Dialog Content Program People Texts

MEDIA

Saturday afternoon, between 2-7 PM, Radio N5M will focus on The Connectability of the Balkans (hotlines with sarajewo and Tuzla)
and the relation between MultiMedia and MultiCulture.

January 1995

IRMA in CYBERSPACE

Six days after the Schengen agreement went into effect, closing the borders of the European Union, Irma Hadzimuratovic died in the Great Ormond childrens hospital in London. Five days later Sarajewo will enter its fourth year of siege. International newspapers around the western world are dedicating a media-event to Sarajewo called RSarajewo Alive, Sarajevo on-lineS.
The European Union is closing its borders. It is sending refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, and from Sri Lanka and Somalia and from Kurdistan and Afghanistan and, and... Back home, or at least away from Europe. The life line that was established when governments around the world were forced by the media to help dying children from Sarajewo, the life line that was symbolized by Irma with-the- difficult-surname has proved shorter then the need for the Contact Groupies to continue their performance of RSave your face, fuck SarajevoS.
International media report on the results of Schengen: traffic problems on the borders between the European Union and Slovenia, Hungary, Checkia, Slowakia and Poland. The European Union is an Exclusive Union. You canUt deny the facts. But you can clarify them, like Poland is doing: they refuse to separate EU-traffic from, non-EU traffic at its borders, so everybody has to wait while the computer system is being tested. I hope they have a good time together. If you can+t change reality, you can also create a new reality. That is what the international newspapers are doing with their electronic, virtual life line between Jthe citizens of SarajewoK (in fact mostly people working in the media who have access to telephone and computers or to some international collegue) and journalists who donUt want to wait for Maybe Airlines (they have all been in Sarajevo, itUs time Sarajevo comes to them. No not really, just virtually!) Sorry I am getting a bit cynical. It is great that journalists and editors around the globe have found a new way to discover and exploit Electronic Mail, Internet, World Wide Web, Cyberspace and all that jazz.
But I happen to be a journalist myself. I know that the wet dream of every journalist is to create a media event, if possible with him or herself in the center of attention. Like in All the Presidents Men, Under Fire, or Missing. And like all normal humans they would like to help their fellow suckers in Sarajewo. No problem. But the reality is that journalists are almost never there when really something happens. They watch televison and telex in Intercontinentals and Holiday Inns. They copy stories of their collegues and they pay interpreters and Humanitarian Aid workers with presents and propaganda for their RexclusiveS information. The good journalists is first on the scene, after the event happened. The rest can report on the consequences of and reactions to the event itself. Just read any newspaper, and you will find not a single new fragment of reality, just reflections, echoes and shadows of what is actually happening. Irma was news, not when she was hit by a grenade, but when she was produced as the ideal victim for international consumption. And when she died. An echo of innocence. The innocence that was on offer to all those who were looking on, when Sarajevo was being shelled, besieged and betrayed.
In the same way, international media now discover and exploit the fact that Sarajevo is not only besieged and betrayed, but that Sarajlije are also fighting back, and that they know how to use telephone, computer and modem. In fact 700 people are using E-mail already for months through the homegrown network Zamir. But these international journalists didnUt know that, or did not want to know (a journalist from Reuters international press agency wrote about it three months ago). Simply because it was not exclusive! Everybody can have access to Zamir. That is the basic principle of the Zamir Transnational Network (Available in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia- hercegowina, Kosova, Makadonija and Slovenija, and worldwide Through APC, the Association for Progressive Communication). Therefore my conclusion: the Sarajevo Virtual Lifeline is a media event staged by journalists who are realizing their wet dream, a performance of electronic masturbation in cyberspace. And of course they put themselves in the center of attention. That+s only human. And it is exclusive, because they ask the questions, and they decide what to publish in their papers. It is not exclusive in the way that other people can read all the questions and answers, e.g. on Zamir (/zamir/media/list/cyber,.pub). So you can judge for yourself the quality of the questions, and the answers. But that is nothing new! The newsconference apc/yugo.antiwar is available on Internet for already four years! And you don+t have to be rich, or a journalist, to steal that news.
Is it a coincidence? Irma dies, Europe closes, the rest of the world disappears, and the media stage a symbolic rebirth of Sarajewo: Irma in Cyberspace.
Zagreb 3-4-1995

Email jo@xs4all.nl

p.s. In part as a reaction to this article an attempt was undertaken to continue the service that the project Sarajevo on-line started to deliver to citizens of Sarajevo and people interested to contact them.
Info: Paul Garrin, NY. mf@mediafilter.escape.com

One year later, January 1996, a state of the art Satellite Link with surrounding hard- soft- and wetware, is bound to get installed and operative by March.
Info: http://www.vu.nl/~vusus.