination. Over time, the nationalism became racialized…" (p.8., Mertus).
These myths have been created through propaganda. This propaganda is overtly done through the press operating in the country. The interviews presented in Mertus' book about the 1981 student demonstration clearly show how press propaganda has shape different realities and consequently crystallizes into a collection of factually slurred memories. This becomes the collective consciousness of the different groups of people, and dictates the way they view other events and the way they behave.
Using social critic Jacques Ellul's categorisation of the propaganda types, what happens in Kosovo is clearly a culmination of generations of integration and horizontal propaganda. Slobodan Milosovic's ruling tactics are also based on that model of propaganda. The pre-propaganda part has already been accomplished for him. All he needs to do is to evoke the images, stereotypes and feelings. Whether this is the concept of racial superiority or a history of victimization, Milosovic can quickly mobilize the Serbs into an uprising. His objective, however is not to free the people, nor to implement any specific political ideology. According to Mertus, the only goal of Milosovic, Rancovic, Tito or any other head of state, is simply to gain and maintain power.
The cliché of 'divide and conquer' holds true. The manipulation of truths through propaganda engines such as the press to create distrust is one way of dividing people. An example of this is the story about the alleged poisoning of Albanian school children. The fact that there is no consensus from any news outlet on the most basic fact about whether or not there had been poisoning, shows how factual information is malleable in the Yugoslav press.
Before reading Mertus' book on the Kosovo war, I was somewhat clueless about the subject. I began my research for this paper by reading the press clippings in the class kit. But this didn't illuminate much for me about the conflict. All I obtained out of the readings was that there is a dictator named Milosovic and that he is leading Serbs to commit ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, purging Albanians out. And for some reason, NATO gets involved because it is trying to protect ethnic Albanians from human rights violations.
I went to the PBS educational site on the 'net, and there I perused the interviews with various people who had been involved in the war. The interview with U.S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright provides nothing more than vagueness. Most of her talking has been carefully worded, full of non-committed verbiage. This is no doubt so if or when necessary, she can come back on her words. On the other hand the interviews with the three Serbian soldiers are explicit in terms of information. They are first-hand accounts on how they went from village to village and killed people who they suspected work for the KLA. At first glance, on might think that this makes the PBS site about the Kosovo war balanced because it gets interviews from many sides of the conflict. But in reality this only serves to reinforce the view that Serbs are bloodthirsty murderers.
Then I read Mertus' book and some chapters of Vickers' book. They gave me a bigger picture of the conflict. This is probably just one way of understanding the conflict, but it is better than the out-of-nowhere-fragments that I get from reading and watching the news. Obviously the Yugoslav press, both Albanian and Serbian, is unreliable because they are blatently biased. But it's also clear that there is propaganda in the North American press in the coverage of this war. Inevitably, that skews my understanding of what truly happened in the conflict. All the media accounts do is appeal to my emotions. That is propaganda. In this case it is also journalism. I think the role of journalism ideally is that it serves as the fourth estate in a society to keep various authorities in check. But in practice, most news organizarions have a bit of partisan-press characteristics in them.
I think back on my first class in the Journalism programme three years ago. I remember after being taught the importance of 'truth', 'accuracy', and 'fairness' in reporting, the class began discussing the role of journalism. I know there is a connection between truth and journalism but somehow it has never been clear to what degree journalism is a dispenser of truths. The professor taught us that journalism isn't supposed to be just a mirror of reality. I learned that as a reporter we should gather facts and information and put them together in a way that provides meaning to the raw data, and that readers expect a story to make sense of their world, somehow. Another way to see the journalists' role is to perceive ourselves as a flashlight that points and illuminates various areas of a dark room. I liked that analogy, because it gave me a sense that we have the freedom to shed light on stories that would otherwise be buried in darkness. But today when I reflect on propaganda and the role of journalism, I feel a certain powerlessness. I know I could never pull the flashlight back far enough as to illuminate the whole room; there will always be areas plunged in the shadows, and it is in these places that propaganda breed. They're not lies, just hidden truths.
One might argue that in times of war, propaganda is necessary, that it is as important as military personnel and weaponry. Perhaps. But our daily lives and interactions are guided by the shifting of powers, individually and through interest groups. That means propaganda inevitably operates almost everywhere. Ellul warns that propaganda is destructive to a democratic society and that it threatens our survival (p.257, Ellul, 1965).
Most people wouldn't take that warning seriously; We'd say Ellul is just another doomsayer, of the same category as those who live in fear of the H-bomb. Propaganda couldn't be that dangerous; I just have to see it coming, and I'll be safe if I just 'duck and cover'.
Bibliography, Works cited
Kosovo, how myths and truths started a war, by Julie A. Mertus.
Between Serb and Albanian, a history of Kosovo, by Miranda Vickers.
Propaganda, the formation of Mens'attitudes, by Jacques Ellul, Vintage Books, 1965.
Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and the Media, by Mark Ashbar, Peter Wintonick.
COMS 361 coursepack, Dennis Murphy, Concordia University, 2000.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kosovo/inte rviews
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