(Il premio Pulitzer che nel 1993 fu assegnato a John F. Burns e Roy
Gutman, per i loro reportage FALSI sui "campi di concentramento" ed
altri "crimini serbi" in Bosnia, va revocato: è la richiesta formulata
da David Binder all'atto della presentazione dell'importante
libro-denuncia di Peter Brock "Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting,
Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia" - si veda:
https://www.cnj.it/documentazione/bibliografia.htm#brock05 )
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200603/SPE20060322a.html
Former NY Times Reporter: '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked
By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 22, 2006
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Castigating the press for "journalistic
crimes" committed during its reporting on the Balkans wars of the
1990s, retired New York Times reporter David Binder claims the 1993
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting awarded to both the Times
and New York's Newsday "should, in all fairness and honesty, be revoked."
Binder was speaking at a press conference for the release of a new
book criticizing the war reporting. Binder wrote the foreword to the
book by Peter Brock, titled "Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting,
Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia."
"What we're looking at here is a series catalogued by Peter Brock of
journalistic crimes," said Binder. Before mentioning the reporting of
the Times' John F. Burns and Newsday's Roy Gutman, Binder evoked the
memory of what he called Walter Duranty's "phony reporting" for the
New York Times in the 1930s as an example of an undeserved Pulitzer.
Duranty was criticized for having been too deferential to Joseph
Stalin and his plan to industrialize the Soviet Union.
"What Peter [Brock] has unraveled and disclosed in this book involves
at least a couple of Pulitzer prizes that should in all fairness and
honesty be revoked." Binder confirmed to Cybercast News Service that
he was referring to the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international
reporting, awarded to Burns of the New York Times and Gutman of
Newsday for their reporting in the Balkans. Brock devotes considerable
space in his book to criticizing the reporting of Burns and Gutman.
Binder noted that the Times has gone through "agony" in recent years
over the "terrible professional behavior of its staff members" and
with "what has gone on under its masthead."
"[E]xposure is the best remedy," said Binder.
"I think Peter Brock's book helps a great deal to confront these
egregious crimes of journalism. I think it should be shoved under the
noses of editors all across the press, at least the editors who are
dealing with foreign news ..." said Binder.
The Pulitzer Board at first voted to award the prize solely to Gutman,
according to Binder. "The New York Times got so agitated that John
Burns was passed over that they started lobbying the board. The
Pulitzer is an extremely political award in many if not all cases.
There are all kinds of backstage manipulations that go on."
The centerpiece of Burns' Pulitzer entry was a seven-hour interview
with a captured Bosnian Serb -- Borislav Herak -- who in graphic
statements to Burns, confessed to dozens of murders, including eight
involving rape. Burns' Nov. 27, 1992, article was described by the New
York Times as offering "insight into the way thousands of others have
died in Bosnia."
However, more than three years after the publication of Burns' story,
the Times on Jan. 31, 1996, described Herak as "slightly retarded" and
reported that Herak had retracted his confession and claimed it had
been beaten out of him by guards.
"I was tortured, forced to confess," said Herak. By that time his
testimony already had been used to convict Sretko Damjanovic for the
killing of two Muslim brothers who were later found alive. Both Herak
and Damjanovic, who also said he had been "tortured" into providing a
false confession, were sentenced to death by firing squad.
Author Peter Brock described Burns' interview with Herak as "a
manipulated confession and interrogation in which Burns was the key
participant." Brock faults Burns for failing to tell readers that the
interview took place with a Sarajevo video production crew present and
that "interrogations were conducted by [government] investigators and
by Sarajevo film director Ademir Kenovic."
He also argues that "vital pieces" of Herak's story were missing.
"[T]here was no evidence, corpses or victims, or eyewitnesses to
implicate Herak, except for hearsay from Bosnian government
'investigators,'" Brock writes.
Brock also faults Newsday's Roy Gutman for being unduly influenced by
government propagandists including one source who operated under four
different aliases. Gutman was criticized for not exercising enough
scrutiny before repeating allegations of atrocities and statistics of
the dead and tortured.
Gutman won his Pulitzer partly for "electrifying stories about
'concentration camps'," notes Brock, who criticizes the reporter for
the prominence of "hearsay" and "double hearsay" in his stories, as
well as gratuitous use of the language of the Nazi Holocaust.
Gutman's first five stories about the alleged Omarska concentration
camp in Bosnia were actually filed from Zagreb, in Croatia, Brock
complains. It was Gutman's sixth story on the subject that finally
carried an Omarska dateline, Brock wrote, and that was after the
prison had been shut down.
