Institut for War and Peace Reporting IWPR and MediaPlan Sarajevo

THE SEPTEMBER 1996 ELECTIONS IN BOSNIA & HERCEGOVINA
MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN

FINAL MONITORING REPORT

CONTENTS

• 1. Executive Summary
• 2. Preface and Acknowledgements
• 3. Media Monitored (June-September 1996)
• 4. Abbreviations
• 5. Introduction
• 6. An Anatomy of the B&H Media
• 7. The Media in the Elections
• 7.1 The B&H Federation: Broadcasters
• 7.2 The B&H Federation: The Press
• 7.3 Republika Srpska: Broadcasters
• 7.4 Republika Srpska: The Press
• 7.5 The Neighbours: Broadcasters
• 8. Media Supervision and Projects
• 9. Graphs and Tables

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The media in Bosnia & Hercegovina helped compromise the general elections of 14 September 1996. Despite considerable foreign attention and a degree of concrete international intervention, no fundamental improvements were achieved among those media long dominated by national hate speech and war propaganda, and still firmly controlled by ruling nationalist parties and undermined by communist-era traditions. Instead of creating a common space for pluralistic political debate, the media remained splintered into three separate spheres, reflecting the interests of the leaderships of the national communities. Indeed, the scale of the problem meant that any hopes of achieving a democratic media climate by the time of the September vote were unrealistic.

Even so, hindered by an absence of political will and a severe lack of resources, the international bodies tasked with overseeing the media failed to take a range of steps that might have improved the media environment. While the impact of the internationally-organised Open Broadcast Network (TVIN) project (costing $10.5 million to date) was nil, many smaller steps, particularly the use of sanctions to pressure the domestic authorities and media to allow a more open atmosphere, were neglected.

A fully open and independent media would not, by themselves, have been sufficient to create conditions for "free and fair elections", much less a radically different result. But the patent absence of media pluralism in most of B&H ensured that voters were presented with only minimal choices on 14 September, and that the victories of the nationalist parties were preordained. Indeed, the failure of international actors to take firmer measures to support open media at a time of such heightened interest may have contributed to the subsequent crackdown on alternative media in Republika Srpska, Serbia and Croatia. If international pressure to open the media remains deficient, the municipal elections, scheduled for June 1997, will be equally compromised.

In the three months preceding the September poll, the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) and the Sarajevo-based Media Plan - both independent nongovernmental media-development organisations - carried out intensive daily monitoring of the main media covering the territory of Bosnia & Hercegovina. Drawing on reports by individual monitors in the principal cities, as well as on information supplied by intergovernmental organisations and published materials, IWPR and Media Plan produced a weekly Monitoring Report and compiled a comprehensive archive of indigenous media coverage of the election campaign.

This report, a summary analysis of that work, documents in particular the ways in which the nationalist-controlled media served to emphasise rather than to reduce the reigning fear of other groups. In highlighting the "foreign-ness" of other national communities, and at times referring explicitly to certain territories within B&H as foreign political entities, the report concludes that the electoral choice presented to voters, especially in Serb- and Croat-controlled areas, was effectively reduced to a referendum on secession. Thus, viewed through the media campaign, elections intended to begin the process of democratisation and re-unification served as much or more to continue the process of national homogenisation ("ethnic cleansing") and partition.

The report does note important exceptions of professionalism that did emerge within the media, especially on the territory controlled by the Sarajevo government, but also in Republika Srpska. (No such encouraging developments were visible in Croat-ruled areas.) If these openings were in no way sufficient to alter the basic environment, they do offer some hope for the future of the media - and of democracy - in B&H.

With too many entity, sub-entity and local authorities remaining resistant to an open media, both consistent international pressure on these powers that be and unflagging support for independent media are essential. IWPR and Media Plan urge outside governments and intergovernmental organisations working in B&H to:

• * Establish clear standards for open media in the region and to utilise levers of political support and economic aid - particularly membership in intergovernmental bodies - to compel compliance. This should include pressure on governments not only in B&H, but also in Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
• * Place a priority on creating conditions for free movement of persons, including journalists, and information. This should include:
• * Increasing the general level of physical security within B&H by enhancing the role and capacity of the International Police Task Force and reforming local police forces;
• * Restoring telephone and other communications links across the Inter-Entity Boundary Line;
• * Introducing a common design for vehicle licence plates.
• * Increase the capability of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the media and to take constructive or punitive action, especially by improving the Media Experts Commission and creating an independent media ombudsman.
• * Support legal and regulatory reform, particularly regarding media ownership and the allocation of broadcast frequencies.
• *Sustain and increase levels of financial support for open media while enhancing coordination and refining the use of such aid. This should include:
• * Establishing a commercial press distribution firm to increase the availability of publications across entity and sub-entity boundaries;
• * Focusing on sustaining existing and developing new small-scale projects rather than large-scale start-ups such as TVIN;
• * Allocating training and development funds not only to educate reporters and editors in journalism, but also to teach basic management and marketing skills in preparation for a free market.
• * Include state-owned broadcasters in media support and development schemes. Sarajevo's RTV B&H, for example, could develop into a genuine public service broadcaster, and constructive support for it might be more effective than aid to privately-owned "independent" media. In addition, advantage should be taken of openings in the relevant international agreements to allow programming from both RTV B&H and SRT (the Republika Srpska broadcaster) to be aired throughout the territory of B&H.

2. PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In April 1996 the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), an independent conflict-monitoring and media-support charity registered in the United Kingdom, agreed with Media Plan, a Sarajevo-based media consultancy and research firm, to work together to monitor press and broadcast coverage of the impending election campaign in Bosnia & Hercegovina. IWPR had previously developed and won pledges of funding for such a project. It now contributed the results of its research on media monitoring, its international perspective and two members of staff to work alongside Media Plan in Sarajevo. Media Plan, for its part, provided local expertise, including its substantial databank on the B&H media scene, identified monitoring staff, organised technical support and set up and serviced a joint project office.

The case for media monitoring

The Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) had provided that free and fair elections should be held within nine months of the treaty's signature in Paris on 14 December 1995. This meant by 14 September 1996. The tasks of certifying that conditions existed for such elections and, then, of organising and conducting them, was entrusted by the signatories (or parties) to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Several international conventions, covenants and agreements specifying the electoral standards to be observed, the human rights and freedoms to be guaranteed and the obligations incumbent upon the parties were incorporated in the DPA. These and the DPA itself enjoined the parties, among much else, to promote and protect media freedom; and required the media, in turn, to provide unimpeded access to all participants in the electoral process.

Press freedom was thus joined to freedom of movement and association and, more generally, to the creation of "a politically neutral environment" during the election period as one of the essential conditions for free, fair and democratic elections. The arrest and despatch to The Hague Tribunal of indicted war criminals and a significant start to the repatriation of refugees and internally displaced persons were subsequently added to this list of essentials by OSCE Chairman-in-Office Flavio Cotti.

Insistence on open, free and responsible mass media has become standard practice as more and more newly independent, transformed or post-civil war states have sought seals of democratic respectability for their elections from the international community. In the case of the former Yugoslavia, the deepening realisation, documented by the work of Mark Thompson, that the media had been instrumental in the making of war was an additional and compelling reason for paying close attention to their role in the making or breaking of Bosnia's peace.1

Monitoring aims and methodology

IWPR and Media Plan decided on a largely qualitative approach to the monitoring of the B&H media. They decided, too, to maximise the immediate usefulness and impact of their work by issuing a weekly bulletin, Monitoring Report, which would chart, in both Bosnian and English-language editions, the performance of the main B&H media, as well as of the widely viewed television newscasts from Croatia and Serbia, in the preceding week. The first bulletin appeared on 5 June 1996. It announced the following aims:

• * To raise public awareness of issues relating to media control and management in the campaign;
• * To document and publicise transgressions by the media against general standards and specific rules issued by the OSCE;
• * To sensitise broadcasters, print journalists and the public alike to the importance of media discourse as a force for good or ill;
• * To encourage editors and journalists to adhere to the highest possible professional standards;
• * To provide an independent and credible source for assessing the fairness of the election campaign and the legitimacy of the results;
• * To assist in the longer-term development of free and democratic media in B&H by establishing the basis for continuing local monitoring of journalistic practice.

Fifteen numbers of Monitoring Report followed until the elections had been held. (A new series of fortnightly reports commenced on 23 October.)

Monitoring was carried out by 13 experienced local journalists or media experts in Banja Luka, Bihac, Mostar, Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica. They recorded and analysed daily the principal newscasts and election programmes put out by up to 22 radio and television stations. Election-related stories and commentaries were the objects of their especial attention. The press (17 titles) was also covered, both for comparative purposes and in its own right.

The operating assumption, however, based on polling evidence and first hand knowledge, was that the broadcast media were the most important sources of information for the bulk of the population. As a consequence, for nine weeks before the elections, the monitors of the two main networks, Radio-Television Bosnia & Hercegovina (RTV B&H) and Srpska Radio-Television (SRT), also counted and assessed (as positive, negative or neutral) all mentions of the political parties and their leaders in the stations' central newscasts on both radio and television.

Monitors filed weekly reports on the media they had been assigned to cover. (See list below.) These formed the basis of the published bulletins. Amendments to the list of media being monitored were made in the course of the summer as election programming proliferated, new broadcasters and papers appeared and experience revealed that certain media were of little or no interest. Coverage, therefore, was selective. Noteworthy media events were occasionally missed because they took place on programmes which could not be monitored consistently. Frequent power cuts played havoc in mid-summer with broadcast monitoring in Republika Srpska. On balance, however, the project team is convinced that selective, long-term monitoring produces the most illuminating results. But for whom?

Initial impact

The project aims quoted above proved prescient in the emphasis they put on the domestic, B&H constituency. Although several examples will be cited below of how IWPR/Media Plan monitoring met the needs or stimulated action on the part of the OSCE Media Experts Commission, the local media were themselves the most interested consumers of the bulletins. Naturally enough, they hated the criticism and loved the praise. More importantly, the Monitoring Reports appear to have provoked or reinforced a number of journalists' and editors' better professional instincts. Unfortunately, this positive impact appears to have been confined to B&H Army-controlled regions. Media in Herceg-Bosna and Republika Srpska were generally without shame. The bulletin's circulation in RS was, in any case, extremely limited.

Acknowledgements

The project owes its existence to numerous and far-flung organisations which were generous with advice and/or funds. Vital research and development assistance came from the Media Monitoring Project (South Africa), the Center for War, Peace and the News Media (USA), the Electoral Reform Society (UK) and the Open Media Research Institute (OMRI, Czech Republic).

Individual thanks are due, in particular, to Ms Bronwyn Keene-Young, who journeyed from Johannesburg to Sarajevo to help lead a training session for monitors.

The OSCE Media Development Office arranged for international staff to be issued with OSCE identity cards. In prevailing circumstances, these were essential for genuine freedom of movement. The Office of the High Representative, for its part, provided international press clippings and BBC monitoring summaries on ex-Yugoslavia. The project team benefitted, too, from regular interchanges with members of staff from both organisations.

The Open Society Institute (USA), the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (Germany) and the Winston Foundation for World Peace (USA) provided start-up funds. Principal project support, however, came from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). This organisation is now also funding IWPR's and Media Plan's continuing monitoring and media support work in B&H.

3. MEDIA MONITORED (JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1996)

An asterisk (*) following the name of a broadcaster or publication indicates that monitoring was occasional rather than consistent. The objects of monitoring on radio and television were the main daily newscasts, as well as election programmes and particularly popular phone-in shows. Paid party political advertising and OSCE voter information spots were not specifically monitored.

BROADCAST MEDIA

Federation B&H

Networks:

• Radio-Television B&H (RTV B&H)
• Free Elections Radio Network (Radio FERN, from 15/7/96)*
• TV International Network (TVIN, from 7/9/96)*

Regional:

• Radio Bihac
• Croatian Radio - Radio Station Mostar (HR-RPM)*
• Croatian Television Mostar (HTV Mostar)
• Radio Herceg-Bosna (Mostar)*
• Radio-Television Mostar (RTV Mostar)
• Bosnian Muslim Radio Hayat (Sarajevo)*
• Independent Television Hayat (NTV Hayat, Sarajevo)*
• Independent RTV Studio 99 (NRTV Studio 99, Sarajevo)
• Radio Tuzla
• TV Tuzla
• Television Tuzla-Podrinje Canton (TV TPK)
• Radio Zenica
• TV Zenica
• Independent Television ZETEL (NTV ZETEL, Zenica)

Republika Srpska

Network:

• Srpska Radio-Television (SRT)

Regional:

• Radio Krajina (Banja Luka)
• Radio Prijedor

Croatian and Serbian Networks:

• Croatian Television (HRT)
• Television Serbia (RTS)

PRINT MEDIA

Federation B&H (Published in Sarajevo unless otherwise noted.)

