When words replace bombs: Is war propaganda still ongoing in Kosovo?

The Journalists’ Association of Kosovo and Metohija (DNKiM) and the Journalists’ Association of Serbia (IJAS) have informed the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), as well as seven other international media and journalism organizations, that false information has been re-published on the RTK website in Serbian and Albanian languages, which was the trigger for the event known to the world public as the March Pogrom. For Kosovo Online interlocutors, this is just the latest in a series of examples of war propaganda that gained momentum during the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia in 1999.

In addressing international media organizations, it was stated that false information about the guilt of the Serbian community for the tragedy of Albanian children triggered the outbreak of unrest on March 17, 2004, in which 19 people were killed, 39 churches and monasteries were destroyed, villages and urban areas were set on fire, more than 900 people were beaten and maltreated, and about 4,000 Serbs were expelled.

As a result of this event, at least 50 employees of the TV channel RTK2 in the Serbian language and in the Serbian editorial office of RTK1, including the director, journalists, editors, cameramen, editors, and others, announced that they had completely distanced themselves from the controversial text about the March riots, demanding an investigation into professional responsibility in this regard.

"The text published on the RTK portal in the Serbian language on March 17 on the occasion of the anniversary of the March violence does not represent the content written or reported by the TV channel RTK2 and the program in Serbian RTK1. This text was taken from the Albanian language, translated, and published in Serbian, but it is not a product of editorial or journalistic decisions of the Serbian editorial offices. It should be noted that the portal rtklive.com/rtk2, the Facebook page RTK2, and the YouTube channel are not under the control of RTK2," the statement of the employees states.

The President of the Journalists’ Association of Kosovo and Metohija (DNKIM), Ivana Vanovac, says that it is clear to everyone that the pretext for the March Pogrom was a false news story, and it is unacceptable that it is being repeated 20 years later. Because of this, she will insist with international media organizations that this event be fully investigated.

"We will absolutely not stop until, at the very least, all of these institutions and organizations express their disapproval and condemn such unprofessional behavior by the public broadcaster in this area," Vanovac concludes.

She emphasizes that it is the duty of journalists to convey the truth and always expose false news, regardless of the fact that this task may take years to complete.

"The duty of journalists is always to expose fake news. Whether it is tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or a month later, sometimes it takes years of investigative work to debunk something. But our job is always to tell the truth. Every fake news story must be debunked sooner or later, corrected, and those behind it must be held accountable because we have seen, for example, on March 17th, that it can cause enormous casualties," Vanovac said.

She emphasizes that the most difficult job that requires time is proving that certain information is not accurate.

"As soon as fake news is published, the damage is done, and the time it takes to debunk it determines the extent of the damage," Vanovac emphasizes.

Journalist Vladimir Radomirovic assesses that the events of the past few days are proof that the wartime propaganda initiated in 1999 has never been interrupted.

"War and post-war propaganda continue unabated, and it is clear that Serbs and the Serbian community in Kosovo and Metohija are the targets. Self-Determination on the day of the Serbian tragedy claims that Albanian children were killed and that Serbs also killed Albanians on March 17th. It's as if we are not witnesses to what happened, as if we don't know what actually happened and what propaganda RTK and Albanian media played in 2004," Radomirovic said for Kosovo Online.

He believes that such reporting is a result of no one being held accountable for the false news spread in 2004.

"These journalists and editors are still working in leading Albanian media outlets. Self-Determination has once again shown that its sole goal is the complete persecution of the Serbian people in Kosovo, and it's incredible that Western ambassadors in Pristina and Western governments do not react to this obvious national hatred towards a community in Kosovo," Radomirovic believes.

According to him, recent events are just a continuation of the propaganda that peaked just before and during the NATO bombing of the former FR Yugoslavia.

"Every war involves propaganda, especially when you have such a disparity in media power as we had in 1999 and before that year when the West had all the media on their side, and Serbia or the FR Yugoslavia could not effectively counter it," Radomirovic says.

As the most dangerous example of spreading false information, he cites claims by Western media at the beginning of the bombing about the existence of a secret plan by Serbia and the "Operation Horseshoe" action aimed at alleged ethnic cleansing, expelling Albanians from Kosovo.

"Later, we found out that this information was provided by the Bulgarian service to Germany, and from the German service, it was passed on to the media, which, without any verification, broadcasted that information. This led to the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic during the war and everything else we had the opportunity to see," Radomirovic emphasized.

He also recalls that high-ranking NATO officials claimed there was a concentration camp with 100,000 Albanians at FC Pristina stadium, which was debunked, in part thanks to the fact that the then AFP correspondent Aleksandar Mitic went to the stadium and confirmed that it wasn't true.