Both Binder and Brock accuse the press of falling into "pack
journalism" and playing the role of "co-belligerent." The reliance on
Croat and Bosnian Muslim propaganda resulted in distorted reporting
that exaggerated the Serb role in the three-sided conflict and ignored
ethnic cleansing of Serbs, according to Binder and Brock.
Brock went so far as to say the $3,000 Pulitzer Prize money awarded to
Burns and Gutman was "blood money."
"What we're talking about in terms of what I call crimes of journalism
was only ten years ago," said Binder. "It wasn't so long ago that
these, I think revolting things, were happening -- revolting bias,
revolting suppression of other sides of the story."
During his recent appearance at the National Press Club in Washington,
D.C., Binder said it would take "at least a decade" before historians
"clear out that wretched underbrush of lies and concoctions" from
"despicable" politicians "like Richard Holbrooke," an international
negotiator during the administration of former President Bill Clinton
and "certainly the journalists" criticized in Brock's book. The rise
of blogs and media watchdog groups offers a "corrective" for the
public now, Binder contended.
In his call for the revocation of the Pulitzer Prize Peter Brock said
that "in all fairness, if [the Pulitzer board] is not going to revoke
the prize, they ought to give Janet Cooke's Pulitzer back." Cooke was
a Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer for a fabricated 1980
story about an eight-year old heroin addict.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there had been no reaction from either the
New York Times or Newsday to Cybercast News Service's several requests
for comment related to this article.
---
----- Original Message -----
From: sparta
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 5:57 AM
Subject: National Press Club - Conference: Peter Brock's book, Media
Cleansing: Dirty Reporting
"Was the American public duped about Bosnia? We should be asking what
kind of justice is this at The Hague that cases against Serbs are not
over tuned when Muslim witnesses have admitted that they were coached
by Bosnian authorities to lie on the witness stand? What kind of
justice is Carla dela Ponte promoting by keeping Serbs imprisoned for
killing numerous Bosnian Muslims who turned up alive and well in
Sarajevo?"
Date: 17 March 2006
Where: National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Panelists: Peter Brock, William Dorich, David Binder
************
National Press Club Introduction
Good afternoon, my name is William Dorich, I am the publisher of
GMBooks, established in Los Angeles in 1985. I am also the author of
5 books on Balkan history and religion including my 1992 book Kosovo.
When Peter Brock came to me to publish Media Cleansing: Dirty
Reporting, I was thrilled but I was fully aware that this manuscript
was submitted and rejected by every major publisher in the United
States, revealing an ugly truth that dissenting views are not always
welcome in the media or in the American publishing industry.
In the entire decade of the 1990s during the dismemberment wars of
Yugoslavia not one single article was printed in the New York Times
that was written by a Serbian journalist, author, scholar or political
leader. The same can be said of numerous major newspapers across the
nation including the Los Angeles Times in my city. Serbs were simply
muzzled into silence. Thanks to Madeleine Albright and Richard
Holbrook Serbs were also made Persona non grata here on The Hill and
denied the right to appear before any House and Senate hearings on
Bosnia including the Foreign Relations Committee.
The result, the word Serb has become synonymous with evil. I should
know as I was the victim of two hate crimes and received numerous
death threats for daring to defend, write and publish Serbian views.
Dr. Alex Dragnich, a Serb, is the recipient of the Thomas Jefferson
Award for Outstanding Scholarship at Vanderbilt University where he
taught for several decades. Dr. Dragnich is the author of ten books
on Balkan history and politics and was a member of the diplomatic corp
in Belgrade after the Holocaust. At the height of the Bosnian Civil
War Dr. Dragnich submitted 42 OpEd articles to the New York Times...
not one was reproduced yet lie after lie was published by the Times
from instant Balkan "experts." Few of whom had credentials on the
Balkan region.
David Binder who graces our book with a profound foreword was a member
of the Washington bureau of The New York Times from June 1973 to his
retirement in 1996. He continued reporting until 2004, producing
numerous articles on Central and Eastern European affairs with
outstanding reports that afforded unique insights into foreign policy
and the Yugoslav breakup. His assignments for The Times, included
posts in Germany, Belgrade (as East European correspondent) and in
Washington as diplomatic Page 2
correspondent. He reported on the building and fall of the Berlin wall
and the collapse of Communist systems in East Germany, Romania,
Albania and Yugoslavia.
