Italy's perspective on Kosovo. 

The most widespread opinion among the Italian non-governmental
organisations, pacifist associations and volunteers for international co-
operation is that the mass media failed to use all the means at their
disposal to prevent the escalation of violence in Kosovo.

Before the bombing: scant attention to Kosovo. 

In 1993, "Campagna Kosovo", a campaign to prevent the conflict between
Serbs and Albanians was launched in Italy. In the first years of the
conflict, "ethnic cleansing" was still to come, but the Albanian population
had already had to give up its language and cultural identity and to suffer
abuses from the local police as well as the progressive loss of their civil
rights. Unfortunately, these acts of violence were not sufficient to
attract the attention of either the media or the Western governments: for
several years, the appeals and protests of Campagna Kosovo were ignored.

Such silence and lack of interest reached their peak on December 8, 1998,
only a couple of months from the bombing, when a group of several hundred
Italian volunteers went to Kosovo on a pacifist march entitled "I Care", to
awaken the media to the Balkan problem. None of the information networks
commented on this initiative, regardless of the effort of the associations
that had organised this "peace journey" to involve the press and the TV.
The whole initiative went almost unnoticed, as the information networks
appeared to be completely uninterested. It is sad that the media
concentrate on a particular area only when weapons enter the scene. Most
unfortunately, peaceful mediation does not make the headlines. Solvable
problems are ignored by the media, until they deteriorate enough to deserve
worldwide attention. Conflicts between states are granted media coverage
only when they are spectacular enough, when they become tragedy, when they
entail massacres, mass deportation and international military action. This
is how the Italian media, pursuing only the most sensational news, gave up
their role in the prevention of conflicts and in an effective research of
peaceful solutions, right from the start.

During the bombing: a shallow attitude. 

During wars, information is propaganda, especially if it comes from the
parties that are directly involved in the conflict. In the days of the
Kosovo bombing, the media in Italy, too, became propaganda tools and
forcefully affirmed an idea, presenting it as the absolute truth: "the only
possible solution to the conflict between Serbian and Albanians citizens of
Kosovo is a military intervention, namely, severe air strikes".

The tools of propaganda. 

Many tools were used to make the bombing morally acceptable: preference of
certain sources, use of images with a strong emotional impact (e.g.
children, women, refugees), omission of certain information, especially all
the possible alternatives to the war, instrumental use of language and
vocabulary which was favourable to the use of military force,
personification of the conflict (e.g. 'war AGAINST Milosevic' rather than
FOR Kosovo), hasty information with little space for relflexion, doubts and
insight.

Regarding the preference of certain sources, it should be noticed that the
information coming from NATO was given much more credit and reliance than
the information coming from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. From the
beginning, Italy and the Italian journalists decided to believe the version
provided by their own allies, without making an effort to look for
impartial information from unconcerned parties. On several occasions, the
data provided by NATO, or more precisely by the US highest military
authorities, were used by the Italian newspapers and television channels
without even quoting the source, and often without any previous check. On
the other hand, data from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were always
presented as "Serbian sources".

Another example of information which proved not to be too correct was
offered by the Italian weekly "Panorama": on April 9, 1999 "Panorama"
published shocking pictures of a tragic massacre, with a strong emotional
impact on the readership. Such images were described as an instance of
ethnic cleansing which had happened 48 hours before. In fact, those photos
had already been published by the Italian weekly "L'Espresso" on March 19,
1998.  The journalists of "Panorama" apologised to their readers, saying
that the important thing was the substance of the article, and that,
anyway, those images "show why we cannot and should not negotiate with
Milosevic". Undoubtedly, such a statement did not play in favour of
diplomatic activities: on the contrary, it exacerbated the hostility of the
parties at war.


Unilateral information. 

For many weeks, newspapers, magazines and TV channels used all their
energies to prove the brutality and criminal violence of Milosevic's acts
and this made the analysis of all the possible alternatives to NATO's
action more difficult. Besides, the detailed descriptions of crime
committed by the Serbs against the Albanians were not accompanied by an
equally precise description of the criminal nature of the KLA (or "Uçk",
Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves), "Kosovo Liberation Army". Only a few dailies
quoted the reports either from the Geopolitical Drug Watch, the European
Board of Control on Drugs, or from DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration),
the American organisation against drug traffic: these reports highlight the
connection between the KLA and organised crime, traffic in drugs and arm
dealers.

The alternative

OECD observers have said several times that their interposition and
monitoring could have been more effective with a larger contingent and with
more support from OECD member states, and that it would have been crucial
for the restoration of human rights in Kosovo. Unfortunately, very few
Italian newspapers took their statements into any consideration, whereas
the television ignored them completely.

The prevailing idea that the Italians developed is that there was no
alternative to the bombing to restore justice in Kosovo, but this is simply
not true. What is true is that the Italian journalists have not been
capable of describing the alternatives to the bombing in a thorough way and
they have chosen to give voice only to diplomatic corps, politicians and
military experts: in the majority of cases, however, these have not been
able to propose alternatives to the military action or it was not in their
interests to do so.

