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Misreporting Kosovo >From the <http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=magazine&q=102> March 2008 Trumpet Print Edition » How the mainstream press has missed the most important angle on events in the Balkans. By Brad Macdonald On back-to-back days in December 1991, the New York Times published articles highlighting Germany’s alarming and audacious decision to recognize and legitimize the efforts of Slovenia and Croatia to break away from Yugoslavia. Both articles were refreshingly honest and held little back in their analysis of Germany’s seminal role in the violent fragmentation of Yugoslavia. In the second of those two articles, Paul Lewis cited European diplomats who warned that Germany’s decision to support Croatia and Slovenia, despite opposition from virtually the rest of the world, “underscored Germany’s growing political power in the 12-nation European Community.” Germany’s incursion into the Balkans, wrote Lewis, “has worried many in Europe who see it as an attempt to re-exert traditional Germanic influences over this area of the Balkans” (Dec. 16, 1991; emphasis mine throughout). Lewis exhibited little reticence in exposing the German undercurrent in what was unfolding in Yugoslavia, even when it meant connecting Germany’s decision to recognize Croatia and Slovenia in 1991 to its sordid history with these entities during World War II. He wrote, “[I]n its unusual assertiveness in moving ahead with a plan to extend diplomatic recognition to the breakaway Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia, Germany has stirred troubling historical associations …. Nazi Germany dominated the two Yugoslav regions during World War II, absorbing Slovenia into the Third Reich and creating a puppet regime in Croatia.” A month later, the Times wrote this: “Germany’s decision to press for quick recognition of the two republics, disregarding appeals from the United States and the United Nations, marked a new assertiveness that some Europeans find disconcerting” (Jan. 16, 1992). The point? Just 16 years ago, a mainstream news organ like the New York Times was not afraid to report the reality that Germany was manipulating the Balkans in an effort to “re-exert traditional Germanic influences” over the region. A willingness to analyze the Balkans through the German prism was plainly evident. How times have changed. Missing a Blockbuster Angle On Dec. 10, 2007, the deadline for a mutual solution to the Kosovo dilemma expired, and Kosovo Albanians, led by former terrorist leader Hashim Thaci, said they would immediately start finalizing their declaration of independence from Serbia. The subject of Kosovo’s independence does not lack coverage. What it lacks is the kind of fresh, up-front, in-depth reporting practiced by the likes of the New York Times when it covered Yugoslavia’s dissolution in 1991-92. When Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia broke away from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the Times didn’t hesitate to declare Germany’s pivotal and alarming role in the crises (though later, when the U.S. and British governments switched sides, so too did the Times). Now Kosovo may well be on the verge of erupting again, and few people, certainly not the mainstream press, are talking about Germany’s fundamental role in this crisis! Why not? It’s a blockbuster angle! (continued: http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=4750.0.102.0 )