The admiration and respect for Mr. Binder's reporting and reputation
as a journalist of our times – almost five decades – is without equal
during what is fast becoming an era in which most journalist seem to
strive to be mediocre at their craft, too many are simply recklessly
irresponsible.
Who can forget Binder's opening line to the essay he wrote for The
South Slav Journal in late 1995.
Quote: "A widely noted oxymoron for the last four years has been the
phrase `United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia.'" End quote.
Mr. Binder graduated from Harvard University and was a Fulbright
scholar at the University of Cologne. He has lectured and published
articles mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the former
Yugoslavia, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Finland, Japan,
Canada and throughout the United States.
He is the author of Berlin East and West (1962) and The Other German –
The Life and Times of Willy Brandt (1976); and co-author of New York
Times books on Project Apollo, the Fall of Communism and Scientists at
Work.
He lives in suburban Maryland and he speaks fluent Serbo-Croatian.
Can you imagine that when the war broke out in former Yugoslavia his
editors sent John Burns to cover the story, a journalist who relied on
Muslim translators?
Burns won half a Pulitzer for writing about the confession of an
alleged Serbian rapist and killer. This Serb was found guilty by his
own confession without a single victim of rape or a body of an alleged
murder victim presented as evidence at his trial. It was later proven
his confession was tortured out of him. John Burns claimed there was
not a mark on his body.
However, John Burns and the NYT never published an article about Dr.
Ljubica Toholj, gynecology professor at Belgrade University who did
the physical exams of thousands of Serbian prisoners of war in which
sexual
Page 3
torture techniques did irreparable damage to internal organs or
electrical shock used on the male genitals of these prisoners which
also leave no marks on the body.
Was the American public duped about Bosnia? We should be asking what
kind of justice is this at The Hague that cases against Serbs are not
over tuned when Muslim witnesses have admitted that they were coached
by Bosnian authorities to lie on the witness stand? What kind of
justice is Carla dela Ponte promoting by keeping Serbs imprisoned for
killing numerous Bosnian Muslims who turned up alive and well in
Sarajevo?
The U.S. blackout of court coverage of the Hague Tribunal conveniently
hides what has turned out to be lynch mob style tactics of judicial
abuse yet we are told that this tribunal is the lunch pin of future
international court cases involving war and genocide.
Ambassador Bissett of Canada said it best in his attack of the media
and I quote: "It is not the media responsibility to influence
governments to make unwise policy decisions affecting the very course
of history." end quote. But that is exactly what the media did in
Yugoslavia.
If Osama bin Laden and Muslim terrorism is this nation's number one
enemy, then the invasion of Bosnia by thousands of bin Laden trained
terrorists was surely Serbia's enemies and they had every right to
defend themselves. Hundreds of those Muslim terrorists remain in
Bosnia and Kosovo today.
Since the end of the war in 1999 and the arrival of KFOR troops in
Kosovo over 150 ancient Serbian churches have been destroyed. For the
most part the press has remained silent. The same press that demanded
human rights and religious tolerance for Bosnian Muslims continue to
deny the Serbs equal justice as Serbs have been made nearly extinct in
Kosovo where they were a majority of the population in 1939 the year
in which I was born.
The media tells us that Albanians are a majority of Kosovo but never
publish the fact that 40% are illegal aliens who cross the border into
Serbia as easily as Mexicans cross our borders each night in San Diego.
Page 4
In the preface to his book "A Witness to Genocide" which is truly an
oxymoron. Roy Gutman wrote, and I quote: "Having set such lofty
standards, I immediately make an exception and wrote about the Omarska
camp which I had not visited, based on secondhand witness accounts."
end quote.
Gutman wrote to my author refusing permission for Peter to quote from
A Witness to Genocide, so we paraphrased his quotes. Meanwhile his
publisher, Simon and Schuster said we could quote from their book then
charged us $450.00 for the privilege.
Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting documents how many journalists
covering the Balkan Civil Wars also made exceptions to their lofty
standards they, lied, fabricated, and distorted the truth. They
repeated the propaganda of other journalists ad nasuam. Like Gutman
they trampled on journalistic ethics, integrity and morality for their
bylines.
The recent SkyNews release of Bosnian Muslim video footage of Serbs
being rounded up, tortured and shot at point blank range has not
gotten the attention of the media nor Carla Dela Ponte who dismisses
all the crimes committed against Serbs guaranteeing that Muslim war
criminals will all go free. Just like the 20,000 Nazi Hanjar troops
did in Bosnia in WWII after they liquidated tens of thousands of Sebs,
Jews and Gypsies. Have we not learned any lessons?