Simplified and prejudiced information. 

Another feature of information in Italy during the war is that it presented
definitive solutions to a complex situation such as the one in Kosovo:
these interpretations left no room for doubts, very little for analytical
tools, and too much for synthesis and simplification. Such synthesis and
simplification have erased all the shades of meaning, uncertainties,
possible doubts and objections about the "inevitability" of the
intervention. The image of the war, as depicted by the mass media, was
flat, in black and white: it was the image of an action taken by the "good
guys" against the "bad guys", a fight between the Indians and the cow-boys.
The lack of analysis and insight has not allowed us to understand that
ethnic cleansing arised not only because of the violence of Slobodan
Milosevic's regime, but also from the indifference of our governments,
which have deliberately ignored the problem in Kosovo until the situation
became unbearable. The responsibilities for the humanitarian tragedy in
Kosovo do not lie only with the people who carried out ethnic cleansing
materially, but also with all the countries and politicians who failed to
try and prevent an escalation of violence and who did not want to use their
economic and political influence to try and stop the ethnic cleansing even
before it actually started. The superficial attitude of many of the Italian
information networks during the conflict hindered an insightful analysis of
the economic interests and geopolitical strategies: since March 24, 1999,
these have transformed Europe into a passive spectator who was impotent
about the systematic violation of human rights in Kosovo.

The Normalisation.

After 78 days of bombing, there was a need to reassure the public opinion,
who had started to ask questions about the possibility of an extension of
the conflict in case Russia got involved. The "happy ending", with the
arrival of the "peace force" in Kosovo, is only an apparently reassuring
façade that the press and the TV have shown of what is in fact the
beginning of a big crisis that will involve everyone. It is irresponsible
to pretend that everything has turned out well, when we caused an
environmental state of emergency that we will pay the consequences of for
decades, covered the Balkans with cluster bombs, which are equal to
antipersonnel mines (the first to cause casualties within the peace force),
when the hatred and violence that had used to divide the Serbs from the
Albanians were aggravated rather than solved by the conflict, and finally,
when an army supported by the mafia and drug traffic is recognised as the
official police force to which Kosovo will be delivered.

The role of the alternative information media. 

This is perhaps the first war in history which was also fought in
"Cyberspace", with the creation of an alternative circuit of information,
via the Internet. Besides the "official" information released by press
agencies, newspapers and the TV, a grass-root network of information has
developed, thanks to the initiative of citizens and groups of volunteers:
these people were interested in analysing the problems of Kosovo critically
and in depth, while at the same time taking an active role in the
production of information. On the Internet, it was possible to spread
information which was too  lengthy for newspapers and TV broadcasts, such
as the full text of the Rambouillet agreement or scientific reports on the
effects of depleted uranium in antitank bullets: nevertheless, this
information helped people understand the process by which we arrived at a
military intervention as well as the consequences of the bombing. Thanks to
the greater availability of information, the possibility to verify
statements and data produced by the two contending party was also greater.
For the first time in history, the civilian populations involved in the war
were able to speak to each other directly, via e-mail, without being
controlled by either their governments or the military authorities. The
effect of the bombing were described in real time, by people who were
writing e-mail messages while they heard the air raid siren or the noise of
window panes which exploded as a consequence of the shock wave produced by
the blasts. The most effective testimonies were the "war diaries" written
on the Internet by Sasa Zograf, a comic-strip artist who lives and works in
Pancevo, and by Djordje Vidanovic, a professor of Linguistics at the
University of Nis: in one of his messages, he gave a first-hand report of
the facts that took place in the Nis market on May, 7, 1999, when NATO's
cluster bombs - which should have hit the airport, located at about 6 kms-
caused dozens of civilian casualties. The use of e-mail also allowed a
better co-ordinated and more effective action of all the pacifict
associations and movements, which were able to share information and
organise themselves at a distance and at very low costs.

The effective use of the Internet as a tool to contrast war propaganda has
demonstrated that, in the information society, war can no longer exist in
its own right: it needs support from the mass media to be legitimated and
advocated on humanitarian grounds. This is possible with the help of the
mass media themselves, which provide an acceptable and moral motive for
military actions. In a society where the mass media play an increasingly
substantial role, power does no longer lie only in the control of the means
of production, but also in the control of the media: for the wars of the
new millennium, shallow and faithful support from the media will be no less
crucial that support from the arm industry.

Carlo Gubitosa <c.gubitosa@peacelink.it>
Sabrina Fusari <safusar@tin.it>

Associazione PeaceLink - Telematica per la Pace http://www.peacelink.it 
Info@peacelink.it ; P.O. Box 2009 - 74100 TARANTO - Italy
Phone no. ++39-099-7303686; Fax no.: ++39-06-57290945


PeaceLink is an information charity using telecommunication tools to
promote peace, non-violence, human rights, liberation of oppressed peoples,
protection of the environment and freedom of expression. Since 1992,
PeaceLink has worked on line and in the real world to give voice to those
who do not have a voice.