Newspapers:

• Dnevni Avaz (daily except Sundays)
• Oslobodjenje (daily)
• Vecernje novine (daily except Sundays)
• Hrvatska rijec (weekly)
• Ljiljan (weekly)
• Front slobode (fortnightly, Tuzla)

Magazines:

• Dani (monthly)
• Slobodna Bosna (fortnightly)
• Svijet (weekly)
• Zmaj od Bosne (fortnightly, Tuzla)

Republika Srpska

Newspapers:

• Glas srpski (daily, Banja Luka)
• Nezavisne novine (weekly, Banja Luka)
• Dnevne nezavisne novine (daily, Banja Luka, from 22/8/96)
• Panorama (fortnightly, Bijeljina)*
• Alternativa (fortnightly, Doboj)*

Magazines:

• Novi prelom (monthly, Banja Luka)*
• Ekstra magazin (fortnightly, Bijeljina)*

4. ABBREVIATIONS

• B&H - Bosnia & Hercegovina
• BHPS - Bosanskohercegovacka patriotska stranka(B&H Patriotic Party)
• BOSS - Bosanska stranka (Bosnian Party)
• DNZ - Demokratska narodna zajednica (Democratic People's Community)
• DPA - Dayton Peace Agreement
• DPB - Demokratski patriotski blok RS (Democratic Patriotic Bloc RS)
• Dps - Displaced persons
• EUAM - European Union Administration Mostar
• FB&H - Federation B&H
• FERN - Free Elections Radio Network
• FRY - Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
• GDS - Gradjanska demokratska stranka B&H (Civil Democratic Party B&H)
• HABENA - Herceg-Bosna news agency
• HCSP - Hrvatska cista stranka prava B&H (Croatian Pure Party of Rights B&H)
• HDZ - Hrvatska demokratska zajednica (Croatian Democratic Community)
• HR-RPM - Hrvatski radio-Radio postaja Mostar (Croatian Radio-Radio Station Mostar)
• HRT - Hrvatska radio-televizija (Croatian Radio-Television)
• HSP - Hrvatska stranka prava (Croatian Party of Rights)
• HTV Mostar - Hrvatska televizija Mostar (Croatian Television Mostar)
• HVO - Hrvatsko vijece obrane (Croatian Defence Council)
• ICG - International Crisis Group
• IFOR - Implementation Force
• JUL - Jugoslovenska levica RS (Yugoslav United Left RS)
• MBO - Muslimanska bosnjacka organizacija (Muslim Bosnjak Organisation)
• MEC - Media Experts Commission
• NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
• OBN - Open Broadcast Network (aka TVIN)
• OHR - Office of the High Representative
• OMRI - Open Media Research Institute
• ONASA - Oslododjenje news agency
• OSCE - Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
• PEC - Provisional Election Commission
• RFE - Radio Free Europe
• RS - Republika Srpska
• RTS - Radio-televizija Srbije (Radio-Television Serbia)
• RTV B&H - Radio-televizija B&H (Radio-Television B&H)
• RTV Mostar - Radio-televizija Mostar (Radio-Television Mostar)
• SDA - Stranka demokratske akcije (Party of Democratic Action)
• SDS - Srpska demokratska stranka (Serbian Democratic Party)
• SDP - Socijaldemokratska partija (Social Democratic Party)
• SMP - Savez za mir i progres (Alliance for Peace and Progress)
• SPRS - Socijalisticka partija RS (Socialist Party RS)
• SRNA - RS news agency
• SRS - Srpska radikalna stranka RS (Serbian Radical Party RS)
• SRT - Srpska radio-televizija (Serbian Radio-Television RS)
• TVIN - TV International Network (aka OBN)
• TV TPK - Televizija Tuzlansko-podrinjskog kantona (TV Tuzla-Podrinje Canton)
• UBSD - Unija bosanskohercegovackih socijal-demokrata (Union of B&H Social Democrats)
• UNHCR - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
• UN IPTF - United Nations International Police Task Force
• VOA - Voice of America
• ZL - Zdruzena lista B&H (Associated List B&H)

5. INTRODUCTION

The performance of the Bosnian news media during the election campaign was as unsurprising as was the outcome of the voting. The regime media in both Republika Srpska and Herceg-Bosna behaved as badly as might have been expected; while the more diverse and independent-minded media in areas under the control of the Sarajevo government acquitted themselves as well as could have been hoped. There were, of course, exceptions to these generalisations, but their significance was primarily local.

Any elections in which - as has recently been calculated by the International Crisis Group - some 105 per cent of the maximum possible electorate cast ballots, cannot but be considered seriously flawed.2 Few would argue, however, that the three nationalist parties would not have won the endorsements of their respective tribes in even the most scrupulously conducted of polls in September 1996. It is unlikely, therefore, that the domestic media either made or could have made any great difference to the result. The determination of the peoples of Bosnia & Hercegovina to vote overwhelmingly along national-confessional lines was preordained.

In Bosnia's first post-communist elections, in autumn 1990, 75 per cent of the population voted for the three new nationalist movements: the (Bosnjak) Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). In September 1996, the share of valid votes won by the same three - and long ruling - parties' candidates for the collective presidency was 76 per cent. This figure would have been nearer to 85 per cent if absentee voters of Croat and Bosnjak nationality had been able to cast ballots for one of "their own" in Republika Srpska. In the Federation - greater media pluralism notwithstanding - the SDA and HDZ together took 80 per cent of the votes for the B&H House of Representatives.

No matter how responsible, autonomous, pacific and democratic-minded some of the B&H media may already be, the legacy of a savage war was never going to be quickly expunged. A decade of economic, constitutional and historiographical crisis had been required to make the wars of Yugoslav succession. Recovery from them will take far longer.

Background to the Wars of Yugoslav Succession

Yugoslavs lost their president-for-life and father figure, Josip Broz Tito, in 1980. With the end of the Cold War in 1985-86, they lost their principal geo-strategic reason for living together in a non-aligned federation. The central and east European revolutions of 1989-90 deprived their quarrelling communist parties of what legitimacy they retained.

Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia was the first communist leader to accommodate himself to these losses, and to seek and find a new - and old - basis for his regime's continuing mastery. Embracing both Serb nationalist and Yugoslav centralist grievances and rhetoric, Milosevic consolidated his power in Serbia, reincorporated Serbia's formerly autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, extended his control to Montenegro and whipped up nationalist passion and paranoia among Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia & Hercegovina between 1987 and 1991. Saving Yugoslavia as a state for all Serbs was his ostensible aim. Control over the Belgrade-based media was one of his principal tools.

But Milosevic's dominion over the main Serbian mass media - or the countervailing dominion sought and won by Franjo Tudjman in Croatia after April 1990 - does not by itself explain why war came to Yugoslavia. The media, after all, had real messages to convey which resonated powerfully and destructively: messages of fear, frustration and fantasy. These messages would not have had the impact they did if circumstances had been different: if the roots of civil society had been deeper, if political disorientation had been less, if hyperinflation had been conquered sooner, if the other republican leaderships had been a match for Milosevic, if the European Community and the United States had been more attentive, if Yugoslavia had won the 1990 football World Cup... But circumstances were not different.

(2 International Crisis Group, "Addendum to the 22 September 1996 ICG Report on Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina." Sarajevo: 30 October 1996, p. 6.)

The War against Bosnia & Hercegovina

Bosnia & Hercegovina was Yugoslavia in miniature: a thoroughly multinational and multiconfessional republic with great regional contrasts in levels of material development. Each of the six Yugoslav republics save Slovenia was home to large national minorities. But B&H was composed entirely of "minorities", though the term was anathema to them all. Since socialist Yugoslavia's recognition of a Muslim nation in 1969, Bosnia's Muslims had increasingly viewed B&H as their republic. They were the most numerous and they had no other homeland.

B&H, however, had long been regarded by both Serb and Croat nationalists as historically - and, therefore, rightfully - belonging to them. B&H thus needed Yugoslavia as a device for warding off the pretensions its larger neighbours. But Yugoslavia also needed B&H, both as a buffer between the competing claims of Serb and Croat national ideologies and as the land of all South Slavs its name proclaimed it to be.

The proponents of Great Serbia and/or Great Croatia were not often troubled by the fact that the Muslims were B&H's largest nation. (According the eve-of-war 1991 census, Muslims formed 43.48 per cent of B&H's total population of 4,377,033. Serbs represented 31.21 per cent and Croats 17.38 per cent. "Yugoslavs" - an identity often chosen by persons of mixed origins - constituted 5.54 per cent, and "others" 2.39 per cent. The term "Bosnjak" was revived in the course of the war as the favoured and more politically correct self-designation for Muslims.) As far as Serb and Croat ultra-nationalists were concerned, the Muslim South Slavs were assimilable, manageable or dispensable, and their Islamic faith an alien and archaic implantation which would fade away as Muslims were brought back to their roots and into modernity.

Attitudes such as these made it all the easier for Milosevic and his minions to launch the war in B&H in March and April 1992. Their aim by then, however, was not to redeem supposed apostates, but to carve out violently the largest possible "ethnically cleansed" territory and to add it to Greater Serbia. Disbelief on the part of most urban Bosnians that such a project could be mooted or implemented, combined with denial of the horror which it would inevitably unleash, assisted the Serbs in their rapid conquest of more than half of B&H in the first weeks of the war. The international community was, with far less justification, equally unprepared.

The Dayton Peace Agreement

Three years, dozens of shortlived ceasefires, scores of would-be peace maps and several hundred thousand lives later, the United States was finally prepared to engage its power in ending the war. Croatia had been taken under the American wing. The Bosnjak-Croat war of 1993-94 (itself partly a consequence of the demographic shock waves set in motion by Serb ethnic cleansing) had been patched up. The Croatian Serb state, Republika Srpska Krajina, had been all but extinguished and most of its inhabitants set to flight. The B&H Army had become a formidable fighting force, while the Army of Republika Srpska was short of men if not of weaponry. Finally, Slobodan Milosevic had remade himself once more: as a peace-maker.

The Dayton conference met in November 1995. Its task was to reconcile the effective partition of B&H between a shaky Bosnjak-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska while proclaiming Bosnia's continuing integrity and creating instruments through which this profession might one day become practice. Free and fair elections, to be held by 14 September 1996, were one of these instruments. They would square the circle by producing all-Bosnian institutions which would, in turn, unlock the coffers of international reconstruction aid. Bosnians of all nationalities would see the profit in learning to work and live together again.

Elections were also intended to provide an exit strategy for IFOR, the NATO-led peace implementation force. In the meantime, IFOR would separate the combatants, enforce their partial disarmament and ensure a climate of security sufficient for a panoply of international civilian organisations to do their jobs. IFOR was not tasked with catching alleged war criminals, guaranteeing freedom of movement or assisting refugees to return home. These things were the responsibities of the "parties".

The other main international organisations included:

• * The Office of the High Representative, Carl Bildt. OHR was charged with general oversight of the execution of the political aspects of the Dayton agreement by the parties, reporting both to the United Nations Security Council and to the Contact Group of powers (US, UK, France, Germany and Russia).
• * The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Head of Mission, Robert Frowick. OSCE had been invited by the parties to assist them in creating conditions for free and fair elections, to certify that those conditions had been met, to organise, conduct and report on the elections, and to monitor and promote both human rights and arms control. OSCE's brief made it principally responsible for media matters through a Media Experts Commission (MEC) under the Provisional Election Commission (PEC).
• * The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR retained responsibility for assisting refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes. It had been envisaged at Dayton that this process would be well underway by the time elections took place.
• * The United Nations International Police Task Force. UN IPTF was to monitor the performance of local police forces and to act as a check upon them. It did not, however, have powers of arrest or carry weapons.
• * The European Union Administration in Mostar. EUAM retained responsibility for the divided "capital" of Hercegovina and for the municipal elections scheduled to take place there in spring 1996.

