ERAN FRAENKEL:WESTERN REPORTING OF THE FIGHTING IN MACEDONIA IS MORE LIKELY TO INFLAME THAN INFORM
TIPPING THE SCALES
by Eran Fraenkel
SKOPJE, Macedonia--The crisis in Macedonia over the past several weeks has illustrated once again that irresponsible international media have as much ability to incite violence as people with guns. By putting out inflammatory and unfounded reports, the media are complicit in convincing people in Macedonia that their only resort may be to join the bloodletting.
Rather than providing balanced and unemotional information, international press reports have been extremely provocative reports during a very sensitive situation. For example, within the first two days of the conflict, CNN reported that Tetovo had "been taken by the 'rebels' who are advancing on Skopje." The BBC also broadcast equally alarmist and unconfirmed reports about ethnic Albanians flocking to join the armed rebellion against the state. Those stories were not only unfounded, but incredibly dangerous besides.
Such reporting contrasted particularly poorly with the local media that initially were behaving with restraint and a sense of responsibility.
It is a sad commentary that international reporting on the current crisis in Macedonia again demonstrates how poorly the Western media understand events in this part of the world. Both articles and editorial comments are often full of half-truths and factual inaccuracies that misinform and mislead readers. Like the witness oath at a trial, the question is whether the press not only tells the truth, but the whole truth. My answer is: absolutely not.
I have been working in Macedonia for the past thirty years, the last seven directing a non-governmental organization engaged in conflict transformation. Many explanations exist for the violence that has been afflicting Macedonia recently. There are also various reasons why some of Macedonia's ethnic Albanians may popularly support such violence, and why some ethnic Macedonians deeply fear or mistrust Macedonia's ethnic-Albanian community. None of those phenomena, however, is absolute. Macedonia is not just another Balkan country waiting to explode, no matter how convenient that perspective is for reporters looking for a simple story line.
There can be no justification for this quest for a journalistic badge of honour, when reporters struggle their way to the guerrilla headquarters in the Tetovo hills and presume after a day or two to become experts in local affairs. Commonly reiterated statements such as ethnic Albanians "have been denied basic rights, including the use of their own language in schools and other institutions" are an outright falsehood: Although not recognized as an official second language, Albanian-language usage is provided for by law in any part of the country in which Albanians constitute 20 percent or more of the population. It is revisionist history to claim that "dozens of schools teach an Albanian-language curriculum" because Arben Xhaferi, the leader of Macedonia's main ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Party of Albanian, joined the government in 1998. Albanian-language schools have existed continuously from the time of the former Yugoslavia and through the present.
FACE VALUE
Another claim, that ethnic Albanian unemployment is double the Macedonian national rate, is believable only if one takes ethnic Albanian and government labour statistics at face value. Ethnic Albanian numbers are high, and government statistics are low. Anyone sincerely reporting on Macedonia would discover that fact within days of arriving here. Rather than educating readers, reporting of that nature biases the public toward one side or another in the conflict.
Photographs such as the one used by Newsweek in a 2 April article on Macedonia are anything but objective. The picture of spent ammunition, taken from a ground-level perspective, entirely exaggerated its size. Showing a bullet-covered foreground with tanks behind may be dramatic, but it is inflammatory--not informative. What is the point of using it?
Editorial comments are more complicated. For example, virtually every Western medium insists on distinguishing between ethnic Albanians and Macedonian "Slavs." Macedonia's population consists of a numerical majority of ethnic Macedonians, and a numerical minority of ethnic Albanians. There are no Slavs as such. By refusing to refer properly to ethnic Macedonians, the media are denying that community its cultural and ethnic identity. They allow ethnic Albanians their cultural identity, but ethnic Macedonians only a racial one. By what right? Do the media refer to British Anglo-Saxons, Russian Slavs, Arab Semites, or to German Aryans? If they did, the media would rightfully be accused of racism. If not, are the media deliberately supporting one side in the ongoing regional political debate about the name of the Macedonian state and people? If so, the media should reveal their political positions and not presume that their language is value-free. It isn't.
Furthermore in the 2 April Newsweek, the commentator advocates the abandonment of "the fiction of multiethnic states." Does this mean he recommends the partition of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Albania to recreate a Greater Macedonia, or only the creation of some greater Albanian state? Does he also call for the partition of Germany, Poland, France, Belgium, and other pluralistic European (and non-European) countries? The Balkans have no monopoly on minorities, let alone on discontented minorities.
Why do the media ignore that many people here are trying by various means to halt the erosion that is occurring in Macedonia? Why is Macedonia's demise presented as inevitable, pre ordained, or justified?
Why are the various local media appeals for unity and reason and NGO appeals against violence overlooked? Why are people who, in their everyday life and existence, are struggling to prevent this allegedly inevitable dissolution of their country, disregarded? Where are their stories?
In other words, where are the media's efforts to understand Macedonia and not just to feature breaking news? If the answer is that breaking news sells, that is a condemnation of media in the West and not of Macedonia. Like the reporting of the Kosovo war and Macedonia's role in that crisis, it is a challenge that the Western media fail to meet. Such attitudes anger, insult, and ultimately discourage Macedonia's citizens of all ethnicities from believing that their reality truly matters to anyone outside the country.
Those are the images that the Western media create. If they care to, they can also change them.
The author is Director of Search for Common Ground
eranf@sfcg.org.mk
NOTE: Taken from "Transitions Online"
