April 18, 1999
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
Elusive Goals for Runners; All in the Family
Related Articles
The Overview: Serb Press On With Expulsions Despite NATO Raids
Issue in Depth: Conflict in Kosovo
Forum
Join a Discussion on The Conflict in Kosovo
By STEVEN ERLANGER
ELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- The new technologies of war reporting provide very little more
clarity about the truth on the
ground than the old ones, but they
have certainly added to the bizarre
and sometimes contradictory efforts by the Yugoslav Government
to shape the reporting of foreign
correspondents.
A long Yugoslav Army bus tour
from Belgrade through a blasted
Kosovo was designed to display the
gruesome scene of an air attack on
a convoy of ethnic Albanians. But
it also allowed the same journalists to report on clear evidence of
the purging of the same ethnic
Albanians from the province.
While the Yugoslav authorities
have warned reporters not to use
satellite telephones, for example,
and often confiscated them, journalists on this trip were entirely
dependent on them to get their
reports out. So in this case, the
Yugoslav Army not only encouraged their use, but facilitated it, at
least in the case of television.
Television imagery is understood to be the key to the propaganda war.
But NATO has knocked out
the already rudimentary telephone
system within Kosovo, as well as
the cellular telephone system,
which in the past had worked in at
least two major towns, Pristina
and Prizren.
So after visiting the sites, television reporters were escorted into
the Prizren hospital to try to file
some pictures -- it had enough
electricity, given generators.
Print and radio reporters, told
nothing in the rush to aid the transmission of video footage, sat on the
ground outside, scribbling stories
longhand and lining up to try to
dictate them on the few satellite
telephones available, hoping to relay something before darkness fell
and the batteries ran out.
The genial reporter and photographer from the New Chinese
News Agency, with the most up-to-date and best-maintained satellite
phone of anyone, hospitably allowed European reporters, with
more urgent deadlines, to use it at
a nonprofit rate. They did insist on
getting carefully timed receipts,
however, since they said that their
bosses normally let them use the
satellite phone only to dial their
agency's telephone numbers.
That night, the army deemed it
unsafe to drive through Kosovo. So
we were housed in a ski resort
hotel -- the Hotel Narcis -- which
had been locked up since the foreign monitors of the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in
Europe had left Kosovo, just before the bombing war.
When the hotel was finally unlocked, there was no electricity in
the rooms or hot water, just the
thin, watery light in the lobby from
a generator. So it proved impossible to recharge the satellite
phones, frustrating the cable news
channels, which like to chat with
their reporters every hour.
When the bus finally neared Belgrade the next day, getting close to
cell phone range, every person had
their phones on their laps, staring
at them until some glint of signal
appeared. Immediately, the bus
broke into a tower of Babel, with
shouted and simultaneous conversations in Serbian, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese,
Japanese, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek.
When the bus suddenly passed
out of cell phone range again, the
silence was immediate and shocking, as if there had been a collective death in the family.
At a rest and gasoline stop, within cell phone range, there was the
odd tableau, seen from behind, of
four male reporters, all relieving
themselves in a field, by a fence,
each with a cell phone clamped to
his right ear.
Elusive Goals for Runners
In the bizarre world of wartime
Belgrade in the spring, Saturday saw
the running of a marathon sponsored by the International Amateur Athletic Federation and dedicated to the memory of Fred Lebow, who founded the New York
Marathon.
And after a cold bitter morning
downpour, the runners ran under a
clearing sky -- "good bombing
weather," as one caustic Serb
named Vladimir said Saturday.
The marathon was intended, according to the Federation president, Primo Nebiolo, to symbolize
the role of athletics as a "means of
getting to know and respect others
of differing ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious origins."
Asked for his reaction, Vladimir,
who requested that his surname
not be used because he works for a
Government media outlet, laughed
and said, "It seems a little late for
all that, doesn't it?" He noted that
Yugoslavia has been ripping itself
apart for the last 10 years over just
those very issues, and that the
Kosovo war is only the latest example of "the Balkan inability to
be Americans, no matter how
many bombs you drop."
At least one American, Zane
Branson, ran the race. Branson, who lives in Britain, was one
of the organizers. In a letter to the
press, he praised Belgrade for being "a warm, creative and courageous city."
The marathon began in Terazije
Square and passed by the wreckage of the Yugoslav and Serbian
Interior Ministry buildings, which
face each other on Kneza Milosa
street and which were bombed the
same night by American and British cruise missiles.
The runners also passed some of
the more clever and professional
billboards now appearing in Belgrade. One of the latest shows a
picture of the Eiffel Tower collapsing in flames and the words: "Just
Imagine. Stop the Bombs."
In another example of the use of
sports for political ends, just as
sincere and naïve as the marathon,
perhaps, another billboard shows
one of Belgrade's top soccer
teams, Red Star, over the same
slogan: "Stop the Bombs."
Son in Uniform
n the mysterious realm of the
Milosevic family, the son of President Slobodan Milosevic, Marko,
has reappeared on state television
and in the pages of the Government-run Politika daily -- and in
uniform.
British officials had announced
that Marko had run away to Crete
and had been excused by his father
from military service. But in
Wednesday's news and newspaper
he was shown in the family hometown of Pozarevac, where he owns
a large discothèque called "Madona" and other businesses.
Not long ago, he was also on
television in a sort of paramilitary
uniform of black, with dyed yellow,
punkish hair.
This week, he was in a regular
Yugoslav Army uniform, pictured
with his 3-month-old son, also
named Marko, and wife Milica.
Some Serbs have wondered privately if NATO is so interested in
stopping the war, why it has not
targeted any Milosevic businesses
in Pozarevac. To these Serbs, in
any event, it is only one more proof
that Milosevic and President
Clinton are really in cahoots over
this war, which is designed, they
say, to boost the political fortunes
of both of them.