On March 15th, 1993 French journalist Jerome Bony, reporting from the
Muslim stronghold of Tuzla said: and I quote: "When I was at 50
kilometers from Tuzla, I was told go to the Tuzla gymnasium, there you
will find 4,000 raped women." "At 20 kilometers, this figure dropped
to 400. At 10 kilometers, only 40 were left. Once at the sight, I
found only four women to testify." End Quote.
And this is the sort of evidence that gave us headlines screaming
60,000 rape victims in Bosnia, an absurd claim that to this day has
never been exposed as a fraud by the American media.
I attended a panel discussion at Long Beach State in California on
April 15th that year in which Jacques Merlino, Deputy Chief Editor on
Antenna 2 in Paris told his audience: And I quote:
Page 5
"All journalists in Bosnia are required to submit their articles to
Bosnian censors in Sarajevo." "Notice that any reference to conflicts
between Croatians and Muslim forces are heavily edited, visual images
of these conflicts are forbidden. Any journalist breaking these rules
is expelled from Bosnia." End Quote.
In other words John Burns accepted half a Pulitzer and never told his
readers that he abided by this kind of censorship. It also makes me
wonder what kind of Bosnian democracy did Madeleine Albright built on
such deceptions.
In his December 1993 editorial in Strategic Policy Gregory Copley
wrote: I quote: "The big lie technique is alive and well. Croatia
has used the media and skillful image manipulation to hide its renewed
genocide against the Serbs while at the same time ensuring that Serbs
are themselves wrongly accused of the same type of crime, and more.
Pictures of dead, wounded (or raped) Serbs often fill the screens of
the world's television and print media, only to be re-labelled as
dead, wounded or raped Croats or Muslims. Serbs—not only suffer the
indignity of defeat in death; they also are used in death as models in
the macabre image manipulation operations of the Croatians and Muslim
Bosnians." End quote.
Mr. Brock's career as a newspaper journalist for more than 30 years is
highlighted by 17 professional awards – including being named a
finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize competition for Public Service.
Recognized as a political and environmental writer and investigative
reporter, Mr. Brock holds the Southern Journalism Award for
Investigative Reporting (Duke University), the Thomas L. Stokes Award
for Environmental Reporting of the Washington Journalism Center, and
15 other distinctions.
He has widely traveled the Balkans, Western Central Europe, the former
Soviet Union, the Middle East and other regions since 1976.
A specialist in the role of the Western media in the Balkan wars, Mr.
Brock's controversial articles and reports were reprinted in major
newspapers worldwide. He appeared on nationally-televised panel
discussions that focused on the Yugoslav wars, and he was interviewed
by numerous domestic and international newspapers, television and radio.
Page 6
During his career, he has covered organized crime, drug-trafficking,
and the unique politics along the U.S.-Mexican border as well as
critical water issues in that desert climate.
His "Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press", published 13 years ago
in the journal Foreign Policy set off shock waves in Washington and
the media that are still rippling. The publisher was regaled into
organizing a virtual accountability session at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. Brock appeared with David Binder, facing a
roomful of media "pit bulls," and restated his findings about the
co-belligerent Western pack journalism maneuvering and manipulating
for NATO intervention, incouraging NATO to violate it own defensive
treaty.
But, that wasn't enough for his critics who harangued Brock as a
"holocaust denier" until they ran out of breath.
In preparation of Media Cleansing…, Peter confronted his colleagues
about their professional lapses and collusion with the secessionist
Yugoslav governments – and our own State Department.
He did what any good investigative reporter does. He searched for
information and waited patiently as the story developed, talking with
scores of professionals and eventually tracking down the offending
correspondents one-by-one, some of whom refused to answer questions.
They complained to his superiors at his newspaper, and even threatened
him with lawsuits. He caught up with one Pulitzer Prize winner at an
international Balkan conference in Sweden and unrelentingly questioned
him from the audience.
One of the best lines in his book is from the editor of a top
supermarket tabloid who, when asked about the shrill and surreal
war-coverage by the American media flagships, answered: and I quote:
"They're doing a better job of it than we could!" end quote.
Peter Brock began his newspaper career at The Philadelphia Inquirer,
served for 20 years with The El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post, and
wrote/reported/edited for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado and
Washington, D.C. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to introduce a true
professional, an expert at his craft and my friend, Peter Brock.