The Media and the Peace

Despite the presence of some 60,000 IFOR troops, the ministrations of a veritable alphabet soup of inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations and the intermittently critical scrutiny of the foreign press corps, the B&H media were in no position to undo the effects of nearly four years of war, let alone to create, on their own, those conditions for genuinely free and fair elections which were to remain so conspicuously absent on the ground. Yet it often appeared that this was what the international community expected the media to do. Having discovered that the media had been used to stoke the fires of war in the late '80s and early '90s, the sponsors of Bosnia's peace were determined to reverse the process.

As it happened, indicted war criminals remained uncaught and their influence was scarcely diminished. Freedom of of movement existed only for foreigners. Postal and telecommunications links between the two entities were not restored. Some 2.6 million refugees and displaced persons continued to languish in foreign or internal exile. And the "neutral political environment" stipulated for the elections remained a pipedream.

The disproportionate attention lavished on the news media in the course of the campaign was, in fact, illustrative of why conditions for free and fair elections were so far from being met. Given its unwillingness to pay the price in blood, intellect, treasure and time which would have been required to create a satisfactory climate for elections, the international community seems to have found it more congenial to focus instead on media projects. They offered a less costly means of making it appear that everything possible was being done to ensure that the vote would be free, fair and real. Even in this respect, however, their efforts were far from impressive. The much-touted Open Broadcast Network (or TVIN) is the most obvious case in point.

But Bosnia's foreign guardians and benefactors were not alone in seeking compensation for their weaknesses in the media sphere. Opposition parties also sought to make up for their lack of cadres, grass roots organisations and saleable pedigrees by accessing the media. When they could not do this to their satisfaction, they again sought to use the media to cry foul. This, of course, is the practice and prerogative of politicians everywhere. But television loomed even larger in the calculations of untried or minority parties which possessed few other means of getting their messages across.

It is at least arguable that opposition parties in B&H Army-controlled areas of the Federation commanded more time on television and radio - both paid (by OSCE) and unpaid - than their likely or eventual tallies of votes justified. On the other hand, in Republika Srpska it is also likely that the Socialist-led, pro-Milosevic Alliance for Peace and Progress (SMP) benefited nearly as much from Belgrade television's consistent and exclusive support as it did from the absentee ballots of Bosnjaks and Croats with no other place to cast them in the race for the collective presidency.

This may be the one important exception to the argument here that the media did not matter very much in the making of the final result. If so, it is also the exception which proves the rule: for the SMP campaigned not so much as an opposition coalition than as a vehicle for mobilising Bosnian Serbs behind the regime of their alternative and true motherland, Serbia.

No such dilemma confronted Bosnian Croats. Both the local and the Zagreb-based electronic media provided monolithic support for the HDZ as the sole legitimate manifestation and guarantor of Croats' national and existential interests. The SDA had slightly less success in portraying itself as the sole representative and wartime saviour of Bosnjaks. Although it used local broadcasters to convey this message, it either refrained from or failed in harnessing the state network, Radio-Television B&H, to its exclusive service.

6. AN ANATOMY OF THE B&H MEDIA

Bosnia & Hercegovina was not renowned in socialist Yugoslavia for the vibrancy or heterodoxy of its media, any more than it was for the liberality of its communist establishment. The currents of reform which periodically swept through Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia - and which created space for challenging journalism - passed Bosnia by.

Independence and collapse

Only from 1989, with the federal communist party disintegrating and the republican parties hastening to find either new reformist or old nationalist electoral credentials for themselves, were the B&H media set free. RTV Sarajevo, RTV B&H's predecessor, was liberated from direct government control by act of parliament. In 1990, both the privatisation of existing "socially owned" media and the foundation of new privately-owned ones became theoretically possible. The dominant Oslobodjenje publishing group, for example, defeated a bid to nationalise it and moved, instead, towards downsizing and privatisation.

Also in 1990, Sarajevo offered a home to Yutel, a would-be all-Yugoslav television service which the reformist federal premier, Ante Markovic, intended to use to combat the propaganda of hate and/or separatism emanating from Belgrade and Zagreb. Yutel's anti-nationalism and pro-Yugoslavism came too late and had too little reality or visibility to have any impact on the media war raging between Croatia and Serbia (or against Slovenia), but its programme and message proved very popular in B&H, even after the shooting war started in June 1991.3

Bosnians were permitted their devotion to a dying faith - and their media a brief spell of independence and neutrality - because the coalition government of the three nationalist parties formed after the November 1990 elections was deadlocked. Each either wanted its own nationalised (and nationalist) media or was determined to prevent its partners (and enemies) from having theirs. Failing to split up RTV Sarajevo and Oslobodjenje, the SDS and HDZ initiated the establishment of party media. This led to the first use of force in B&H: the Serbs' seizure of TV Sarajevo's transmitter on Mt Kozara in the summer of 1991 and its redirection to Belgrade. A veritable transmitter war followed. By April 1992, five of TV Sarajevo's 11 transmitters had been taken. With the Serbs' initiation of open hostilities, three more were siezed.4

As Mark Thompson has observed, whereas the approach of war was accompanied in Serbia and Croatia by the centralisation and consolidation of the news media, "in Bosnia they were split and reconstructed in triplicate."5 The almost totally separate media systems and markets prevailing today date from this period. Radio and television signals were to continue to cross the front lines and, later, the entity and sub-entity boundaries, but publications and journalists were not. Horizons shrank as well.

In fact, the formerly all-Bosnian media based in Sarajevo were from late spring 1992 effectively reduced to broadcasting and publishing for not much more than the beseiged capital. The signal of the renamed TV B&H now covered only 20-25 per cent of the republic's territory.6 Yutel gave up broadcasting. The Republika Srpska and, later, the Herceg-Bosna media, on the other hand, linked up with the party-state media networks in their putative motherlands. Serbian television's signal covered some 70 per cent of B&H.7 Many Sarajevo Serb and Croat journalists and technicians defected to Pale or Mostar, found themselves sidelined at home or - like so many others - simply sought to escape.

The once integrated Bosnian media structure was thus partitioned as thoroughly as the republic. It was also reduced in size and altered in profile. According to Media Plan's calculations, there were 377 publications, 54 radio stations, four television stations and one news agency registered in B&H in mid-1991. By mid-1996, in both entities, there were 145 print media, 92 radio stations, 29 TV stations and six news agencies. The total number of media outlets had, therefore, fallen by 62 per cent over five years. But, overall, the losses were registered exclusively by the press. The number of broadcasters more than doubled. Radio and television were vital to the war effort. It was the the beekeepers' gazettes that died, along with the habit of reading generally. For the circulation of the press fell even more precipitously than the number of titles.

Media in Republika Srpska

The institutionalisation of Republika Srpska - and the emergence of conflicts of interest and personality between it and Serbia - led during the war to the development of a media system parallel to and increasingly competitive with that of Belgrade. Although Pale dared not and could not pull the plug completely on RTS, the media of Milosevic the peace-maker became unreliable friends of Karadzic the warrior. The SDS regime invested heavily in founding its own integrated media (ie, propaganda) system. This was all the easier because the speed of the Serbs' military conquest in 1992 left RS with a media infrastructure that was little damaged. Not until the NATO bombings of summer 1995 were significant losses registered. Nor did any independent media appear in RS until after the signature of the Dayton agreement. Even then, "independence" in the RS context usually meant (and means) pro-Belgrade.

By July 1996, RS possessed 25 newspapers and other periodicals, 36 radio stations, seven television stations (ie, production units or studios) and one state news agency, SRNA. The backbone of the RS information system was SRT: Srpska Radio-Television. Confusingly, it was also often known as SRNA. Its main studios were located in Pale and Banja Luka. Of the 36 local radio stations, 29 were publicly (ie, municipally) owned and seven were private. All seem to have taken their news from SRT and SRNA. As will be discussed below, the RS Army-run Radio Krajina in Banja Luka also employed a far wider range of sources. Not until late in the election campaign did one of a few long-standing attempts to establish private television stations come to fruition.

Also until late in the campaign, there was only one daily newspaper in RS, Glas srpski. Its readership was miniscule, but its devotion to the SDS was immense. A daily edition of the weekly Nezavisne novine started publication in Banja Luka in late August. Other non-SDS weeklies or fortnightlies were published in Bijeljina and Doboj. The Belgrade press was available in all RS towns. The coverage of RTS, on the other hand, was patchier. Belgrade's signal was directly receivable in northeast and east Bosnia, but would-be viewers in northwest Bosnia depended on SRT's sometimes capricious feeds of the first or second channels of Serbian Television into the network. On the other hand, they could also watch and listen to HRT from Croatia.

Media in Herceg-Bosna

Bosnian Croats lagged slightly behind the Serbs in subverting and plundering the all-Bosnian media in order to establish their one-party alternative. Their system also remained underdeveloped in comparison with that of RS. In the absence of overt conflicts of interest with Zagreb, the Herceg-Bosna media did not need to grow beyond basically local dimensions. HRT provided the main broadcasting services. Local relays re-transmitted HRT's first channel in areas controlled by the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). By mid-summer 1996, HRT's second channel was also receivable throughout most of the Federation.

Herceg-Bosna offered a supplementary or ancillary service that could, when occasion demanded, be far fiercer in tone than Zagreb, which latterly craved international respectability. Although both HRT and the Herceg-Bosna media were controlled by the HDZ, the (west) Mostar-based media gave vent to the especially virulent nationalism of the party's "Hercegovina lobby". The interests of the majority of B&H Croats who did not live in Hercegovina were less often catered for - in the media as in the political sphere.

By July 1996, Herceg-Bosna had 10 papers or magazines, 15 radio stations, five television studios and one official news agency, HABENA. Many of the radio stations were municipally owned. The main local television station, Croatian Television Mostar (HTV Mostar), was privately owned but no less ardent in its support of the HDZ for that. Radio Herceg-Bosna, which provided news services to the local stations, was owned by the para-state. The most significant Croatian publications in B&H (eg, the weekly Hrvatska rijec) originated in Sarajevo, not in Herceg-Bosna. Print media from Croatia dominated the market in HVO-controlled territory; but dissentient publications such as Feral Tribune from Split or Novi list from Rijeka were more easily - and safely - acquired at newsstands in Sarajevo than in west Mostar.

Media in B&H Army-controlled territory

The exigencies of war killed off more media than it did journalists and technicians thoughout B&H. The former, however, were more easily replaced. The paradoxical fact is that the media boomed in wartime, and especially in Sarajevo, despite the grievous losses in cadres, money, buildings, presses, transmitters, equipment and expertise. Socialist-era dinosaurs like Oslobodjeje were reborn in glory. Private radio and television stations proliferated. New magazines (but fewer newspapers) were launched with dizzying regularity, and expired almost as regularly. Journalism was not only newly relevant, exciting and patriotic, it could also keep you out of the trenches or get you on a UN flight out of Sarajevo. Mini-booms also took place in provincial cities under Armija control.

Officially, wartime censorship did not exist. Several of the new magazines and broadcasters were highly critical of the leadership's accomplishments, if not of its aims. Sarajevo's three daily papers proclaimed themselves independent. But self-censorship was ubiquitous, a habit of mind inherited from the past and amply justified by the present emergency. All media were vulnerable to charges that they were deficient in patriotism. Nor was overt intimidation of journalists by Sarajevo's gangster warlords, official army commanders and party enforcers unknown. RTV B&H, in particular, came under pronounced SDA influence. Provincial media were often more exposed to domination by local party, clerical or army bigwigs. The authorities also played favourites, giving scoops to friendly media and denying access to "enemies".

Other flaws clouded the genuinely heroic image of grace under pressure. Most were unavoidable. Multinationalism ceased being second nature. It became a principle and an affectation. Increasingly, Bosnjak-staffed media were addressing an increasingly Bosnjak audience. Unspoken assumptions and herd instincts prevailed. More subtly than in RS or Herceg-Bosna, a collectivist national ethic still came to prevail. Individual rights were slighted.

