MEDIA STUDIES
Never heard of Living Marxism?
Thanks to ITN's writ, you have now
STEPHEN GLOVER
L'ving Marxism is not a magazine which will be very familiar to most Spectator read- ers. It is published by the British Revolu- tionary Communist Party, and sells 10,000 copies a month at a cover price of £2.50. The causes it espouses are a ragbag. During the Gulf war it rooted for Saddam Hussein. In Bosnia it cheered on the Serbs. After Dunblane it opposed proposals to limit the use of guns. Most eccentrically of all, the magazine was sympathetic to Neil Hamil- ton's candidature in Tatton.
For all its apparent dottiness, the publi- cation would have remained a well-kept secret for aficionados had it not been for ITN. This news organisation is suing Living Marxism over its publication in February of an article by Thomas Deichmann about ITN's reporting in Bosnia. As a result of this writ, the magazine is making a huge issue of press freedom. There have been demonstrations (I ran into one a couple of months ago in Oxford) and a public meet- ing in Church House in Westminster.
Two weeks ago a letter appeared in The Spectator under the headline 'Press Free- dom'. The signatories were a disparate bunch including Noam .Chomsky, Phillip Knightley, Roy Greenslade and Auberon Waugh. The letter complained that 'a major news broadcaster is using libel laws to thwart an open press and this has serious implica- tions for journalists.' It urged all journalists `to support LM against the libel writ, and defend a free press and open debate'.
Well, should we? The natural sympathies of many of us will be with a small publica- tion, even a slightly lunatic one published by the British Revolutionary Communist Party, when it is set upon by a large and powerful outfit like ITN. It seems a piece of bullying on the broadcaster's part. The magazine may be driven out of business. Add to this the superficial plausibility of Thomas Deich- mann's case against ITN, and your immedi- ate inclination may be to contribute to Living Marxism's fighting fund.
Mr Deichmann's article alleged that an ITN crew led by Penny Marshall gave a false impression of conditions in Trnopolje camp in north west Bosnia which they visit- ed on 5 August 1992. The ITN team pro- duced a film which showed a starving man, Fikret Alic, standing behind a barbed-wire fence in the company of others in a Bosni- an Serb camp. This horrifying photograph was later reproduced in newspapers around the world, including the Daily Mirror, which published it under the headline `Belsen 92.' It was probably the most influential image of the war, and persuaded many people that the Serbs were evil aggressors.
Mr Deichmann alleges it was a put-up job. Relying on unused ITN footage which he has mysteriously produced, as well as on a film shot at the same time by a Bosnian Serb crew, he argues that Fikret Alic was in fact standing outside a barbed-wire fence, not inside as the film clip suggests. In fact he suggest that there was no barbed-wire fence surrounding Tmopolje camp, only an internal fence inside a small enclosure next to the camp. He furthermore suggests that conditions .in the camp were generally good, and cites pictures of apparently well- fed looking people.
I am in no position to pass a definitive judgment on Mr Deichmann's allegations. It seems rather unimportant that he did not visit Bosnia until 1993, and that he is regard- ed in his own country, Germany, as a pretty obscure journalist. However, it is impossible to overlook the recent appearance of Fikret Alic during a talk by Mr Deichmann in Bonn. The former inmate of Tmopolje camp assert- ed that 'We were 100 per cent behind barbed-wire.' Some of this wire, Mr Alic said, was dismantled before the visit of the ITN crew. When I mentioned Mr Alic's statement to a spokesman for Living Marxism, she in effect said that he was lying.
Nor can we set aside Living Marxism's extreme pro-Serbian views which put it in sympathy with Mr Deichmann. It has been alleged, and denied, that the magazine has received Serbian funds. This is no more than a supposition based on the fact that a glossy, low circulation publication carrying practically no advertising manages to sur- vive at all. What is beyond dispute is that Living Marxism has argued that the Bosnian Serbs neither practised ethnic cleansing nor created what the rest of the world has cho- sen to regard as concentration camps. It apparently hopes to use Mr Deichmann's allegations to bolster a general point, which is not true. There is surely now enough evi- dence from numerous sources to support the existence of several Serbian-run 'death camps' of which Trnopolje seems to have been one of the least disagreeable.
This does not mean that the ITN crew may not have been guilty of sensationalism in its report of what happened in Tmopol- je. Manipulation of the facts is, of course, an altogether more serious charge. I can understand why ITN felt so stung, but it was surely an awful mistake to dignify the allegations of an unknown journalist and an unheard-of magazine with a writ. So long as this matter proceeds, the waters are bound to be muddied in a way that will hardly be to the benefit of the broadcaster. Even if it wins, ITN will be represented as the mean giant which slew the foolish dwarf.
After my piece last week about the Independent, an angry gentleman called Brendan Hopkins rang me to deny that the newspaper and its Sunday sister were for sale. He is the right-hand man in London of the press tycoon Tony O'Reilly. I told him that my point had been that they should be for sale rather than that they were. I had enumerated several impedi- ments to their immediate auction. Mr Hop- kins complained that the headline (Tor sale: two Independents and one Observer (reduced)') could have fooled him. I replied that our editor is a poet, and it is always advisable to read the copy.
Mr Hopkins also denied that his boss, whose company owns 46 per cent of the Independent titles, had had a recent meet- ing with Mohamed Al Fayed to discuss the sale of the papers. I said that Mr Al Fayed had told me eight weeks ago that he was on the point of meeting Dr O'Reilly for this very purpose. I then rang Mr Al Fayed's man, Michael Cole, who said that the meet- ing had not taken place after all, though Mr Al Fayed was hopeful that it would do so soon. However, it appears that during the last six months Mr Al Fayed has had at least one meeting with David Montgomery, chief executive of Mirror Group Newspa- pers, which speaks for another 46 per cent of the Independent titles.
Mr Hopkins maintains these newspapers are not for sale. But I don't think this means they won't one day be sold.
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