Gutman, per i loro reportage FALSI sui "campi di concentramento" ed
altri "crimini serbi" in Bosnia, va revocato: è la richiesta formulata
da David Binder all'atto della presentazione dell'importante
libro-denuncia di Peter Brock "Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting,
Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia" - si veda:
https://www.cnj.it/documentazione/bibliografia.htm#brock05 )
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200603/SPE20060322a.html
Former NY Times Reporter: '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked
By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 22, 2006
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Castigating the press for "journalistic
crimes" committed during its reporting on the Balkans wars of the
1990s, retired New York Times reporter David Binder claims the 1993
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting awarded to both the Times
and New York's Newsday "should, in all fairness and honesty, be revoked."
Binder was speaking at a press conference for the release of a new
book criticizing the war reporting. Binder wrote the foreword to the
book by Peter Brock, titled "Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting,
Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia."
"What we're looking at here is a series catalogued by Peter Brock of
journalistic crimes," said Binder. Before mentioning the reporting of
the Times' John F. Burns and Newsday's Roy Gutman, Binder evoked the
memory of what he called Walter Duranty's "phony reporting" for the
New York Times in the 1930s as an example of an undeserved Pulitzer.
Duranty was criticized for having been too deferential to Joseph
Stalin and his plan to industrialize the Soviet Union.
"What Peter [Brock] has unraveled and disclosed in this book involves
at least a couple of Pulitzer prizes that should in all fairness and
honesty be revoked." Binder confirmed to Cybercast News Service that
he was referring to the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international
reporting, awarded to Burns of the New York Times and Gutman of
Newsday for their reporting in the Balkans. Brock devotes considerable
space in his book to criticizing the reporting of Burns and Gutman.
Binder noted that the Times has gone through "agony" in recent years
over the "terrible professional behavior of its staff members" and
with "what has gone on under its masthead."
"[E]xposure is the best remedy," said Binder.
"I think Peter Brock's book helps a great deal to confront these
egregious crimes of journalism. I think it should be shoved under the
noses of editors all across the press, at least the editors who are
dealing with foreign news ..." said Binder.
The Pulitzer Board at first voted to award the prize solely to Gutman,
according to Binder. "The New York Times got so agitated that John
Burns was passed over that they started lobbying the board. The
Pulitzer is an extremely political award in many if not all cases.
There are all kinds of backstage manipulations that go on."
The centerpiece of Burns' Pulitzer entry was a seven-hour interview
with a captured Bosnian Serb -- Borislav Herak -- who in graphic
statements to Burns, confessed to dozens of murders, including eight
involving rape. Burns' Nov. 27, 1992, article was described by the New
York Times as offering "insight into the way thousands of others have
died in Bosnia."
However, more than three years after the publication of Burns' story,
the Times on Jan. 31, 1996, described Herak as "slightly retarded" and
reported that Herak had retracted his confession and claimed it had
been beaten out of him by guards.
"I was tortured, forced to confess," said Herak. By that time his
testimony already had been used to convict Sretko Damjanovic for the
killing of two Muslim brothers who were later found alive. Both Herak
and Damjanovic, who also said he had been "tortured" into providing a
false confession, were sentenced to death by firing squad.
Author Peter Brock described Burns' interview with Herak as "a
manipulated confession and interrogation in which Burns was the key
participant." Brock faults Burns for failing to tell readers that the
interview took place with a Sarajevo video production crew present and
that "interrogations were conducted by [government] investigators and
by Sarajevo film director Ademir Kenovic."
He also argues that "vital pieces" of Herak's story were missing.
"[T]here was no evidence, corpses or victims, or eyewitnesses to
implicate Herak, except for hearsay from Bosnian government
'investigators,'" Brock writes.
Brock also faults Newsday's Roy Gutman for being unduly influenced by
government propagandists including one source who operated under four
different aliases. Gutman was criticized for not exercising enough
scrutiny before repeating allegations of atrocities and statistics of
the dead and tortured.
Gutman won his Pulitzer partly for "electrifying stories about
'concentration camps'," notes Brock, who criticizes the reporter for
the prominence of "hearsay" and "double hearsay" in his stories, as
well as gratuitous use of the language of the Nazi Holocaust.
Gutman's first five stories about the alleged Omarska concentration
camp in Bosnia were actually filed from Zagreb, in Croatia, Brock
complains. It was Gutman's sixth story on the subject that finally
carried an Omarska dateline, Brock wrote, and that was after the
prison had been shut down.