Heroism also bred arrogance. The young journalists who had gone to the front and come to the fore thought they knew everything. Self-made editors and broadcasting bosses inclined towards megalomania. Yet material impoverishment and physical destruction led also to a deficit in professionalism. This was most glaringly obvious on television.

In addition, much of the media - and most of the independent media - came to depend utterly on donations from foreign foundations and agencies for their survival. Media Plan estimates the value of donations between October 1992 and the end of 1995 at $ 7 million. This was the only market that existed and the only market media managers knew. But it was no preparation for a future in which outside interest in B&H was bound to decline. The press, in particular, was too extensive for a poor, workless, non-reading and divided populace to support.

Foreign largesse also aroused envy on the part of state-owned media which benefitted less; antipathy in government circles on account of the donors' unaccountability and the recipients' resulting independence of them; and suspicion among a broader public schooled by socialist non-alignment to fear the alienation and subversion of precious national assets.

The legal and regulatory environment was confused and contradictory. The start made in 1989-90 in introducing new legislation for a non-socialist society was set back when, upon independence, old Yugoslav federal laws were adopted wholesale to cover the gaps in legal provision. Other improvisations took place during the war. The result was chaos. Although this and a generally permissive attitude on the part of the authorities created loop-holes through which would-be private broadcasters were able to gain licences and frequencies, legal uncertainty was basically to the advantage of the government. It was in a position to grant favours rather than to observe laws.8

In addition, the nationalisation of former "social property" as an ostensible prelude to its comprehensive privatisation was seriously canvassed by the government. This put at risk media enterprises which had privatised themselves (by making their workers into shareholders) before the war. It was, of course, also the means by which the HDZ had neutered much of Croatia's media. The B&H Federation partners had failed to resolve this - as so many other issues - by summer 1996.

The Washington Agreement creating the Federation in March 1994 had entrusted media regulation (except for the allocation of broadcast frequencies) to the cantons. This meant giving it to the two ruling parties in their respective bailiwicks. They thus had no interest in sorting out media laws at the federal level. Dayton, for its part, left media matters to the entities. The legal and regulatory deadlock was therefore as rigid as Bosnia's national-territorial division when the election campaign commenced.

The media scene, on the other hand, was highly dynamic and diverse on Armija-controlled territory. Nearly two-thirds of all B&H media operated there. Media Plan figures show that 110 newspapers, magazines and other periodicals, 41 radio stations, 17 TV stations and four news agencies existed in July 1996. Aside from the greater liberality of the regime, this concentration of media activity could be explained by the fact that the Sarajevo government controlled more of B&H's cities than did RS or Herceg-Bosna and, in particular, the only big city. Media reflecting (or espousing) national (or nationalist), religious (or fundamentalist), party political (or apolitical) and civil (or anarchic) perspectives were all to be found. There were even more purveyors of pop culture and music. Journalism of a world standard was also produced.

RTV B&H, the state and would-be public service broadcaster, remained - to mix metaphors - both a cinderella and a politcal football. Its relative material and human impoverishment in the war had been the greatest, while its exposure to assaults from all quarters had been the highest. It took pride in its "we never closed" spirit throughout the war, and resented - to the point of paranoia - all criticism. It appeared to view the new independent broadcasters as asset-strippers and/or get-rich-quick cowboys. TVIN, the Open Broadcast Network promoted by the international community, was seen as an invader to be repelled.

The network was run from late 1992 by SDA loyalists since, under "state of war" legislation, executive appointments fell to the presidency. Standards also fell. News centred on the embattled capital. Journalists left in droves. In 1995, the acting director, Amila Omersoftic (now director), took to suing, in her private capacity, the network's critics. Her hostility towards former Premier Haris Silajdzic had become legendary. Yet technically and journalistically, matters improved with the end of hostilities.

Ms Omersoftic left the SDA to found the Zena B&H (B&H Woman) party, for which she was to stand in the elections. Her position was emblematic of RTV B&H generally. She was widely regarded in opposition circles (ironically, like Silajdzic) as an SDA stalking horse; yet it was also rumoured as the campaign began that she would soon be dismissed for her treachery to the ruling party. Getting it from all sides was RTV B&H's fate.

RTV B&H's recovery was (as will be discussed below) also manifest in its improved coverage of the country. By late summer 1996 (ie, after relays to the far west Unsko-Sanski canton had been restored), RTV B&H estimated that its television signal could be received by 57 per cent of the population of B&H, including 30 per cent of RS. In the Federation, it figured that it was visible to 70 per cent of people (78 per cent of those living in B&H Army-controlled areas, and 30 per cent of those in HVO-ruled regions). This did not alter the fact that a previously all-Bosnian system had, like everything else in B&H, split along national lines. RTV B&H's pretence that it was the successor to an all-Bosnian information system was thin.

(3 Thompson, Forging War, pp. 38-50.; 4 Ibid, pp. 207-09.; 5 Ibid, p. 206.; 6 Ibid, p. 208.; 7 Ibid; 8 "Report on Legal and Practical Obstacles for Professional Media Development: 1. Bosnia and Herzegovina." Ljubljana: International Federation of Journalists/International Federation of Newspaper Publishers Co-Ordinating Centre for Independent Media of the Balkan Region, March 1996, pp. 1-4.)

7. THE MEDIA IN THE ELECTIONS

As was noted in the Introduction, media coverage of the elections was far from being the worst thing about them. Not only did it probably make very little difference to the result, but in so far - and it was far indeed - as the media misbehaved, they usually did so at the behest of one or another of the parties to the DPA. In other words, they did their masters' bidding, or what they trusted was their master's bidding. Expecting the party-state media of RS and Herceg-Bosna - or, for that matter, of Serbia and Croatia - to be anything other than what they were was innocent beyond belief. It is, in fact, impossible to credit the notion that anybody expected otherwise.

Certainly the would-be supervisory bodies possessed neither the structures nor the will to seek to make it otherwise. They did, on the other hand, have the power. OSCE could, in theory, have fined media organisations out of existence. It could have banned whole political parties, and not just a few of their candidates. It could have taken back all the money it had given them for their campaigns, and not just modest sums. It could have acted more expeditiously in dealing with offenses. It could have postponed the all-Bosnian poll, or one of the entity elections, or some of the cantonal votes - as it eventually did the municipal elections. It could have refused at the end of June to set a date, instead of certifying then, not that conditions for free and fair elections actually existed, but that they might - with a lot of luck - come into existence by 14 September. By this quasi-certification OSCE deprived itself of most of its leverage over the parties.9

The trouble was that these were mostly powers which could not be used. Like Carl Bildt's nominal power to re-impose economic sanctions on RS and/or FRY, they were a species of atomic weapon, unusable in practice if the main elections were to go ahead as scheduled and in both entities on 14 September. And this, because it was the Americans' overriding objective, was also the aim of the international community. As was often pointed out by the Sarajevo press in the course of the B&H campaign, Bill Clinton's bid for re-election was not the only American poll taking place in autumn 1996.

The pages that follow describe how the campaign was covered by the media monitored by IWPR/Media Plan. The stewardship of OSCE and the fates of various international media projects will be briefly assessed in the next chapter.

7.1 THE B&H FEDERATION: BROADCASTERS

RTV B&H

The Habsburg Monarchy was notable before 1914 for being the only great power in whose affairs small states meddled as routinely as it interfered in theirs. B&H is a successor state to Austria-Hungary in more ways than one, and RTV B&H's dominance in the Federation has not gone unchallenged.

Radio FERN, the Free Elections Radio Network backed by OSCE and funded and organised by the Swiss government, started up on 15 July. Its signal was reported to be audible over 81 per cent of the Federation and 66 per cent of RS. OHR sponsored TVIN, a would-be network of local television stations which eventually went on air in five cities for a few evening hours on 7 September. All other Federation-based radio and television stations are strictly local. Yet Croatia's HRT is also broadcast into and inside the Federation, while the signals of the RS and Serbian networks are widely receivable. The yardstick which applies to RTV B&H, therefore, is that of the other state broadcasters. By this measure, RTV B&H was without doubt the most impartial and journalistically professional of the lot in the course of the campaign. It was far from being the slickest or the most technically proficient, but that is another story.

TV B&H

TV B&H's first election programme, a weekly sixty-minute political magazine entitled "B&H Elections", entered the early evening schedule well before the official start of the campaign. Despite offering parties four free minutes to promote themselves, the bigger parties refused to take part. Their objection was that, by consigning news of their press conferences and other activities to this unattractive (because too early) and variable slot, TV B&H was excluding them from the programme that mattered most: the 19.30 "Dnevnik". TV B&H did not try for long, however, to maintain this exclusion zone.

TV B&H fulfilled OSCE's subsequently issued requirement to provide every party contesting the elections with an opportunity to present itself. Beginning on 29 July, these ten-minute self-promotions followed the main evening news. Although all B&H parties were invited to appear, none from RS did so. Nor did the two Croat opposition parties from Herceg-Bosna (the HSP and the HCSP) take up the offer. The ruling HDZ did so, but it regards itself as the party (or movement) of all Croats, wherever they may live. This boycott demonstrated the extent to which TV B&H is considered to be "Muslim television" by the RS and Herceg-Bosna parties - and B&H to be no state of theirs.

From mid-August, TV B&H's evening schedule was dominated every night by two-hour-long thematic debates among party representatives. Again, only parties based in largely Bosnjak areas took part, save for the HDZ. These discussions proved to be ideal opportunities for the smaller parties to mix it up with the big players, but also for single-issue parties (eg, the BOSS, arguing for a tripartite division of B&H; and the BHPS, pushing for a boycott of the poll) to seek to commandeer the agenda. The greater readiness of the ruling parties to stick to the point probably served them well. They looked more "governmental".

A certain disdain for the whole enterprise was demonstrated by the ruling SDA and HDZ, as if they considered it redundant. During the final debate on 12 September the SDA spokesman, Ismet Grbo, remarked that he was participating only out of respect for TV B&H's editorial exertions: for, as that day's great rally in the Kosevo Stadium had shown, the SDA would surely triumph. What was also certain was that these well-intentioned, professionally moderated but often tedious programmes went on far too long.

The only appearances by RS politicians on TV B&H were in party political films prepared by OSCE. Unlike presenters and editors on SRT, those of RTV B&H did not therefore have the experience of playing host to politicians from the "other entity" in their studios. Given the aversion and/or indifference generally shown by TV B&H journalists towards RS parties, potentially gripping television was lost.

Watching the early evening news is a virtual obsession in former Yugoslavia. This made "Dnevnik" by far the most important election programme on TV B&H, especially as its election-related content swelled with the passing weeks. It was notable that TVIN did not pit its evening newscast against "Dnevnik".

"Dnevnik" did not overtly favour the ruling SDA. But it did, at the start and near the end of the campaign (see graphs), permit the party to make the most of its advantage of incumbency. Between 8 and 14 July, for example, President Alija Izetbegovic and Premier Hasan Muratovic appeared 15 times on "Dnevnik", mostly in the protocol roles (ie, greeting, meeting and bidding farewell to various worthies) beloved by television in ex-Yugoslavia.

Moreover, by identifying with the government's stands on matters like the meaning of the Mostar poll results, the exclusion of Radovan Karadzic from the RS and SDS presidencies, and the nullification of the P-2 absentee ballot registrations, "Dnevnik" provided a fillip to the SDA. It was keen, too, to express grave doubts on behalf of the government and the entire Sarajevo political establishment about the stewardship of the international community.

More importantly, "Dnevnik" tended to lend substance to the notion, promoted by the SDA, that it, the state, the army and the Bosnjak nation are one. ("Dnevnik" was squeamish, however, about adding the Islamic faith to this equation.) The presentation of gatherings attended by President of the Presidency, Army Commander, SDA President and Father of the Bosnjak Nation Alija Izetbegovic slithered uncomfortably between these various guises, never more so than when Islamic paraphernalia and ceremonies were also a part of the show. The problem was not that "Dnevnik" reported these mass meetings, but that it presented Izetbegovic in one role - as state president or army commander - when he was actually appearing in another - or several.

It tended, too, to inflate attendances and to deflate the religious dimension. Both sins were committed on 31 August, when it led with a report from a rally at Grebak that was ostensibly an army occasion, but omitted to show the mass Islamic trappings. (Sarajevo's independent TV Studio 99 had fun over the next two days airing - twice - its report of this event, during which its camera had been pointed at a smaller but more frightening crowd.) But if "Dnevnik" was always ready to give Izetbegovic the benefit of every doubt, clips of speeches by the SDA's great rabble-rouser, Ejup Ganic, made the party's demand for total Bosnjak unity perfectly plain.

