A War on Information in the Balkans : The press finds itself under fire--sometimes literally--from several directions

As war continues in the Balkans with equally little prospect either for victory by one side or for peace, it becomes steadily more tempting for foreign governments to pronounce all sides equally reprehensible.

If all are equally bad, then intervening for one against another must also be reprehensible. And since, on unrelated grounds, the West has clearly decided not to intervene, it is happy to have this balm for its troubled conscience.

Full reporting of the facts might prevent the balm of perfect neutrality from having its intended effect, but full reporting--never easy in war--has been particularly difficult in the Balkans.

Serbia-Montenegro--what remains of the former Yugoslav federation--has passed from communism directly to fascism. Under either system, the press is a tool of the state. And, judging the world press by its own standards, the Serbs commonly regard it as an extension of the same world political consensus that supports severe economic sanctions against them. The press also receives intermittently hostile treatment from the Bosnians, who see themselves deceived by the West, and from the Croats, whose own press has degenerated to propaganda and who believe that they have lost territory through Western complicity with the Serbs.

One result: 35 journalists killed in Bosnia and Croatia during the past two years; dozens more wounded, attacked, abducted or subjected to the confiscation of their equipment, often with specific reference to stories they had written. The further, inevitable result: an erosion in the quality of battlefield reporting from this war.

Hostility on the part of the belligerents cannot easily be remedied, but a less-well-known part of the problem is coolness toward the press on the part of the United Nations. The world body has been increasingly reluctant to maintain its policy of transporting accredited journalists on relief flights on a space-available basis, claiming that it fears lawsuits by journalists in the event of a crash. The Committee to Protect Journalists, however, has rightly urged the use on flights of the same simple liability waiver that the United Nations has required of journalists riding its personnel carriers in Sarajevo. Last June, according to a report in the fall CPJ Quarterly, U.N. Undersecretary General Kofi Annan promised an end to discrimination against the press, but so far no change has come.

Information is vital to the functioning of the United Nations in the Balkans if only because it is vital to maintaining an international awareness of the region and its needs. Perhaps the U.N. role in the Balkans is nearing an end; but so long as the international body has any kind of on-the-ground role in the area, it should treat the press as its ally.