Both Binder and Brock accuse the press of falling into "pack
journalism" and playing the role of "co-belligerent." The reliance on
Croat and Bosnian Muslim propaganda resulted in distorted reporting
that exaggerated the Serb role in the three-sided conflict and ignored
ethnic cleansing of Serbs, according to Binder and Brock.
Brock went so far as to say the $3,000 Pulitzer Prize money awarded to
Burns and Gutman was "blood money."
"What we're talking about in terms of what I call crimes of journalism
was only ten years ago," said Binder. "It wasn't so long ago that
these, I think revolting things, were happening -- revolting bias,
revolting suppression of other sides of the story."
During his recent appearance at the National Press Club in Washington,
D.C., Binder said it would take "at least a decade" before historians
"clear out that wretched underbrush of lies and concoctions" from
"despicable" politicians "like Richard Holbrooke," an international
negotiator during the administration of former President Bill Clinton
and "certainly the journalists" criticized in Brock's book. The rise
of blogs and media watchdog groups offers a "corrective" for the
public now, Binder contended.
In his call for the revocation of the Pulitzer Prize Peter Brock said
that "in all fairness, if [the Pulitzer board] is not going to revoke
the prize, they ought to give Janet Cooke's Pulitzer back." Cooke was
a Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer for a fabricated 1980
story about an eight-year old heroin addict.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there had been no reaction from either the
New York Times or Newsday to Cybercast News Service's several requests
for comment related to this article.
---
----- Original Message -----
From: sparta
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 5:57 AM
Subject: National Press Club - Conference: Peter Brock's book, Media
Cleansing: Dirty Reporting
"Was the American public duped about Bosnia? We should be asking what
kind of justice is this at The Hague that cases against Serbs are not
over tuned when Muslim witnesses have admitted that they were coached
by Bosnian authorities to lie on the witness stand? What kind of
justice is Carla dela Ponte promoting by keeping Serbs imprisoned for
killing numerous Bosnian Muslims who turned up alive and well in
Sarajevo?"
Date: 17 March 2006
Where: National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Panelists: Peter Brock, William Dorich, David Binder
************
National Press Club Introduction
Good afternoon, my name is William Dorich, I am the publisher of
GMBooks, established in Los Angeles in 1985. I am also the author of
5 books on Balkan history and religion including my 1992 book Kosovo.
When Peter Brock came to me to publish Media Cleansing: Dirty
Reporting, I was thrilled but I was fully aware that this manuscript
was submitted and rejected by every major publisher in the United
States, revealing an ugly truth that dissenting views are not always
welcome in the media or in the American publishing industry.
In the entire decade of the 1990s during the dismemberment wars of
Yugoslavia not one single article was printed in the New York Times
that was written by a Serbian journalist, author, scholar or political
leader. The same can be said of numerous major newspapers across the
nation including the Los Angeles Times in my city. Serbs were simply
muzzled into silence. Thanks to Madeleine Albright and Richard
Holbrook Serbs were also made Persona non grata here on The Hill and
denied the right to appear before any House and Senate hearings on
Bosnia including the Foreign Relations Committee.
The result, the word Serb has become synonymous with evil. I should
know as I was the victim of two hate crimes and received numerous
death threats for daring to defend, write and publish Serbian views.
Dr. Alex Dragnich, a Serb, is the recipient of the Thomas Jefferson
Award for Outstanding Scholarship at Vanderbilt University where he
taught for several decades. Dr. Dragnich is the author of ten books
on Balkan history and politics and was a member of the diplomatic corp
in Belgrade after the Holocaust. At the height of the Bosnian Civil
War Dr. Dragnich submitted 42 OpEd articles to the New York Times...
not one was reproduced yet lie after lie was published by the Times
from instant Balkan "experts." Few of whom had credentials on the
Balkan region.
David Binder who graces our book with a profound foreword was a member
of the Washington bureau of The New York Times from June 1973 to his
retirement in 1996. He continued reporting until 2004, producing
numerous articles on Central and Eastern European affairs with
outstanding reports that afforded unique insights into foreign policy
and the Yugoslav breakup. His assignments for The Times, included
posts in Germany, Belgrade (as East European correspondent) and in
Washington as diplomatic Page 2
correspondent. He reported on the building and fall of the Berlin wall
and the collapse of Communist systems in East Germany, Romania,
Albania and Yugoslavia.