Besides religion, "Dnevnik" often shied away from other sensitive topics which might portray the authorities in a dubious light. Its coverage of the 15 June attack on Haris Silajdzic in Cazin by SDA toughs was lamentable for its lack of on-the-spot reports by its own correspondents. Similarly, it reported on the disruption of ZL rallies by SDA supporters in the Tuzla region in mid-August by citing party and police statements rather than using its own reporters' despatches. When the SDA governor of the Tuzla-Podrinje Canton was pelted with rotten fruit by enraged refugees from Srebrenica on 12 July, TV B&H averted its camera. The continuing forced evictions of Sarajevo Serbs merited hardly any mention.

The SDA was not particularly advantaged, however, when it came to the reporting of routine campaign events. If a report from some provincial SDA rally erred on the side of breathless enthusiasm, then this was often "corrected" by the tone or content of the editor-presenter's introduction or conclusion. The opposition parties - and especially the ZL coalition and the small GDS - enjoyed easy access to "Dnevnik". (See tables and graphs.) As election day approached, "Dnevnik" was given over almost entirely to party press conferences, rallies and pronouncements. Politicians of all Federation parties (save, of course, Fikret Abdic's DNZ) seemed to be on the air continuously. After the vote, Izetbegovic complained at a press conference that TV B&H had devoted far more time to the opposition parties than their importance had justified. He was probably right.

What "Dnevnik" did not devote much time to was politics in RS or Herceg-Bosna. Although reports by its own correspondents on the ground would, in the case of the former, have been virtually impossible to organise, other means of covering the RS could have been found. Nor was "Dnevnik" much interested in efforts being made to normalise relations between the entities. It did not, for example, mention, let alone cover, Federation President Kresimir Zubak's three visits to Pale over the summer. In fact, "Dnevnik" gave the impression both of having accepted the partition of B&H as a fact of life and of having reconciled itself to being a Bosnjak medium.

In sum, monitoring over three months indicated marked improvements in the performance of TV B&H and, in particular, in its flagship newscast, "Dnevnik". Professional errors, political partiality and even some obvious manipulations which were noted by Monitoring Report in June were largely absent by polling day. This was far from being the case with other broadcasters in and into B&H.

Radio B&H

"Dnevnik" at 15.00 is Radio B&H's premier newscast. Its 19.00 broadcast is largely a reprise. Like TV B&H, Radio B&H is handicapped by the shrinkage of its network of home correspondents to the territory under Armija control. Other handicaps it imposes upon itself. For most of the campaign it espoused the authorities' view that the elections were a foreign imposition for which proper conditions did not exist. Its coverage of party activities was correspondingly sporadic and superficial. Such an approach obviously disadvantaged the opposition more than it did the ruling party. Only in the final weeks of the campaign did "Dnevnik" exert itself. But its coverage of the election race was never as intensive as was that of its television stablemate and namesake.

It provided, in fact, more of a running chronology of the campaign than an interpretive framework. It avoided polemics (except in the despatches from Zagreb of the BH Press correspondent on B&H-Croatian relations) and gave its reporters few chances to do investigative election stories. On the other hand, it showed greater interest in and sympathy for inter-entity contacts (particularly among journalists) than did TV B&H's "Dnevnik".

RTV B&H's news programmes generally respected Dayton terminology (eg, "Republika Srpska" rather than "Serb entity") but found it difficult to refer to Karadzic and Mladic as anything other than "war criminals". The obligatory pre-poll silence was observed.

(9 See the International Crisis Group reports "Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina" (Sarajevo: 13 August 1996, pp. 17) and "Elections in Bosnia & Herzegovina: ICG Report" (Sarajevo: 22 September 1996, pp. 34). The former argues for postponement; the latter that the elections were not free and fair.)

Sarajevo broadcasters

The Bosnian capital possesses nine mostly privately owned radio stations and four private television stations. Not all are audible or visible throughout the city. Monitoring focused on those stations with a significant news output of their own. (Some stations take their main news from the local language services of foreign broadcasters such as VOA and RFE.) The only broadcaster monitored throughout the campaign was Independent Radio-Television Studio 99. Monitoring of Bosnian Muslim Radio Hayat was discontinued in mid-July, while Independent Television Hayat was dropped in mid-August. (The two Hayats share only their names and Bosnjak orientations.)

NTV Studio 99

Studio 99's late-night newscast, "Oko 22", is an ambitious undertaking for a small local station with cramped premises, a shortage of equipment and a largely self-taught staff. During the campaign, the broadcast went out at closer to 23.00 than to 22.00, the single studio having to be cleared of guests from the preceding talk show and set up for the news. When it eventually appeared, the telecast could last for well over an hour. Technical proficiency and editorial consistency were often lacking. Everything was thrown into the editorial pot and served up. This meant that the helpings of election-related material were latterly enormous.

In its ambition to cover everything, "Oko 22" found itself, early in the campaign, giving undue prominence to the doings of government (SDA) leaders. As opposition parties' activities increased, however, its policy of balanced and neutral treatment of all parties was more obvious. Later in the campaign, leaders of the ZL coaltion featured with perhaps disproportionate regularity. "Oko 22" used foreign agency despatches to cover stories in RS, but these were inadequate except in the long-running saga of Karadzic's removal from office.

Studio 99 did have its preferences. It supported the full implementation of the DPA, including the lessening of tension between the entities, the arrest of "war criminals" (not "alleged"), freedom of movement and the return to their homes of DPs and refugees. It was staunch in its defence of a united Mostar and a civil society with a free press. It was originally set to be a member of the TVIN network. Studio 99 was also keener on the elections themselves than was RTV B&H, but just as fierce in its opposition to the P-2 registration forms. It opposed nationalist provocations, the Izetbegovic cult of personality, the meddling of clerics and soldiers in politics and the prevarications of the SDA and HDZ over the Federation.

"Oko 22" played up incidents embarrassing to the SDA which "Dnevnik" on TV B&H played down. Only on two occasions, however, did monitors catch it playing dirty tricks of its own. The first was its 26 July coverage of a war invalids' protest meeting in Sarajevo. This was portrayed as if it were merely an SDA rally. The second occasion was a 4 September report on a HDZ meeting in Bugojno. This was caricatured as a jolly Croatian knees-up in the contested city.

Although its reach often exceeded its grasp, "Oko 22" provided politically engaged nightowls in Sarajevo with the most comprehensive and impartial coverage of the election campaign available on television.

Studio 99 Radio

This is basically a pop music station. Twice a week, however, it broadcasts "Hyde Park", a late morning phone-in programme with a large and devoted following. Most of the themes selected and introduced for discussion by the presenter were of direct relevance to the election campaign. The programme was of interest for monitoring purposes because these themes are often sensitive, the presenter's approach is irreverent and the authorities are reputed to dislike the show intensely.

This dislike was apparently made manifest in frequent blockages of the studio phone lines during the first half of the campaign. If true, such interference was grist to the presenter's satirical mill. Appropriately pointed musical selections would substitute for calls on these occasions. Later the presenter developed a routine of folk songs and recordings of bleating sheep to convey his - and, it seemed, most of his listeners' - disdain for the docility with which the national herds were following their shepherds into their respective sheepfolds. "Hyde Park" was no more respectful of international organisations operating in B&H. It was a healthy phenomenon and evidence that the old Sarajevo was not yet dead.

Radio Hayat

Bosnian Muslim Radio Hayt's early evening "Dnevnik" was monitored between 3 June and 14 July. This was long enough to establish its basic characteristics. The newscast was so unprofessional and technically inept that it was often difficult to guess where error left off and editorial policy took over. The programme provided a mere bulletin board of daily events taken (albeit rarely acknowledged) from the wires of BH Press and ONASA. News about Bosnjaks, the SDA and its leaders featured to the virtual exclusion of Bosnia's other nations, parties and politicians, excepting, of course, the "war criminals" of the "criminal party" in "so-called Republika Srpska".

NTV Hayat

Monitoring of Independent Television Hayat's "Sarajevo Danas" ("Sarajevo Today") took place between 3 June and 18 August. The shorter Sunday newscast was styled "Vijesti" ("The News"). Both were modest productions which gave the impression of being composed of all the agency despatches which happened to fall on the editor's desk on a given day. The small outside broadcast team appeared to aspire to no more than the recording of press conferences and vox pop surveys on the streets. Coverage of the election campaign did not seem a high priority.

Although beginning with the greeting "Eselam alejkum i dobar dan" ("God be with you and good day"), this newscast was usually evenhanded in its treatment of political issues and parties. When it was not, however, its preference for the SDA was clear. More curious was its particular concern to track and celebrate the activities of FB&H Interior Minister Avdo Hebib (SDA). The Dayton terminology for RS was conspicuous by its absence.

Provincial broadcasting centres

Bihac

The far northwest of Bosnia bears the scars both of its long investiture by the Serbs and its even more traumatic experience of Muslim civil war. Municipally owned Radio Bihac was in no state financially or editorially to throw off the total subordination to the political and military authorities to which it had been subjected during the war. As far as these SDA officials were concerned, the struggle against Fikret Abdic and his followers was not yet over. At best, the mainly Bosnjak opposition parties were jeopardising vital Muslim unity for their own selfish ends. At worst, they were abetting or repeating Abdic's treason. When Haris Silajdzic was attacked in Cazin in June, it was as Abdic's successor.

Radio Bihac's "Hronika dana" featured most weeks in Monitoring Report for its abject subservience to and eager glorification of the SDA and its leaders. The evening newscast took all its national news from state sources (eg, BH Press and Radio B&H), while its local coverage bore the clear fingerprints of the cantonal powers. When Silajdzic was assaulted on its doorstep, "Hronika dana" sought first to hush the story up and then to blame the victim for the crime. Its reporting of Abdic's trial (in absentia) for war crimes was highly prejudicial. The resumption of broadcasts (from Croat-controlled territory) by Abdic's Radio Velkaton and his attempt to launch his new party, the DNZ, in the area were met in August with howls of indignation from Radio Bihac. No such horror was expressed at the seizure by customs agents of campaign materials ordered by other opposition parties, nor at the bombings of their premises by persons unknown.

Blaming technical and staffing problems, Radio Bihac delayed until mid-August before starting a series of election broadcasts in which opposition leaders were invited to take part. The SDA was accorded double representation and the DNZ was excluded.

Radio Bihac's programmes were marked not so much by hostility towards Serbs and Republika Srpska as by Bosnjak exclusivity and self-regard. The station demanded the return of Bosnjak refugees and DPs to RS, but never mentioned the possibility that Serbs might return to the Federation.

By the end of August the station's financial and technical position was apparently so dire that the management was compelled to make personnel and editorial changes. It had, in any case, been sidelined when the authorities put their love and money into the new Unsko-Sanski Cantonal Television. On 5 September staff explained the station's plight to listeners and asked for their support. Glasnost seemed to work. It gave the station room for manoeuvre. During the remainder of the campaign the station's news programming was both less obviously in thrall to the SDA and more tolerant of other political options. This change was symbolised by the re-broadcast on 6 September of an interview with Satan himself, Fikret Abdic.

Mostar

The local elections in Mostar on 30 June resulted in a narrow victory for the SDA-led List for a United Mostar. The HDZ both disputed the legitimacy of the result and claimed that it had secured Croat control over those parts of the city important to Croats. In other words, the city would remain divided. Despite the eventual formation of a joint city council and the election by it of a single (Croat) mayor, no unity was evident in the period leading up to the Bosnia-wide elections. The Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna did not expire on 31 August as had been agreed. Forced expulsions of Bosnjaks and Serbs from west Mostar continued. Vehicles caught on the "wrong" side of the Neretva continued to be shot at or stoned. The elections in Mostar and their aftermath set a gloomy precedent for B&H as a whole.

The media in Mostar were equally polarised. East (Bosnjak) and west (Croat) Mostar possessed their own media. Each side acknowledged the other only for purposes of attack. The west was, however, far more aggressive than the east. After an early run-in with OSCE, the east side RTV Mostar sought and usually succeeded in playing by the rules. The west side Croatian Television Mostar (HTV Mostar), Croatian Radio-Radio Station Mostar (HR-RP Mostar) and Radio Herceg-Bosna refused to acknowledge the existence of any rules, save those of the HDZ, the monolithic movement of all Croats.

