NEWS ANALYSIS : In Reversal, Bosnia Government Is Now Pulling Plug on Media

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — For most of Bosnia’s three-year war, the government has welcomed media coverage and international attention to the massacres and other atrocities committed by Bosnian Serbs.

Searing photographic images of children and the elderly being killed as they shopped in markets or as they waited in line for bread helped cement Bosnia’s image as the victim. The world’s outrage was the best chance for saving Sarajevo, many here believed.

It came as a surprise, then, when authorities in the capital imposed restrictions last week on television coverage and sought to limit the movements of reporters and international observers.

The new attitude in part reflects the fact that Bosnia-Herzegovina has just about given up on the world, which seems to have lost interest in the daily toll of death and destruction.

But more important, the restrictions came as the Bosnian government mounted its most ambitious military offensive of the war--and amid numerous signs that the offensive was not going too well for the government.

During the first days of the offensive, foreign television crews were banned altogether from the streets of Sarajevo. Later, they were limited in where they could go and what they could film.

Finally, they were barred from the roof of the Sarajevo television complex, where the world’s networks have set up shop, after British Sky Television broadcast pictures of the Bosnian Serb shelling of a Bosnian army tank perched on a nearby hill.

The latest offensive started June 15, when the Bosnian military poured an estimated 15,000 troops into a multi-pronged attempt to puncture the 38-month-old siege of Sarajevo.

The army attacked from the north, west and south, toward Bosnian Serb forces ringing the city, and recovered small portions of Serb-held territory.

But the offensive appeared to falter as the Bosnian Serbs retook some of the land and the government suffered high casualties.

Both sides, but especially the government army, are believed to suffer ammunition shortages and resupply problems.

The Bosnian Serbs responded to the offensive by shelling Sarajevo, and the restrictions on coverage continued.

A week into the military campaign, the nationalist Serbs fired a mortar into a crowd of people waiting for water in a Sarajevo suburb. Army officers sealed off the area and tried to confiscate footage of the aftermath, which showed bodies lying amid scattered water canisters.

But it was too late. The images had already been broadcast to the world. The army officers then demanded a meeting with network representatives to lay down the law.

“The army got extremely upset,” said Faridoun Hemani, Central-Eastern Europe bureau chief for Worldwide Television News, one of the principal television agencies covering the war. “They said we were working against the interests of the Bosnian government.”

Some of the camera crews and support staffs, many of whom are Bosnian nationals, feared that they would be arrested or drafted, even though no such direct threat was made publicly.

The army told the journalists that it feared the footage could help the Bosnian Serbs better pinpoint their targets. Of at least equal concern, the journalists were told, was the danger that the images would hurt national morale.

Every government imposes some sort of press censorship in wartime, and no one can blame the government forces for wanting to keep their battle plans discreet. The rebel Serbs have long operated under strict media blackouts.

At work now, however, is the basic conflict of Sarajevo wanting to maintain its image as victim while not publicizing the losses in a way that will erode public support for the offensive, analysts and officials say.

Two senior Bosnian officials--one civilian, one military--said the government erred in raising public expectations about the offensive, which many ordinary Sarajevans believed would free them quickly from the besieging Serbs.

With expectations raised unrealistically, the government was faced with having to make sure that victories were emphasized and defeats minimized.

Since the start of the offensive, journalists have frequently been barred from hospitals, a routine source of information and the scene of reporting in the past.

U.N. military observers, whose job is to confirm casualty figures, have also been told that they may not visit hospitals, said Lt. Col. Gary Coward, the U.N. military spokesman.

“I can only assume that they do not want us to report on [military] casualties,” Coward said. “They were quite content in the past for us to confirm civilian casualties.”

On Sunday, reporters had free access to the city’s Kosevo Hospital after Bosnian Serb shells killed nine people, including four children.

The journalists were eventually ejected, but in this case, according to several present, the press brought the action on itself when overzealous photographers interfered with doctors tending the wounded.

Military casualties have been high, but neither side has released reliable information.

Obituaries in Sarajevo’s daily newspaper Oslobodjenje show that many soldiers have been killed, even as the same newspaper trumpets army victories.

Coward added that there has been a marked change in the relationship between the United Nations and the Bosnian government and military.

U.N. freedom of movement, always restricted in rebel Serb-held territory, has now been substantially cut in government territory.

“Whenever offensive action takes place, there is a move to marginalize our presence, access and visibility. They would like to keep the action at the front lines, and the impact of that action, to themselves,” he said.

Coward acknowledged that a U.N. official “went far too far” by telling reporters before the offensive was launched that Bosnian government troops were massing north of Sarajevo. The U.N. official’s revelations gave advance publicity to what should have been a secret military action.

As for the restrictions, several television outfits said they could work around them. They said they view the rules more as an inconvenience than overt censorship.

“We don’t stand around like vultures waiting for sniper victims like we did before,” WTN’s Hemani said. “I guess the restrictions made that decision for us.”