The admiration and respect for Mr. Binder's reporting and reputation
as a journalist of our times – almost five decades – is without equal
during what is fast becoming an era in which most journalist seem to
strive to be mediocre at their craft, too many are simply recklessly
irresponsible.
Who can forget Binder's opening line to the essay he wrote for The
South Slav Journal in late 1995.
Quote: "A widely noted oxymoron for the last four years has been the
phrase `United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia.'" End quote.
Mr. Binder graduated from Harvard University and was a Fulbright
scholar at the University of Cologne. He has lectured and published
articles mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the former
Yugoslavia, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Finland, Japan,
Canada and throughout the United States.
He is the author of Berlin East and West (1962) and The Other German –
The Life and Times of Willy Brandt (1976); and co-author of New York
Times books on Project Apollo, the Fall of Communism and Scientists at
Work.
He lives in suburban Maryland and he speaks fluent Serbo-Croatian.
Can you imagine that when the war broke out in former Yugoslavia his
editors sent John Burns to cover the story, a journalist who relied on
Muslim translators?
Burns won half a Pulitzer for writing about the confession of an
alleged Serbian rapist and killer. This Serb was found guilty by his
own confession without a single victim of rape or a body of an alleged
murder victim presented as evidence at his trial. It was later proven
his confession was tortured out of him. John Burns claimed there was
not a mark on his body.
However, John Burns and the NYT never published an article about Dr.
Ljubica Toholj, gynecology professor at Belgrade University who did
the physical exams of thousands of Serbian prisoners of war in which
sexual
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torture techniques did irreparable damage to internal organs or
electrical shock used on the male genitals of these prisoners which
also leave no marks on the body.
Was the American public duped about Bosnia? We should be asking what
kind of justice is this at The Hague that cases against Serbs are not
over tuned when Muslim witnesses have admitted that they were coached
by Bosnian authorities to lie on the witness stand? What kind of
justice is Carla dela Ponte promoting by keeping Serbs imprisoned for
killing numerous Bosnian Muslims who turned up alive and well in
Sarajevo?
The U.S. blackout of court coverage of the Hague Tribunal conveniently
hides what has turned out to be lynch mob style tactics of judicial
abuse yet we are told that this tribunal is the lunch pin of future
international court cases involving war and genocide.
Ambassador Bissett of Canada said it best in his attack of the media
and I quote: "It is not the media responsibility to influence
governments to make unwise policy decisions affecting the very course
of history." end quote. But that is exactly what the media did in
Yugoslavia.
If Osama bin Laden and Muslim terrorism is this nation's number one
enemy, then the invasion of Bosnia by thousands of bin Laden trained
terrorists was surely Serbia's enemies and they had every right to
defend themselves. Hundreds of those Muslim terrorists remain in
Bosnia and Kosovo today.
Since the end of the war in 1999 and the arrival of KFOR troops in
Kosovo over 150 ancient Serbian churches have been destroyed. For the
most part the press has remained silent. The same press that demanded
human rights and religious tolerance for Bosnian Muslims continue to
deny the Serbs equal justice as Serbs have been made nearly extinct in
Kosovo where they were a majority of the population in 1939 the year
in which I was born.
The media tells us that Albanians are a majority of Kosovo but never
publish the fact that 40% are illegal aliens who cross the border into
Serbia as easily as Mexicans cross our borders each night in San Diego.
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In the preface to his book "A Witness to Genocide" which is truly an
oxymoron. Roy Gutman wrote, and I quote: "Having set such lofty
standards, I immediately make an exception and wrote about the Omarska
camp which I had not visited, based on secondhand witness accounts."
end quote.
Gutman wrote to my author refusing permission for Peter to quote from
A Witness to Genocide, so we paraphrased his quotes. Meanwhile his
publisher, Simon and Schuster said we could quote from their book then
charged us $450.00 for the privilege.
Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting documents how many journalists
covering the Balkan Civil Wars also made exceptions to their lofty
standards they, lied, fabricated, and distorted the truth. They
repeated the propaganda of other journalists ad nasuam. Like Gutman
they trampled on journalistic ethics, integrity and morality for their
bylines.
The recent SkyNews release of Bosnian Muslim video footage of Serbs
being rounded up, tortured and shot at point blank range has not
gotten the attention of the media nor Carla Dela Ponte who dismisses
all the crimes committed against Serbs guaranteeing that Muslim war
criminals will all go free. Just like the 20,000 Nazi Hanjar troops
did in Bosnia in WWII after they liquidated tens of thousands of Sebs,
Jews and Gypsies. Have we not learned any lessons?