Monitoring focused on the the two television stations. The radio stations (despite their different ownerships on the Croat side) broadcast news bulletins almost identical in content to those of the TV stations. Their staffs were also interchangeable. It was necessary, however, to have regular recourse to HR-HP Mostar because of power cuts and reception problems with HTV Mostar. Radio Herceg-Bosna was followed irregularly. The long-promised arrival of TV Herceg-Bosna did not happen before the September elections. RTV Mostar, however, joined the OBN when it eventually appeared.

RTV Mostar

RTV Mostar's treatment of the local election campaign differed considerably from its handling of the national contest. In the former it was an unabashed cheerleader on behalf of the List for a United Mostar and its omnipresent leader, east Mostar Mayor Safet Orucevic. During the latter it offered time to all parties, broadcast OSCE voter education spots in the appropriate settings (after MEC intervention) and showed its preference for the SDA only by a slighty more generous allocation of time. The Croat parties did not, for their part, take up invitations to participate in election programmes; while the HDZ's promotional film was not (for reasons unexplained) broadcast by the station.

The west side of the city existed for RTV Mostar only as a source of bad news. Violent or otherwise embarrassing events on its own side were passed over in silence if possible. When, for example, a Muslim cleric issued a call to "jihad" at an SDA rally in Capljina on 24 August, RTV Mostar ignored the unfortunate utterance until a storm blew up and made its earlier circumspection look silly. The reduction in local news output following the advent of TVIN at least allayed this sort of risk.

HTV Mostar & HR-RP Mostar

These stations' public function was to unite the "hrvatski korpus" (Croatian corps) behind the Herceg-Bosna para-state, the Croatian mother-state, the Catholic Church and the party-movement of all Croats, the HDZ. Journalism did not come into it. HTV Mostar's editor-in-chief, Smiljko Sagolj, is a former TV Sarajevo correspondent who - notoriously - pretended to report the fall of the Berlin wall while actually in Sarajevo. The editor of HR-RP Mostar is Veseljko Cerkez, whose stock-in-trade is anti-Muslim invective. He inveighed regularly (on both stations) against the disgusting notion of "mixing" ("gemistanje") with Muslims. All efforts to promote a common life must, he insisted, be nipped in the bud.

During the two campaigns HTV Mostar offered air time in equal measure to ardently nationalist Franciscans and Mostar's mafiosi, but most of all to the leaders of the HDZ. They seemed to drop in to make pronouncements whenever the mood took them. No other parties' representatives appeared. No other parties' advertisements were accepted. No OSCE spots were broadcast.

When permitted or required by Zagreb, the stations attacked the DPA as "immoral and unjust to the Croatian nation". The city's EU administration was always under fire, as were the carpetbaggers of OHR and the mercenaries of IFOR. Anti-Bosnjak rhetoric and terminology was, however, more prevalent in the course of the life-or-death local election struggle than during the HDZ's "our choice is peace" national campaign. But as Cerkez's notorious radio commentary on 29 July made plain, it was Croats who sought to stand aside "while foreign and domestic hyenas from this space tear, piece by piece, at our body of freedom, land and future" that were most at risk.10 The firebombings, shootings and sackings of Croats who had dared to stand for the ZL must have come as no surprise.

(10 See Monitoring Report, no. 10, 8 August 1996. As will be noted below, Cerkez's diatribe moved the MEC to contemplate writing a letter.)

Tuzla

The broadcasting scene in Tuzla was less poisonous, despite being a largely family quarrel. The city was controlled by the opposiiton UBSD and SDP. The canton was run by the SDA. The media reflected this split. TV Tuzla, founded during the war by the municipality, espoused the civil, anti-nationalist and left-of-centre views of Mayor Selim Beslagic. The cantonal TV station, Television Tuzlansko-podrinjskog kantona (TV TPK), promoted the SDA and Bosnjak values. Radio Tuzla generally occupied the middle ground. Although Tuzla has many other radio stations, these three broadcasters were judged most significant for monitoring purposes.

TV TPK

The station's fealty to the SDA was complete. No party event or statement was too insignificant to broadcast. No SDA worthy was denied a chair in the studio or time on air. The absence of trained journalists in the station's employ no doubt facilitated the party's domination. But the lowly professional standards which prevailed at TV TPK presumably also diminished its effectiveness as a vehicle for propaganda, despite its powerful signal and modern equipment.

TV TPK did not offend against OSCE rules requiring access for all parties to election broadcasts. That would not have been in the interest of its masters. Rather, it diminished or ignored opposition activities in its news coverage. Beslagic, in particular, was banished from the air except on those occasions when (as in his closure of TV Tuzla on 5 September) the story could be used to discredit him. The disruption of opposition rallies by SDA supporters and other dirty tricks were, on the other hand, only reported through SDA denials and justifications. Similarly, when the giant SDA rally on 12 July to commemorate the fall of Srebrenica went wrong, and the ungrateful masses pelted Governor Izet Hadzic with stones and rotten fruit, TV TPK chose to ignore the unpleasantness.

The station showed little interest in the affairs of non-Bosnjaks, whether in the SDA's partner in government, the HDZ, or in the Serbs of RS. It homogenised others as much as it sought to homogenise Bosnjaks.

TV Tuzla

TV Tuzla's devotion to its masters was mitigated by higher journalistic standards. Beslagic and his ZL partners were provided with news coverage which was preferential in terms of air time, but not in terms of content. The station also welcomed the participation of all parties in its election broadcasts and was keen on cooperation with RS. The gaps in its campaign coverage appeared to stem more often from limited resources than from prejudice or policy. The superficiality and/or predictability of its reporting was presumably a reflection of staff weaknesses. The fact that one of its most professional journalist-presenters was also a cantonal leader of the SDP was not, however, an example of good practice. (TV TPK's editor-in-chief was an SDA candidate.)

The major scandal surrounding TV Tuzla was its closure by Beslagic on the eve of its entry into the TVIN network. Ownership by the city had not provided the station with adequate facilities nor its staff with regular pay. The mayor's apparent aim was to secure the station's future - and the resources it stood to gain through TVIN - by privatising it before the SDA's likely victory in the municipal elections. The staff, who had briefly gone out on strike earlier in the summer, were not appeased by assurances that they would be among the station's new owners. Their howls of protest were taken up by Beslagic's opponents, and he was made to appear an enemy of media freedom. The station soon went back on the air, the question of its ownership still unresolved.

Radio Tuzla

This is a small station of limited power but with a long tradition and a large audience. Owned by the municipality, it gave every indication at the outset of the campaign that it would favour the UBSD and the ZL coalition. As the contest went on, however, it devoted more and more time to the SDA and the Party for B&H. Its editor-in-chief formally joined the SDA in August. Other journalists occasionally seemed to have different preferences. On the whole, the station's public affairs output was neutral if uninventive. All OSCE stipulations were observed.

One of the editors gave vent on 3 September to what must have been a widely shared disenchantment in Tuzla with the blasts and counterblasts of the parties and their media champions: "After all these communiques and announcements, I give myself the right to send a message to the party leaders that, if no one else, Radio Tuzla refuses to be a cockpit for party contention and narrow party interests. People can't believe anyone any more, and it's certain that all this argumentation about who said and did what will do no good at the polls."

Zenica

Contrary to its wartime reputation as a "mujahadin" stronghold or its onetime preoccupation with metal-bashing, this city did not become a centre for media fireworks during the campaign.

Radio Zenica & TV Zenica

The municipally owned Radio Zenica and TV Zenica contented themselves (their newscasts being identical until the end of July) with providing largely implicit support for the SDA. This they did by featuring the routine activities of the mayor and the commander of the B&H Army 3 Corps (both of whom were SDA candidates) at every possible opportunity. Their specific coverage of the campaign itself was neutral until September, when a clutch of programmes explicitly promoting the SDA were broadcast. If only because of the power of pictures, TV Zenica's coverage of the great SDA rallies during the summer left an impression of greater ardour on behalf both of the ruling party and of Bosnjak unity.

NTV Zetel

Zetel, by contrast, is that rarest of all things in B&H: a genuinely independent television station. It is also a shoestring operation. Until late in the summer, its signal was not even visible throughout Zenica. Despite its modest resources, it managed to make increasingly professional - and interesting - news programmes in the course of the campaign. Even its essays in voter education were fresh and stylish. Its stance was equally critical towards all parties. It was unafraid to venture into such perilous subjects as the politisation and islamisation of the B&H Army. It showed, too, unusual interest in opposition currents in RS. In September it joined TVIN.

7.2 THE B&H FEDERATION: THE PRESS

Eight Sarajevo-based papers were monitored throughout the campaign: the dailies Dnevni Avaz, Oslobodjenje and Vecernje novine; the weeklies Hrvatska rijec, Ljiljan and Svijet; the fortnightly Slobodna Bosna; and the monthly Dani. Only two provincial papers were covered: Front slobode and Zmaj od Bosne, both biweeklies published in Tuzla. The Sarajevo press is distributed in all areas controlled by the B&H Army, but only a few titles that are highly critical of the government (eg, Slobodna Bosna and Dani) can normally be found on HVO territory.

The attitude of the Sarajevo press towards the elections themselves ran the gamut from approving to dismissive, with the majority of papers adopting a stance which varied from the sceptical to the hostile. The three dailies (which proclaim their independence) and Ljiljan (which styles itself a national - Bosnjak - journal) viewed the elections as an imposition of the DPA which would be likely to legalise the partition of B&H. Ljiljan was the most hostile, followed by Avaz; while Oslobodjenje and Vecernje novine were merely sceptical. There was no doubt, however, about the aversion expressed by the opposition-minded Dani, Slobodna Bosna and Svijet to the whole electoral exercise. As far as they were concerned, the elections were a circus sent by foreigners for the entertainment of the locals. Nothing good could come of them. Only the HDZ weekly, Hrvatska rijec, approved unreservedly of the B&H poll. But even its enthusiasm vanished when the results of the Mostar elections were announced, and remained in abeyance until a deal was struck between the HDZ and SDA over the city's governance.

Whatever their views of the elections' appropriateness, all the papers gave it enormous coverage. Most were open, too, to the bulk of the opposition parties which shared the pre-war goal of a united and whole B&H. This included papers which favour the SDA either explicitly (Ljiljan) or implicitly (Dnevni Avaz), but not the ultra-Bosnjak Zmaj od Bosne. The press was much less well-disposed towards the co-ruling HDZ, with the exception, of course, of Hrvatska rijec. Dani, Slobodna Bosna, Svijet and Front slobode tended to sympathise either with the ZL or another of the opposition parties. Given their small size and scant potential for breaking the stranglehold of the nationalist parties on power, the opposition can be said to have enjoyed a good press.

In the ex-Yugoslav context, however, editors tend to believe that independence and an open editorial preference for a given political party are mutually contradictory. The endorsement of a party is regarded as tantamount to undermining the credibility of one's journalism. In the specifically Bosnian context, moreover, papers with multinational and politically heterogeneous staffs tend to make a fetish of their neutrality. This was the case with Oslobodjenje and Vecernje novine.

The course of events did not favour efforts which the press might otherwise have made to promote understanding of and reconciliation with either RS or Herceg-Bosna. The long campaign to exclude Karadzic and Mladic from office, the regular exhumation of mass graves, the constant harassment of travellers and refugees seeking to return home and the revelation of the extent to which the P-2 forms were being used to ratify ethnic cleansing were not conducive to conciliation with RS. Nor were the storms over Mostar, the liquidation of Herceg-Bosna and the formation of a united army favourable to Bosnjak-Croat amity. The press, however, did show increasing interest in reporting from and about RS. It was not its fault that the circumstances were usually negative.

7.3 REPUBLIKA SRPSKA: BROADCASTERS

With the exception of a handful of papers and one radio station, the ruling SDS controlled all RS media during the election campaign. The regime has since moved to silence even these few. The SDS not only demanded and received the enthusiastic support of its media, it also used the media to instigate and implement its policies.

