The Balkans Are Bereft of ‘Good Guys’ and ‘Bad Guys’ : News Media: By seeming to take sides in the Yugoslav dispute, reporters made themselves targets.

It’s understandable, if not excusable,that Yugoslavian journalists, after undoubtedly contributing to the fall of the former communist regime in this ill-omened country, later turned into loyal adherents of the new nationalist autocrats declaring their rule in various parts of our country.

But how one can explain similarly unobjective behavior by a significant number of my foreign colleagues?

Some Austrian and German journalists, whose nations once had (and perhaps have now) strong property interests in Croatia, Slovenia or other parts of Yugoslavia, showed an age-old antagonism to what they saw as the “Serbian” leanings of the central government and federal institutions. That at least makes some historical sense.

But what of the Americans? The Americans, whose influence on world public opinion is great and becoming greater, to the point that the media’s views even affect American foreign policy.

For example, the Western news media repeatedly labeled the current leadership in Serbia “communists in disguise”--which is, by the way, absolutely true. The problem is that they “forget” that the same breed of people (former communist leaders) are also in top positions in all of the republics, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There are too many other examples of bias to counter individually. I mention one representative example: the coverage of Cable News Network at the end of June, when Slovenia declared its independence. The visuals were almost exclusively of tank columns crashing into little Slovenian towns, air force jets attacking civilian targets and civilians fleeing,terrified, to shelters. When, after the “war,” it became clear that at leastthree times more Yugoslavian army soldiers were killed than Slovenians, it was too late to correct a wrong, one-sided impression.

Over just a few days during this crisis in June and early July, the official attitudes of most European and Western countries underwent a major shift. Even those that had expressed their full support for a united Yugoslavia began to talk more tolerantly about the inalienable right of nations (or peoples) to “self-determination.” This attitude violated the letterand the spirit of Helsinki Final Act. It also opened the door to the later tragic events in Yugoslavia.

What caused the bias of some American journalists? Was it a sincere conviction that they really conceived the truth about the Yugoslav drama? Or is it simply the tendency to picture these conflicts in the frame of classical stereotypes about “good guys” and “bad guys”?

Most probably, both.

But the roots of Yugoslav drama are too numerous and too interwoven to be presented and explained in just one or two stories or programs. Ill-fated Yugoslav reality is the best proof that there really is no such thing as the one and absolute truth.

How many of my American colleagues are fully aware--or aware at all--of the fact that some of their reports have beyond a doubt contributed to the accumulation of hate and mistrust and misfortune in the Balkans? Are they aware that their biggest mistake was taking sides, anyside, in these senseless conflicts?

It’s little or no help that some news organizations seem now to have shifted to a more balanced view, more willing to listen to the different viewpoints, including the central government’s. Now, all sides are furious with the media, and likely to stay that way.

The result: At least 16 journalists and their assistants, Yugoslav and foreign, have been killed by all sides, in less than four months. Some of them were shot, sometimes deliberately, even when it was quite obvious that they were representatives of the press and that they were unarmed. But, to all sides, the press has been on the “opposite” side.