On March 15th, 1993 French journalist Jerome Bony, reporting from the
Muslim stronghold of Tuzla said: and I quote: "When I was at 50
kilometers from Tuzla, I was told go to the Tuzla gymnasium, there you
will find 4,000 raped women." "At 20 kilometers, this figure dropped
to 400. At 10 kilometers, only 40 were left. Once at the sight, I
found only four women to testify." End Quote.
And this is the sort of evidence that gave us headlines screaming
60,000 rape victims in Bosnia, an absurd claim that to this day has
never been exposed as a fraud by the American media.
I attended a panel discussion at Long Beach State in California on
April 15th that year in which Jacques Merlino, Deputy Chief Editor on
Antenna 2 in Paris told his audience: And I quote:
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"All journalists in Bosnia are required to submit their articles to
Bosnian censors in Sarajevo." "Notice that any reference to conflicts
between Croatians and Muslim forces are heavily edited, visual images
of these conflicts are forbidden. Any journalist breaking these rules
is expelled from Bosnia." End Quote.
In other words John Burns accepted half a Pulitzer and never told his
readers that he abided by this kind of censorship. It also makes me
wonder what kind of Bosnian democracy did Madeleine Albright built on
such deceptions.
In his December 1993 editorial in Strategic Policy Gregory Copley
wrote: I quote: "The big lie technique is alive and well. Croatia
has used the media and skillful image manipulation to hide its renewed
genocide against the Serbs while at the same time ensuring that Serbs
are themselves wrongly accused of the same type of crime, and more.
Pictures of dead, wounded (or raped) Serbs often fill the screens of
the world's television and print media, only to be re-labelled as
dead, wounded or raped Croats or Muslims. Serbs—not only suffer the
indignity of defeat in death; they also are used in death as models in
the macabre image manipulation operations of the Croatians and Muslim
Bosnians." End quote.
Mr. Brock's career as a newspaper journalist for more than 30 years is
highlighted by 17 professional awards – including being named a
finalist for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize competition for Public Service.
Recognized as a political and environmental writer and investigative
reporter, Mr. Brock holds the Southern Journalism Award for
Investigative Reporting (Duke University), the Thomas L. Stokes Award
for Environmental Reporting of the Washington Journalism Center, and
15 other distinctions.
He has widely traveled the Balkans, Western Central Europe, the former
Soviet Union, the Middle East and other regions since 1976.
A specialist in the role of the Western media in the Balkan wars, Mr.
Brock's controversial articles and reports were reprinted in major
newspapers worldwide. He appeared on nationally-televised panel
discussions that focused on the Yugoslav wars, and he was interviewed
by numerous domestic and international newspapers, television and radio.
Page 6
During his career, he has covered organized crime, drug-trafficking,
and the unique politics along the U.S.-Mexican border as well as
critical water issues in that desert climate.
His "Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press", published 13 years ago
in the journal Foreign Policy set off shock waves in Washington and
the media that are still rippling. The publisher was regaled into
organizing a virtual accountability session at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. Brock appeared with David Binder, facing a
roomful of media "pit bulls," and restated his findings about the
co-belligerent Western pack journalism maneuvering and manipulating
for NATO intervention, incouraging NATO to violate it own defensive
treaty.
But, that wasn't enough for his critics who harangued Brock as a
"holocaust denier" until they ran out of breath.
In preparation of Media Cleansing…, Peter confronted his colleagues
about their professional lapses and collusion with the secessionist
Yugoslav governments – and our own State Department.
He did what any good investigative reporter does. He searched for
information and waited patiently as the story developed, talking with
scores of professionals and eventually tracking down the offending
correspondents one-by-one, some of whom refused to answer questions.
They complained to his superiors at his newspaper, and even threatened
him with lawsuits. He caught up with one Pulitzer Prize winner at an
international Balkan conference in Sweden and unrelentingly questioned
him from the audience.
One of the best lines in his book is from the editor of a top
supermarket tabloid who, when asked about the shrill and surreal
war-coverage by the American media flagships, answered: and I quote:
"They're doing a better job of it than we could!" end quote.
Peter Brock began his newspaper career at The Philadelphia Inquirer,
served for 20 years with The El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post, and
wrote/reported/edited for newspapers in New Mexico, Colorado and
Washington, D.C. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to introduce a true
professional, an expert at his craft and my friend, Peter Brock.