Unlike broadcasters in the theoretically non-existent sub-entity of Herceg-Bosna, who did not even pretend to uphold the standards of professional conduct promulgated by OSCE, the RS government ensured that its media acknowledged the rules and regulations of the PEC and collaborated in the work of the MEC and its regional sub-commissions. Had such commitments been taken seriously, however, both the media and the regime itself would have been utterly changed. No such transubstantiation took place. Rather, the object of RS cooperation in the electoral exercise and its associated institutions was to reinforce, reify and ratify RS statehood. The RS media made no bones about that at least.

The SDS did not obscure, either, its hold on the most important media, Srpska Radio-Television (SRT). RS Assembly President Momcilo Krajisnik chaired the SRT Council and Vice-Premier Velibor Ostojic headed the Management Board. The occasional denials by Minister of Information Dragan Bozanic at MEC meetings that the government ran the RS media were belied during the campaign by reports in that media of the instructions issued to editors by Acting President Biljana Plavsic or other SDS luminaries.

Srpska Television

The election campaign began in RS well before it did in the Federation. The reason was the cavalcade of mass "meetings" called in defence of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Madic against their indictment for war crimes by The Hague Tribunal. As each town hosting a rally appeared to compete for the honour of staging the biggest and best, the cameras of Srpska TV went along. The unity of leaders, party, state and nation was proclaimed at each stop. So too was the infernal unity of the international conspiracy against RS - and Serbs in general - denounced and explained: as a product of hatred, fear and envy. Addressing journalists arriving for one of these meetings, RS Foreign Minister Aleksa Buha informed them that their "job was already finished or almost finished". Everything had been prepared, above all by Srpska TV.

The eventual exclusion of Karadzic from the RS and SDS presidencies (at the end of June and in the middle of July, respectively) marked a significant lessening in the frequency and virulence of the regime's - and its media's - expressions of animosity towards the international community. The DPA, in fact, became a species of holy writ, and the elections the means by which RS statehood would be finally and formally confirmed. Karadzic, for his part, was relegated for a time to a spiritual realm: invoked as the unseen saint and martyr in whose name and on whose behalf Serbs must vote.

In the latter stages of the campaign, however, Srpska TV focused regularly on posters bearing his image held aloft in the crowds attending SDS rallies while speakers hailed his selfless achievements. Behind them, on the dais, a decorated but empty picture frame could often be seen. On 28 August, for example, Srpska TV covered an SDS rally in Cajnice. Biljana Plavsic addressed a sea of Karadzic placards: "One man once said, and said it very well - and his visage is present among us now - that 'We have completed our work. We have a Serbian state, like a jewel in our hands.'"

Srpska Television's main evening newscast ("Novosti u 8", moved back to 7.30 during August so as to coincide with the central "Dnevnik" on RTS from Belgrade) was the principal vehicle for SDS promotion. The party dominated the screen, especially at the start and end of the campaign. (See graphs.) Mention of other RS political parties served either a decorative or a cautionary function. SDS satellite parties were covered in order to float proposals, to confirm the ruling party's unique state-building role or to lend substance to the image of a multiparty democracy with an accessible media. Opposition parties served as whipping boys and/or as object lessons in the perils of disunity and treason. If Serbs did not vote as one for Krajisnik as their member of the collective presidency, for example, then they might find themselves once more saddled with a "vizier".

There could, however, be too much of a good thing; and on 31 July Srpska TV announced that, as "a product of the nation", it was no longer prepared to broadcast the "lies" of self-seeking parties and coalitions which jeopardised the national interest by promoting the reintegration of RS in B&H. Naturally, no similar glut in the market for the speeches, thoughts and activities of SDS leaders was ever noted. Advertising rates for political spots had meantime been set at astronomical rates, justified by Srpska TV on the ground that the anti-state parties had lots of foreign money to spend. The SDS did not need to pay for "advertising" on its medium.

The Federation, its parties and peoples were much in the thoughts of Srpska TV editors. They existed to provide proof of the impossibility of any sort of common life with "Muslim hordes" or "Ustasa butchers". Although relegated to the section of "Novosti" bearing the rubric "From Abroad", the "Croat-Muslim Federation" enjoyed regular coverage. It was always negative. Despite a request by Biljana Plavsic on 11 August that the RS media should respect Dayton terminology, little improvement was noted. B&H remained "former". The Federation remained "artificial". Muslims remained "balije" (ie, rude peasants). And Alija Izetbegovic remained the chief "Muslim terrorist" and "war criminal" who should be packed off to The Hague. The future "Dayton Bosnia" would be a "union" of Republika Srpska and the Croat-Muslim Federation, ie an association of two sovereign states.

The fact that Federation-based parties had dared to enter the race in RS was an abomination. SRT's director general, Ilija Guzina, made the point in a commentary broadcast on "Novosti u 8" on 29 June:

Eight, yes, eight political parties from the Muslim-Croat Federation have entered themselves for the elections in Republika Srpska! The history of European and world democracy, going back to the time of Pericles, has probably never recorded that parties from one state entered the elections of another... Serbs are presented with two possibilities at the polls. The first is to cast their votes for parties which stand for a united and whole Republika Srpska and for unification with Serbia one day. The second possibility is to give their votes to all those good-for-nothings who have now or somewhat earlier declared themselves as fighters for this or that right, and who are ready to surrender practically the whole state into Alija Izetbegovic's hands. There is one other possibility, also unfavourable for Serbs - and that is if they do not go to the polls, then the number of votes from all the others will be bigger than their votes, and so they will lose their state.

As will be noted below, OSCE was eventually moved to act over this and the continuing declarations by SDS leaders that the point of the elections was to confirm RS statehood.

In the meantime, Srpska TV initiated on 8 July its series of election programmes presenting the contenders in which politicians from Federation-based parties sometimes managed to appear. (Transport to SRT studios in Pale or Banja Luka was often an insuperable problem.) Those that did make it were generally roundly abused by presenters, by RS party representatives also appearing and by telephone callers. When the SDA took its turn on 25 July, the screen went blank ten minutes into the broadcast, the notice "smetnja" ("disturbance") appeared and the programme was abandoned. RS opposition party leaders also had a rough time when they were allowed to appear. A specific ban on the ex-SDS leader of the Democratic Patriotic Bloc (DPB), Predrag Radic, appears to have been maintained.

Srpska Radio

The role allotted to Srpska Radio and its 16.00 "Dnevnik" was no different. It, too, had the job of affirming the SDS party-state. The purpose of the Dayton elections was to establish RS as a fully - or at least three-quarters - independent state which would thereafter have the right to unite with Serbia. Since the principal opposition coalition, the Alliance for Peace and Progress (SMP), claimed precedence in the unification stakes, it had to be branded as the carrier of a false Serbian consciousness which would lead RS back into either a "unitary Bosnia" or a neo-communist dictatorship. "Dnevnik" regularly offered air time to anti-Milosevic historians and "Islamists" from Serbia who hailed RS as the true repository of Serbianism ("srpstvo"). The opposition parties' sporadic claims to represent the values of civil society (including an independent media) were dismissed as dangerous fripperies.

Following the effacement of Karadzic, however, Srpska Radio began to report more frequently on opposition press conferences and even to carry their criticism of the state media. This openness did not last long. Nor did its attempt in August to shed pejoritive terminology for Bosnjaks, Croats and the Federation. In the final weeks of the campaign Srpska Radio's zeal on behalf of the SDS may have exceeded even that of Srpska TV. News, as such, was almost dispensed with, and "Dnevnik" was given over to editorial commentaries and philippics.

Radio Prijedor

This station was worth monitoring for several reasons. In the first place, its signal is exceptionally strong. Secondly, Prijedor plays host to many Serb refugees from former Republika Srpska Krajina and north-western Bosnia. Thirdly, the station occasionally broadcast commentaries which hinted at dissatisfaction with the limitations placed on journalists by the SDS regime.

Radio Prijedor was given a prominent role in convincing refugees within range to register to vote (using the P-2 forms) in their current places of residence. This, it was argued, was their patriotic duty. No contrary views were expressed.

Programmes purporting to present all political parties (excepting, of course, those from the Federation) openly favoured the SDS. Newscasts mentioned opposition parties positively only when their positions were identical to those of the ruling party. Otherwise, the opposition was castigated for playing a "dirty political game" to gain power at any price.

The troubled Federation was presented as an entity with which RS could have only "inter-state" relations. The SDA was singled out as dangerous to Serbs on account of its fundamentalism and integralism. The new demographic structure of B&H was regarded as permanent.

Local events during the summer which begged for substantive reports (eg, a strike following the removal of a factory director disloyal to the SDS, the appearance of SDA slogans and symbols on public buildings and the armed confrontation of the Prijedor police chief with Czech IFOR soldiers) did not get them.

All this sat oddly with the occasional commentaries of M. Mutic, Radio Prijedor's licensed dissident. His attacks on corruption, black marketeering, the exploitation of refugees, the myth-making of "professional Serbs" and the abuse of journalists in RS contrasted with the station's overt fealty to the SDS. Whether a revelation of score-settling inside the regime or some sort of safety valve, these mid-summer sermons were an interesting phenomenon.

Radio Krajina

The open heterodoxy of this radio station was easily explained. It was run from a RS Army barracks in Banja Luka by General Mladic's former propagandist-in-chief, Colonel Milovan Milutinovic. As such, it represented both the claim of senior officers to embody truly patriotic Serbian values and their resistance to SDS efforts to turn the Army into a party legion. During the election campaign it was the only broadcaster in RS which put any premium on objective information or journalistic integrity. It employed both serving soldiers and civilian volunteers. In mid-November it was put off the air as the regime moved to settle accounts with the Army. Its death was "collateral damage" sustained in the internationally supported effort to persuade Biljana Plavsic to get rid of Ratko Mladic. The irony went unnoticed.

Two Radio Krajina programmes were monitored: its daily noon newscast, "Dnevnik", and its Friday evening call-in, "Objective Reality".

Drawing on a wide range of sources (VOA, RFE, Deutsche Welle, HRT, etc), "Dnevnik" carried stories which the SDS-controlled media did not touch. Only Radio Krajina listeners would have had, for example, any idea of what was really going on during the period when Karadzic was being forced into retirement. "Dnevnik" covered fully the press conferences and rallies of the four most important RS parties or coalitions: the SDS, SRS, SMP and DPB. Well-crafted commentaries, broadcast at the end of the news, were often highly critical of the first two until near the end of the campaign. Other parties were covered less frequently. From 22 July, Radio Krajina employed "Dayton terminology" for the other entity and its peoples unless it was citing SRNA.

There were, however, several exceptions to Krajina's policy of glasnost. One was the RS Army and its commander. "Dnevnik" transmitted no news injurious to the Army's honour or standing. It was thus hostile towards both The Hague Tribunal's pursuit of Mladic and IFOR's treatment of the Army. Confrontations between the two forces were reported only through communiques from the General Staff or SRNA. IFOR was always held responsible. If Krajina disposed of no information which would allow it to blame IFOR for an incident, then no report was broadcast. IFOR's own bulletins were never cited.

"Dnevnik" was also allergic to reports on the continuing expulsions of Bosnjaks from Banja Luka during the summer, despite the publicity given to them at UNHCR and IPTF press conferences in the city. In fact, its view of the Federation was no better than that of the regime media. Only its language was more polite. Promoting reconciliation and the possibility of a common life with Bosnjaks and Croats was no part of Krajina's scheme.

The phone-in show, "Objective Realities", went out for between two and four hours. Leading politicians from all RS parties except the SDS (which ignored invitations) and the Party for Serb Unity (which banned its members from appearing) took part in the course of the campaign. So did representatives of OSCE and independent journalists. Although the presenters used and tried to impose the Dayton vocabulary, neither guests nor callers cooperated. The programmes revealed no hidden longing for reintegration in B&H. On the other hand, callers often rang to complain of the behaviour of SRT presenters towards their guests on the Srpska TV election broadcasts which ended while "Objective Realities" was still on the air.

7.4 REPUBLIKA SRPSKA: THE PRESS

Glas srpski

This little read regime daily is published in Banja Luka. It reputedly prints fewer than 2,000 copies. Its election coverage was devoted almost entirely to promoting the SDS and it leaders. Perhaps two-to-three per cent of news items related to opposition parties. It censored advertisements placed by the SMP, which complained to the MEC Sub-Commission. Glas srpski's editor was a member of this body.

