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BELGRADE,
April 23, RTS building
Radio Television of
Serbia Central Building, in the
centre of Belgrade, was bombed
tonight. According to initial reports,
many people have been injured and
some have been killed. NATO's
interpretation of the term "media
war" has finally been defined. There
is real war going on against the
media. The level of brutality and
animosity of this attack had shocked
everyone. It was well known that
people (journalists as well as
technical and support staff) were
always present inside offices and
studios, due to 24hr-day
broadcasting
schedules.
Western media as well as NATO
military campaign against media in
Serbia have been going on for days.
TV transmitters were being hit and
some stations were unable to go on
air. Information within Serbia is
slowly fading into darkness. Every
night fresh news, containing reports
of another transmitter destroyed and
another channel shut, are arriving.
As the NATO HQ speaks, these
actions are performed in order to
diminish the coverage of RTS
broadcast area, because RTS is
claimed to be "Too narrow and is
not reporting in the appropriate
manner."
However, destroyed transmitters,
were not RTS owned but are
property of the state. They have
been used for many different links
from public to government. Many
private and non-Government media
have been taken off air. By ranking
the action against "media
dictatorship" very high on its priority
chart, NATO brutally slammed its
own principles. It simply made one
point of view disappear. By
crushing transmitters and links,
many goals of human rights
movement were also crushed, yet
they were proclaimed to be high on
NATO's priority list during press
briefs.
It makes no difference if NATO
agreed with RTS's policies, it should
not have allowed itself to stop the
broadcast by destroying the RTS
network. This is a violent, barbaric
act, because one side in
conflict is denied the chance to
speak for itself.
There are periodical broadcasts of
NATO's channel happening on
many channels in Serbia. It has been
noted that most of the
transmitters that could obstruct the
NATO broadcast were targeted. It
is reported that NATO program for
the time being could be seen on
21st UHF channel throughout the
northern Serbia and Belgrade area
while occasionally radio broadcasts
were captured on 92.5, 102.2,
106.4 FM and 1003 AM. Radio
and TV stations that used these
frequencies were housed in
Business Centre USCE, destroyed
on April 22nd.
Human victims and blood curdling
pictures from tonight's missile attack
on Serbian
Radio-Television headquarters have
opened a new, sickening, dimension
in media relations.
Targeting a TV centre is a barbaric
act world has never seen before.
Does this mean that Serbs are free
to destroy CNN or BBC centres?
What would the world media say if
we followed NATO's example? Or
how would foreign journalists,
presently reporting from Yugoslavia,
feel about meeting the same destiny
as their Yugoslav colleagues from
downtown Belgrade? After all, this
is a WAR?!
Will they meet the same fate as
RTS? The only remaining voice of
"the other side in this war" is coming
over the Internet. Is world`s only
toll-free media going to be censored
by cutting Yugoslav links from the
rest of the world? Are the people of
the world going to loose the
opportunity to see both sides of the
story and to make educated
conclusions? The question that
remains is ""Are we, the Internet
media, now NATO's targets?
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