GLAMOUR WITHOUT RESPONSIBILITY

Kenneth Roberts, who works with the UN

forces in Bosnia, says that journalists there should be held accountable for their actions

Sarajevo LATE LAST YEAR the Bosnian peace talks reached what should have been a watershed. The mediators of the interna- tional conference on the former Yugoslavia persuaded the leaders of the three Bosnian factions to meet, along with the Presidents of Croatia and Yugoslavia. The partici- pants flew in for six precious hours of talks. Pressure was on the Croats to cede Muslim access to the sea. The mediators split the parties in order to talk confidentially to each and feel out potential concessions. Agreement seemed in the air, but when the session reconvened, the Croats declared that they were no longer willing to talk to the perfidious Muslims, who had taken advantage of this meeting to launch an all- out offensive on Croat positions along the front line. Unless President Izetbegovic ordered an immediate ceasefire, they would leave the negotiations.

Surprised and harassed officials ran off to telephone the UN headquarters in Zagreb. What was happening? How much territory had the Muslims gained in this surprise attack? UN headquarters, never famous for its split-second reactions, expressed itself puzzled: no offensive, they declared. But the Croats would not be con- vinced — their source was reliable. The telephones hummed once more, this time to individual UN units in Bosnia. The British reported an unusually quiet day in Gornji Vakuf and occasional sniping in Vitez. The Spanish could detect no fight- ing in Jablanica, and in Mostar the only shelling was coming from Croat positions. Faxed reports were hurriedly composed and transmitted, the Croats eventually accepting grumpily that there was no offen- sive. Some suspicion remained, though, for the UN was seen as less reliable than the source still transmitting details of the non- existent offensive — the BBC World Ser- vice. The story of the Muslim push was also carried by two British broadsheets the fol- lowing morning.

Around the same time, members of the Bosnian Armija's 'Muslimanski Brigade' descended on the Croat village of Uzdol in central Bosnia, killing each living thing they found. British troops went to the scene to verify details. Camera crews duly followed, and the BBC's Kate Adie reported on both the 6 o'clock and the 9 o'clock news yet another atrocity against the Muslims, per- petrated by the Croats. The following day the reporter corrected the facts of the story, but not before the warped version had drawn a complaint from the Croatian government.

Two factual errors were made by the BBC, though they could have been com- mitted by any of the news teams visiting Bosnia on whistle-stop tours. Anyone can make mistakes, and most of us do. But when our mistakes touch on matters of such importance, most of us would expect to suffer for their commission, as would the public which entrusts us with our duty. It is unlikely that an official who, through gross misintepretation of the facts, disrupted potentially vital negotiations on Bosnia would long survive the wrath of Owen. And if the media got hold of his misde- meanours, his end would be much has- tened. But the same media seem curiously unwilling to seek out or discipline offend- ers in their own ranks, especially when they are of the near-film-star variety which has fronted much of the Bosnian war.

The power of the modern journalist, especially the television journalist, is nowhere more apparent than in Bosnia. The war is about territory, but no nation in

the West wants the territory. Our involve- ment there is based on the need for action to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population. Emotion rather than political or practical interest drives the public opin- ion that steels western governments to send troops. And that emotion is turned on and off, amplified and diminished, by the nature of the war's reporting.

For some correspondents this is as things should be: journalists as participants rather than spectators — people who make things happen in the face of reluctant or callous governments. This is frequently true, and often admirable. But, unlike those govern- ments, the press has no proper accountabil- ity for the consequences of its actions. Should those be dire, no heads roll in Fleet Street, Bush House or Television Centre.

The dangerous potential of reporting does not stem only from factual errors such as the earlier examples. With the power of the camera or pen to expose and exhort inevitably comes an equal and opposite potential to conceal and delude. What appears on television is true and immediate and influences opinion and policy. What fails to appear effectively never happens.

One example of this is the relentless con- centration of the press on Sarajevo. Per- haps surprisingly, Sarajevo is the simplest part of Bosnia to cover. A journalist may fly from Heathrow in the morning and, on a good day, be in Sarajevo by nightfall. He can travel via Italy, where he picks up a UN flight which will take him, free, to Sarajevo in the company of several tons of lentils. On arrival, he will live at the Holi- day Inn on black-market meat and drink and sally forth in a flak jacket to make his report and, possibly, his career.