Radomirovic says that at one point, NATO realized it was losing the media war, which is why it engaged the media expert of the then-British Prime Minister.

"When NATO felt it was starting to lose the media war, when images of suffering that did not suit the member states were coming, Tony Blair sent his media advisor Alastair Campbell to NATO headquarters to help. When the train was attacked in Grdelica Gorge, when it was clear that a civilian target was hit, that dozens of civilians were killed, NATO, at Campbell's urging, sped up the footage from the aircraft's camera that hit the train to make it appear that the train was coming at an unexpectedly high speed and that the pilot had no chance to react, although the truth was that he could see the train and deliberately hit it to cause maximum casualties," Radomirovic says.

As one of the most tragic examples of war propaganda, he cites the bombing of Radio Television of Serbia on April 26th, 1999.

"When NATO bombed RTS in April 1999, killing 16 and injuring dozens of our colleagues, Western media remained silent and even supported it. In Washington, when Richard Holbrooke brought the news that RTS had been bombed, there was applause in the room. American journalists, thanks to this overall propaganda, supported the killing of their colleagues in Belgrade," Radomirovic notes.

According to him, the propaganda from 2003 served as a model for Western media reporting in later wars.

"The bombing of FR Yugoslavia, or the propaganda successfully carried out, also led to propaganda in 2003, before the attack on Iraq, when all Western media outlets effectively supported the attack on a sovereign country and transmitted obvious fabrications and lies from their officials about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction," he says.

He assesses that some Eastern countries, like China, Russia, Qatar, or Saudi Arabia, have launched their media to counter those from the West, and that for Serbia, it is crucial to have professional media representatives who will know how to counter any form of propaganda.

"Serbia can defend itself only with strong media, journalists who are professionals in their field, who speak multiple foreign languages ​​and can communicate on an equal footing with their colleagues from the West and the East, explaining the situation in Serbia, explaining what is really happening here, that Serbia is not a country that wants to persecute minorities on its territory or a country that seeks conflicts or war, but a democratic and free state that wants to communicate with all countries in the world," Radomirovic concludes.

About wartime propaganda during NATO's 1999 campaign, German journalists Jo Angerer and Mathias Werth produced a documentary film titled "It Began with a Lie" in 2012.

Among other things, they proved not only that there was no secret plan called "Horseshoe," and that there was no concentration camp at FC Pristina stadium, but also that some war crimes attributed to the Serbs did not occur.

"When I hear that a concentration camp is being established in Pristina when I hear that parents and teachers are brought in and that teachers are shot in front of children," German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said in 1999.

German journalists found Shaban Kelmendi, who lived near the stadium and was in Pristina throughout the war.

"You can see for yourself, from here we have a direct view of the stadium, and everything can be clearly seen. There were no prisoners or hostages there at that time. The stadium was always used only as a helipad," Kelmendi stated.

Scharping also claimed that on January 29, 1999, Serbian forces committed a massacre of civilians in the village of Rugovo. He displayed photos of the dead, and the headlines in newspapers read - "This Is Why We Are at War." However, he did not show footage of killed members of the KLA with military boots, uniforms with insignias, and weapons and military IDs beside them.

"It was quite clear that it was not a massacre of civilians because, according to OSCE reports, the KLA commanders themselves said that Albanian fighters for a great Albanian cause were killed there," General Heinz Loquai, a member of the OSCE Verification Mission, testified in this film.

Journalist Ljiljana Smajlovic assesses that even after 25 years since the NATO bombing in Kosovo, there is still present war propaganda, and she fears that this narrative will continue, which is why it is necessary to establish all undisputed facts from the past regardless of whether they would change the opinion of Albanians or the United States.

"You must, for your own sake, strive for as much truth as possible and always show your people that you have established everything that could be established and that your attitude towards credibility and truth is different from your enemies. This is a very important weapon. And we should not be discouraged that we failed to change Kurti's statement and Washington's stance. What is important for us is to document as much detail as possible and show that we care about what our people think, even though they are automatically on our side. That is not enough; efforts must be made to prove everything that can be proven with facts," Smajlovic said.

She says she is not surprised that 24 years after March 17, RTK television and the Self-Determination Movement of Albin Kurti, as she put it, "resurrected" a story in Western media denied and declared false, that the trigger for violence against Serbs was the drowning of three Albanian boys forced by Serbs to jump into the swollen Ibar River.

Smajlovic adds this is an egregious example of propaganda and she fears that this narrative will only intensify in the coming years.

