CENSORED 2000: THE YEAR'S TOP 25 CENSORED STORIES
A Progressive Review story on the Balkan War won 12th place in Project Censored's list of the top 25 censored stories of 1999. The folks at the project asked [me] for some comments, so I wrote the following, which appears in Censored 2000: The Year's Top 25 Censored Stories.
At about the time the Balkan War broke out, I was working on a memoir of the '60s and read, with no little embarrassment, some of the things I wrote as a 27-year-old in 1965 about Vietnam. I found there the tracks of a Cold War liberal upbringing; recent service in the Coast Guard; the memory of a friend who was among the first 40 killed in Southeast Asia; but, most of all, of a young journalist unwilling to risk looking foolish to others. It took about a year before I could turn such influences aside and stare straight at the facts.
In the end, it was a struggle that stood me in good stead. It taught me that war was the most seductive drama most of us will ever encounter, and that the media too often chooses the role of playwright rather than of honest observer.
The task has become much harder. Not only has military agitprop become infinitely more sly and manipulative, but today's typical journalists are without personal experience of the system they celebrate. For this reason, I sometimes suggest a revival of the draft--but only for reporters. That way they would not be so easily conned by the military "experts" they so gladly interview and quote.
A less painful solution, of course, would be a far more aggressive and skeptical journalism that did not repeatedly serve, in Russell Baker's phrase, as a "megaphone for fraud." For my part, I find myself increasingly covering Washington's most ignored beat: the written word. The culture of deceit is primarily an oral one. The sound bite, the spin, and the political product placement depend on no one spending too much time on the matter under consideration.
Over and over again, however, I find that the real story still lies barely hidden and may be reached by nothing more complicated than turning the page, checking the small type in the appendix, charging into the typographical jungle beyond the executive summary, doing a Web search, and, for the bravest, actually looking at the figures on the chart.
My work on the Balkan War represents an effort of this sort. It is the result not of investigative journalism, but of something that I fear is even rarer these days: simple journalistic curiosity, a chronic dissatisfaction with the loose ends of our culture and experience. The piece was just a compilation of what should have been in my morning paper, but was not.
--Sam Smith
NEWSWEEK: At a press conference last June . . . Defense Secretary William Cohen declared, "We severely crippled the [Serb] military forces in Kosovo by destroying more than 50 percent of the artillery and one third of the armored vehicles." Displaying colorful charts, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Henry Shelton claimed that NATO's air forces had killed "around 120 tanks," "about 220 armored personnel carriers," and "up to 450 artillery and mortar pieces." . . . In fact, as some critics suspected at the time, the air campaign against the Serb military in Kosovo was largely ineffective. NATO bombs plowed up some fields, blew up hundreds of cars, trucks, and decoys, and barely dented Serb artillery and armor. According to a suppressed Air Force report obtained by Newsweek, the number of targets verifiably destroyed was a tiny fraction of those claimed: 14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450. Out of the 744 "confirmed" strikes by NATO pilots during the war, the Air Force investigators, who spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot, found evidence of just 58. The damage report has been buried by top military officers and Pentagon officials, who in interviews with Newsweek over the last three weeks were still glossing over or denying its significance.
SHEA SHILLS FOR HIMSELF
Jamie Shea, NATO spokesman during the Kosovo war, recently gave a talk to business leaders, titled: "Selling a Conflict - the Ultimate PR Challenge." With unusual bluntness, Shea talked about the 78 days of his media success. . . . The "collateral damages" endangered the public opinion in favor of NATO, but the pictures of refugees on all the TV channels restored the public opinion, according to Shea. Shea said that the public loves daily soap operas with good characters, and that's what he gave to the public. How well he did this job is shown by the fact that people still recognize him today wherever he goes.
Shea also boasted that he was recently nominated as one of the "10 sexiest men in the world" by a magazine. The media had Jamie Shea; NATO had the media. On the other side was Milosevic, with no media briefings and ever-changing spokespersons--projecting a bad image in the media. The former NATO spokesman said his daily TV briefings were a big challenge. His task was to convey as many details as possible--from the cockpit video to the angle of missile impact--without committing any mistakes, in order not to lose credibility.' What made his challenging task even more difficult was the fact that the briefings also happened while the bombings paused during bad weather.
Shea compared this problem with a cricket match during rain--the sports reporter still has to keep reporting on the pursuit of the match, although nothing is happening on the playing field. Shea said that he used these "breaks" to explain again who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. According to Shea, an important principle is: "If you don't have a story, make a story." For instance, on a slack day, Shea organized the visit of First Ladies Clinton and Blair to a refugee camp. These images were gladly reported by CNN, Shea mentioned. On the other hand, on an important day of war actions, Shea made sure that a meeting of ministers did not happen at the same time as the NATO media briefing, in order not to deflect media attention. On day 78--when the bombings ended--NATO won the war. Not 5 to 0, according to Shea, but 4 to 2. "It's like with Rocky II; only the result counts. In hindsight, mistakes are unimportant."
--from PEACE MOVEMENT AOTEAROA: Translated from the Swiss press by an Australian-New Zealand peace organization, AOTEAROA, <http://www.apc.org.nz/pma/sshea.htm 31>