01. 07. 2005

MEDIA AT WAR – “CREATING THE FEAR”

THE HAGUE, July 01, 2005 – The Serbian Democratic Party used their control over media to convince the Serbs that they were facing the extinction in 1992, said the Guardian journalist in the Hague. Serbian Democratic Party had successfully established the control over media in their region in the beginning of 1992, and used them to create fear of extinctions of the Serbs living in the Bosnia and Herzegovina and convince them in genocidal tendencies of the Croats and Bosniaks, said the British journalist Mark Thompson on the trial of the Serbian Democratic Party leader Momcilo Krajisnik. Author of the book “Plotting the war – media in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia” also said that media in Republic of Srpska acted not only as “protectors of democracy”, but on the contrary were used as stifle the information that was not in line with the standpoints of the Party. Thompson was reporting for the British Guardian from former Yugoslavia in 1992, investigating problems which he later tackled in his books. Thompson pointed out that the information in media under control of the Serbian Democratic Party “were not overstated warnings, but fabricated threats of the most serious kind – that the ghost of genocide was hanging above the heads of Serbian population. In situation like this, all means of self-defense were justified”, said Thompson. “Media were supposed to investigate such serious political statements, but they didn’t do it”, said Thompson.