"Who will notice that the text was corrected after publication? Self-Determination did not retract their statement. I feel sorry for my colleagues at RTK, but this is perhaps an egregious example that they are serving a terrible propaganda. They may now think they saved their soul by changing two sentences in some text on the website, but nothing has changed. From this year onwards, if Kurti remains in power, but perhaps even if he doesn't, if this passes, it will only intensify. In ten years, we will be divided into two camps. We will tell one story, they will tell another, and no one will be interested in what really happened. Most of the time, no one is interested in what really happened," Smajlovic concludes.

She emphasizes that a large number of pieces of information that Western media or NATO disseminated in 1999, before and during the bombing, were classic examples of war propaganda that took various forms, from sophisticated to intellectually offensive.

"In Dorcol and other parts of Belgrade, leaflets were distributed stating in poor Serbian that while people feared bombs, Slobodan Milosevic had villas and yachts in Greece. They didn't realize that such leaflets were for us an association with Nazi Germany and had no effect," she said.

As much more serious and striking examples of war propaganda, Smajlovic points out the case of Racak, the alleged mass executions at a stadium in Pristina, as well as the alleged crimes of Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, and the testimony in The Hague of a journalist whom NATO had declared a victim of "Serbian forces" a few years earlier.

"Even at Slobodan Miloevic's trial and others, they abandoned Racak as a massacre. We know that Walker was waiting for some incident and immediately stated that people in that village were shot in the back of the head. You know, the worst thing about the worst war propaganda is when state authorities and blocs of states organize it. No one from NATO, Brussels, or Washington will say, 'This is not true, this did not happen.' So, the propaganda that has someone's strong political support wins," Smajlovic said.

She recalls that Western media announced at the start of the war that the FC "Pristina" stadium in Pristina had been turned into a concentration camp for 100,000 Albanians, modeled after the National Stadium in Santiago in 1973 in Chile.

"But you had a correspondent from the LA Times who immediately proved that it was one of the biggest lies," Smajlovic noted.

Similarly, she says, there was the alleged role of Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan in Kosovo in 1999.

"When the bombing began, all American journalists were housed in the Hyatt, and Arkan also moved there, making sure the journalists saw him every day. Then we watched a report where George Robertson, NATO Secretary-General, informed that Arkan with his troops was killing Albanian civilians in Kosovo. Western journalists watched that report and knew Arkan was there in the hotel, but no one refuted Robertson. I guess they did not want to argue with the NATO Secretary-General," Smajlovic said.

She adds that it was almost absurd the testimony of the former editor of Koha Ditore at the Hague Tribunal against Slobodan Milosevic.

"Milosevic asked him, 'NATO announced that you were killed?' He laconically replied that it was true but that at the time, he didn't want to refute that information to avoid discrediting NATO. We found that humorous, but that's exactly how it's done in war," Smajlovic said.

Journalist Zoran Stankovic from Gracanica also assesses that wartime propaganda is still present in Kosovo and that many media outlets today favor disinformation or sensationalistic news aimed against Serbs because they profit from it.

"We can only fight with real information against misinformation, but essentially, many media outlets today favor misinformation, they live off it. For them, the most important thing is to create a sensation, even if it is false. And as long as we remain enslaved to sensationalism, nothing will change in journalism. On the contrary, it will get even worse," Stankovic says.

Drawing a parallel between wartime propaganda from 1999 and media reporting in Kosovo today, Stankovic believes that propaganda has always existed and continues daily.

"This happens every day, even today. And not only when it comes to news, but also social media, which we can now call media. Unfortunately, our big drawback is not knowing the Albanian language, so we can't keep up with everything and see everything that's being published there. Almost every day, there are media outlets that push at least one news story that will somehow portray Serbs in a negative context or remind of something that would in some way only fuel hatred. Unfortunately, because of that, these things happen to us," Stankovic warns.

Recalling the propaganda that marked the period before and during 1999, this journalist says that spinning and spreading false news intensified before the war, when several Albanian media and newspapers were launched in Kosovo.

"There has always been propaganda. In the years leading up to the war, there was this spinning, these false news stories. With the emergence and flood of more private media, many new Albanian newspapers came out. They literally started publishing even pictures that were often fake or manipulated. The era of fake news began, as did, of course, the insane belief in everything and anything the media published. I don't think anything has changed to this day. It still exists today," Stankovic emphasizes.

As one of the recent examples, he mentions RTK's reporting on the 20th anniversary of March 17th.

He says that despite Albanian media knowing the truth and the fact that the news 20 years ago about Serbs being responsible for the deaths of Albanian boys was quickly debunked, that story was repeated.

"That one sentence, just slightly differently formulated, gets a completely different connotation with the reader," Stankovic concludes.