The fact is that no one is starving in Sarajevo, or ever has been. One look at the quantity of goods on sale in the markets, or one encounter with a besuited Sarajevo government delegation visiting central Bosnia, is enough to disprove the much- peddled image of a city totally besieged and isolated. That image has distracted world attention from more needy cases. Nato has forced a Serb withdrawal from Sarajevo while the suffering and devasta- tion in Mostar (inflicted by the Croats) is far in excess of anything Sarajevo has expe- rienced. And Maglaj, cut off by Serb forces since last summer, has only seen one out- side visitor — the UNHCR's doughty Larry Hollingworth.

In some ways the media's concentration on Sarajevo has also worsened the plight of its inhabitants. Last year the American- based International Relief Committee devoted much time and effort to a clever scheme to restore running water to around 60,000 homes in the city. Though complet- ed many months ago, the operation of the project is still being obstructed by the Sara- jevo government. One of the IRC officials resignedly summed up the government's reasoning: 'They don't want to diminish the suffering Muslim image.'

The Bosnian government, desperate for the outside world to engage militarily, is quite capable of inflicting short-term suf- fering on its people for that long-term goal. For some time now, there have been UN mutterings about the Muslims shelling their own people in bread queues or mar- kets. Perhaps driven by a natural sympathy for the abused Muslims, journalists appear to be unwilling to probe such potentially sensational scoops with the enthusiasm they normally employ in pursuit of the truth. The Sarajevo market shelling attract- ed swarms of reporters, but none returned to investigate the possibility of it being a Muslim shell, or to film the 24-hour armed guard which has subsequently kept visitors away from the crater — surely odd behaviour in a city which has received any- thing up to 3,500 shells daily.

None of this diminishes the indispens-

ability of the media in Bosnia. Without coverage of Serb concentration camps or Croat massacres, it is highly likely that gov- ernments around the world would have felt able to ignore the humanitarian issue and concentrate on the more pragmatic busi- ness of preventing the spread of hostilities to neighbouring countries. Exposure of UN corruption has led to dismissals of offend- ing officials. The appearance of a camera crew has on several occasions halted, or at least postponed, atrocities which the perpe- trators would prefer to be conducted in pri- vate. More than one British commander on the ground has remarked that the press is the only truly effective weapon. British journalists have been well to the fore of the pack and must take or share the credit for prompting many initiatives, from the issu- ing of improved flak jackets to British troops, to the issuing of a Nato ultimatum to the Serbs.

But with such credit and such power should come a heavy responsibility. If CNN's live coverage of the Sarajevo mar- ket shelling can prompt such outrage in the West as to drive previously reluctant politi- cians to take Nato to the brink of a Balkan war, CNN ought first to ensure that it is presenting the actual facts. But instant reporting precludes analysis and verifica- tion. A shell landed in a Sarajevo market and 66 people died. We assume, because CNN so assumes, that the Serbs fired the shell. Nato therefore takes action against the Serbs. But if we should discover, after several bombing raids and the deaths of UN troops under Serb shells, that the CNN reporter had had a bad day, like the BBC journalist at Uzdol, or that the Muslims had manipulated him to their own ends, what sanctions apply? None. Complaints by politicians are dismissed as attempts to muzzle the monitoring press. No regulatory body can take action, nor is any libel court 'likely to entertain Dr Karadzic's claim for defamation.

The uncomfortable fact is that we, the viewing and pressurising public, must rely entirely on the individual reporter's integri- ty, diligence and, if necessary, willingness to sacrifice career opportunities in order to relay the whole truth. Such reliance is unparalleled elsewhere in public life. The media might do well to reassure their pub- lic that they are willing to act against those of their number whose actions provoke unpleasant consequences.

A reasonable starting point might be to despatch to central Bosnia those reporters whose breathless pieces last summer gave birth to Operation Irma. They could report, belatedly, on one side-effect of their crusading journalism — the patients who died in Muslim hospitals when the Croats, enraged at the partiality of the British response to Irma, blocked the planned UN evacuation of casualties.