IsayUsaySsay

Name   : Lidija Zelovic 
Time   : 
Subject: The Influence Of The Media On The War In Former Yugoslavia 
Date   : 

The image of Atlantis is the image of a rich land populated by a happy people, having disappeared into the depths of the ocean, possibly as a consequence of some devastating earthquake. Normally, you will see Atlantis as a legend and you won't try to find the reasons of its sudden disappearance. A legend is a legend and there is nothing more to say about it. But now, since I had to leave my home country, Yugoslavia, I wonder how come that Plato, who first introduced this image of Atlantis to the collective human imagination, never asked himself whether anyone had survived the 'country's collapse.' According to later legends, some of Atlantis's inhabitants did manage to save themselves, and 'like castaways were washed ashore on the Atlantic coast of southern Europe.'

Can we see something of this story reflected in the modern historical disaster of the war in former Yugoslavia? This time the disappearance is organized in a more subtle, well prepared, almost fashionable, 'civilized' way - through media. Politicians used all kinds of media for the sake of 'saving your own nationality.' And before people became aware of the fact that they were just pawns controlled by politicians through their beloved TV, their dearest newspaper, their always honest radio, the war was on their doorsteps. It was too late to step back, the only possibility left was to go on believing everything said by the media. Other options were to get crazy or to join the army of 'exiles', the 'displaced,' the 'refugees', the 'asylum-seekers'.

That last solution has become mine, and the solution of more than two million others. Before the war began, I used to work for the independent TV station DOBRE VIBRACIJE in Sarajevo. When war began, I moved to Belgrade and started to work for the TV station STUDIO B. But because of all the nationalistic changes there a journalist could no longer do dissident, professional work, so I left. Then I went to Zagreb, to the official TV HTV, where the situation was exactly the same. Because of this media control, the impossibility to use my own mind, I could not even use my own feelings, I left Yugoslavia in April 1993.

Once I came to The Netherlands and started to 'live' again, I saw that even here, pretty far away from the Balkans and their happenings, the media served information in a black and white manner. It is obvious who are the bad guys and who are the good guys, and it is also obvious that these categories are firmly connected to the Muslim, Serb or Croat nationality. The information is presented as simple as possible to make it for 'ordinary people' easy to understand. The good guys are shown as the poor, helpless people, with the pathetic stories. The bad ones are wild and dangerous, their stories are not to be connected with the normal mind. Nobody asks "How come these people suddenly changed?" Already more than four years the same stories are presented, as seen from the same point of view, with the same presumptions.

That is the reason why I decided to make a film, with a friend of mine - Moniek Wester Keegstra, about the influence of the media under circumstances of war, on the basis of the Yugoslavian case. Our aim is not to show our personal view on the whole situation, but to show that this situation is not as simple and black and white as it is often shown. Moniek and I went to Yugoslavia last December to see how things in the media are developing right now.

What we found during our research trip is that in every part of the former Yugoslavia plenty of independent media exist, but they don't have a considerable influence on the population of their new countries. They are financially controlled by the government, disrupted at work and very often unable to act professionally. Most of the journalists who are now working for the independent media, used to work a few years ago for the official media. But since they were not able to do a decent job there, they decided to work for the small independent agencies, regardless being less payed, in a bad work situation (they used to have a good work situation) but able to be professional and spread honest information. According to these journalists independent media exist only because the politicians want to show the 'outside world' how democratic they are. Journalists of the independent media are afraid that the outside world does not know the actual situation: non-governmental media can reach only 15 - 35% of the population and the government does its best to make their journalistic work as difficult as possible. But still, they look at the situation from the positive side, stating "it is more important who we reach than how many people we reach." The important thing is quality, not quantity. The people who are now working for the official media are journalists who have accepted the new one-nation-policy. Amongst them are newborn journalists who always wanted to do this job because of the power it brings to them. They don't really care about the contents of their work. In popular language they are called "people with a flexible back."

Most of the people whom we spoke to in Yugoslavia, are taking part in this conference on tactical media, The Next 5 Minutes. They will explain, face to face, the reasons they have to put quality before quantity, and what it means to be a journalist in Yugoslavia nowadays.

Our film will not tell that war wouldn't have happened at all if the media had remained independent as it blames to be. Instead, we want to show that if the media had been really free, the war would not have been so horrible as it has become. The population was manipulated through the media. Politicians were counting on the fact that Yugoslav people were used to watching TV and believed what was said on TV, because that is what they were learned during the last 50 years of 'soft communism.' People are not born good or evil. Nations are not good or bad by definition. People are made the way they are, and in case of Yugoslavia, that has nothing to do with a nationality. A lot of people are too weak to resist, or to recognize the danger of war in the making. They are the real victims of this nonsense war. Our film shows just another side of the Wild West story of the Atlantic destiny of Yugoslavia. It is not the only truth about this story, but just another one.

In one of Guy De Maupassant's stories a warning is issued: "People of France! Beware of Love, it is dangerous!'. Maybe the Yugoslav people should have been given a similar warning: 'People of Yugoslavia! Beware of the Media, they are dangerous!'

Lidija Zelovic