The paper upheld the SDS line in every particular. Its terminology was unchanged from the war. Some of its journalists were reputed to write for the opposition press under pseudonyms, since the Ministry of Information prohibited any cooperation.

Dnevne nezavisne novine

The weekly Nezavisne novine (Independent News) went daily on 22 August. It advertised for permanent staff in September, but was forced to revert to weekly publication in October when Glas srpski refused any longer to print it and two other opposition papers.

The advent of a non-regime daily was a significant event, though the paper was modest in size (eight pages), compiled entirely from agency despatches and distributed (4,000 copies) only in Banja Luka. It was also, at a cover price of 1 Dinar (DM .33), considered expensive in RS circumstances.

Dnevne nezavisne novine was not an independent newspaper in the sense that it had no ties to or preference for a particular political party. The paper's partiality for the SMP coalition was clear. The DPB was also covered, but the activities of other RS parties were rarely mentioned. Among Federation-based parties, it showed a certain regard for the UBSD (and ZL generally). It was hostile towards the SDA and HDZ.

Judging from the stories carried by the paper, its stance towards the Federation was balanced, as was its point of view regarding IFOR and other international organisations. The headlines provided for these wire service articles, however, often used the old dictionary, eg "former B&H" and "Muslim-Croat Federation" (but in lower case).

Dnevne nezavisne novine came too late and had too restricted a circulation to have much impact on the campaign. But it was one of very few positive developments on the RS media scene.

The others

Three other non-regime papers deserve mention. Novi Prelom is a monthly published by the Social Liberal Party in Banja Luka. It is the post-Dayton revival of a title founded in 1988. As an opposition paper of intellectual cast, it enjoyed some foreign support and came to exemplify Banja Luka's relative liberalism. Alternativa is a Doboj fortnightly established in 1996. It has ties to the RS Army and is pro-Belgrade. An anti-SDS article it published in July landed its editors in court in October. Like Novi Prelom, it was also to be hit after the election by the supposed renovation of Glas srpski's printworks. Panorama is another new bi-weekly, based in Bijeljina, but printed in the safety of Serbia. It is popular in style, but its election coverage was complete and balanced. It claims to be independent and to have a circulation of some 4,000 copies.

7.5 THE NEIGHBOURS: BROADCASTERS

Croatian Television

Whether as predator or protector, Croatia's deep involvement in B&H is obvious. So is the presence of its state broadcaster, HRT. The terrestrial signals of Croatian Television's three channels are visible over a large part of the Federation and RS, and became more so in the course of the summer. This penetration is taken for granted, like Bosnian Croats' possession of Croatian passports and the right to vote in Croatian elections.

Although Croatia banned campaigning for the B&H elections on its territory, that did not stop HRT from active and exclusive engagement on behalf of the HDZ B&H on the air. In fact, only Fikret Abdic's DNZ, operating like its leader from exile in Croatia, also merited coverage. This exception may have reflected Zagreb's appreciation of Abdic's nuisance value. It may have testified to Croatia's territorial interest in Abdic's stronghold of Cazinska Krajina. Or it could have been the result of blackmail. "Babo" Abdic presumably knows where many bodies - real and metaphorical - are buried.

The B&H elections were presented by HRT as possessing historic significance for Bosnian Croats. Only by supporting the HDZ would they guarantee their existence and equality in B&H. Although coverage of Bosnian election themes had been intensive beforehand, from 25 August HRT redoubled its programmatic efforts. The B&H campaign became inescapable: on both regular public affairs telecasts and on special programmes, on all three channels and on the satellite service, as well as in prime time HDZ advertising spots. The HDZ's all singing and dancing Mostar rally was covered live over three hours. HRT cameras were present in every corner of B&H inhabited by Croats. Public opinion polls proclaimed the victory of the HDZ before the real poll was held. There was no pretence of observing electoral silence after 12 September. On election eve HRT made a last minute change in its schedule in order to screen a documentary about the world-wide struggle against Islamic terrorism entitled "The Jihad in America".

Indeed, as presented by HRT, the HDZ campaign appeared to be directed largely at mobilising Croats in opposition to their federal partners, the SDA. The SDA had stolen victory in Mostar. It was responsible for the unjust postponement of the local elections. Its obstruction of the creation of federal institutions reflected an undiminished appetite for a unitary B&H. This was proved by its (and its media's) obsession with the liquidation of Herceg-Bosna. It was to blame for the existential peril facing Croats in Bugojno and for their second class status in Sarajevo.

The HDZ, of course, was without blemish. HRT did not cover Sir Martin Garrod's 30 August challenge to six named Mostar godfathers to put an end to the city's gangsterism. Nor did it report on the ongoing expulsions of Serbs and Bosnjaks from their west side homes. The American-brokered deal to kill off Herceg-Bosna on 31 August was fudged. Like B&H Foreign Minister Jadranko Prlic, HRT regarded the event not so much as a death than as a resurrection. As a corollary, it was evident throughout the campaign that HRT viewed Republika Srpska as only nominally a part of B&H.

Serbian Television

Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) was very keen on the Bosnian elections. Their certification as free and fair would trigger the final lifting of economic sanctions on FR Yugoslavia and provide for the international "verification" of Republika Srpska. The elections also offered Milosevic an opportunity to rid himself of the disobedient SDS and, thereby, to strike a blow against his ultra-nationalist opposition at home. With elections in Yugoslavia scheduled for early November, these were all important aims.

RTS did its best to oblige. Its TV newscasts were put at the disposal of the Socialist-led Alliance for Peace and Progress (SMP). Only the SMP, viewers were assured, could liberate RS from the Pale clique which was, in Milosevic's words, "in conflict with the whole world." Only the SMP could put an end to corruption, the privatisation of the state and the abuse of human rights. Only the SMP would be able to re-establish brotherly relations with Yugoslavia.

Milosevic and his colleagues openly endorsed the SMP and did their best to build up its leader, Zivko Radisic, as their anointed one. Radisic was summoned to Belgrade for a laying on of hands. Party and state functionaries campaigned alongside him in RS. RTS covered it all. In the final week of the campaign, RTS broadcast 17 separate items (totalling 40 minutes in length) about the SMP in its main daily newscast. On the last day of the campaign there were five items telling voters to vote for the SMP. And on 13 September, when electoral silence was meant to reign in B&H, RTS repeated its reports (11 minutes) on the previous day's spectacular final SMP rally in Banja Luka.11 Portraying the SMP as the civilised and non-nationalist option, RTS was tarring the unmentioned domestic opposition as much as it was the SDS.

RTS evinced no curiosity about the campaign in the "Muslim-Croat Federation" except when its partners were at loggerheads (eg, over Mostar). Nor were the problems or existence of Serbs in the Federation of interest. More striking still was the absence of any coverage of the more than 300,000 refugees from B&H in Yugoslavia or of their mobilisation as voters in their supposed future places of residence in RS. In fact, all developments which might have called Belgrade's peace-making policies and achievements into question were ignored.

The impact of RTS's campaign on behalf of the SMP was much reduced by the invisibility of its signal in the western parts of RS. Although Pale continued throughout the campaign to feed Belgrade's programmes into its own network, newscasts were usually replaced by music or sport.

8. MEDIA SUPERVISION AND PROJECTS

OSCE's Media Experts Commission failed to ensure that the B&H media complied with the rules and regulations of the Provisional Election Commission or upheld its standards of professional conduct for media and journalists during the campaign. Speaking to OMRI correspondents Yvonne Badal and Jan Urban in late September, Ambassador Robert Frowick admitted that the MEC "needs some considerable attention."12 He was then under the impression, of course, that the local elections would be held in late November under OSCE auspices. The record of the MEC will be examined below.

International efforts to assist the domestic media were certainly more successful, though only time will tell how much so. Several governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations worked to offer training, technical support, material assistance and project funding to publications and broadcasters in B&H. As might have been expected, it proved far easier to identify and work with deserving or promising media organisations in B&H Army-controlled parts of the country than in either Herceg-Bosna or Republika Srpska. Attempts to foster inter-entity cooperation among journalists were also made. They had some modest success.

Two international media initiatives had a far higher profile: the Open Broadcast Network (OBN, aka TVIN or Bildt TV) and the Free Elections Radio Network (FERN).

FERN

FERN went on the air on 15 July. Operating under the aegis and from the premises of OSCE, it appeared to achieve a substantial listenership at a relatively low cost to its Swiss organisers and funders. Research by the Gallup Organisation indicated that 27 per cent of people in the Federation were tuning in to FERN each week by early September. The station's popularity was generally attributed to its music programming, although its news and current affairs output was also often commended. The RS government tried to prevent FERN from broadcasting on RS territory, but failed. (The DPA gave IFOR control over all broadcast frequencies. This meant that FERN and TVIN did not need licences from local governments.)

TVIN

The OBN project contributed far more heat than light to the campaign. Viewed by the Sarajevo government and large parts of the media establishment as a colonialist imposition which would strip RTV B&H of assets and audience while making a bunch of media privateers very rich, it aroused suspicion, envy and hostility in equal measure. It did not help that the exact nature of OBN/TVIN seemed to undergo regular revision, nor that it was never clear who exactly was in charge.

Despite the expenditure of enormous energy, argument and guile - not to mention some $10.5 million - TVIN did not come on air until 7 September. Its newscast was weak. Its signal was largely confined to areas which already enjoyed significant media and broadcasting diversity. (The exception was Banja Luka, where TVIN had no local partner, but where IFOR put a transmitter at its disposal.) Were it not for the fact that TVIN was always envisaged as a long-term endeavour, it would have to written off as a total failure.

(11 Jovanka Matic, "Analiza sadrzaja udarnih informativnih emisija RTS, TV Politike, Studija B i BK u periodu 8-14. septembar 1996," (Beograd: Institut drustvenih nauka), p. 2.; 12 Jan Urban & Yvonne Badal, "'No Logic Works Here'" (Transition, 1 November 1996), pp. 55-56.)

The Media Experts Commission

The MEC met 20 times between 3 May and 12 September. It suffered from some of the same handicaps as did OSCE generally. It started late and disposed of inadequate resources. More importantly, its mandate was flawed. It was envisaged that the Sarajevo MEC would deal only with the most important business. Its five regional sub-commissions would handle matters in their areas, referring to Sarajevo only those cases which could not be settled locally. It did not work out that way. The sub-commissions were not fully established until 6 June. Their meetings often lacked a quoram. They rarely seemed able to decide anything.

Three of the MEC's five areas of responsibility dealt with the accreditation and protection of journalists. In practice, this meant foreign journalists. Its other two tasks were to monitor the performance of the B&H media: first of all ensuring that political parties and candidates enjoyed equitable access and, secondly, considering cases or complaints about erroneous news reporting or the use of inflammatory language by the media. In all five areas the MEC was empowered either to take action or to recommend it to the PEC. The PEC, for its part, had the power "to impose fines or to take other appropriate action."13

Given its mandate, it was unsurprising that the MEC was to devote more of its time and energy to devising a system of accreditation and assembling information about cases of harassment of foreign journalists in RS than it was to scrutinising media performance and taking remedial action. Ironically, IFOR refused to relinquish its foreign press accreditation monopoly. Nine weeks of labour by the MEC turned out to have been in vain.

Worse still, the MEC was incapacitated by its composition. The MEC was chaired by the head of the OSCE Media Development Office, which also provided its staff. Its membership comprised a representative from OHR; OSCE human rights officers; designated representatives of the three governments (B&H, the Federation of B&H and RS); representatives of the interior ministries of both entities (the Federation and RS); and "qualified media specialists appointed by each of the parties."14 An IFOR observer was later added to this complement. The regional sub-commissions were meant to replicate this structure, with the OSCE regional media officer taking the chair.

The domestic representatives on the MEC were fairly high powered, and certainly more so than the foreigners. But only the RS affected to appoint a working journalist as its media specialist. The Federation and B&H governments were represented by politicians or officials, even if some had formerly been journalists. Since the Federation actually disposed of real and independent journalists aplenty, their absence from a body charged with monitoring the media and upholding the highest possible standards was regrettable. It was also unfortunate that there was no representative of Croat nationality.

Entrusting the governments with the power to appoint all the local members of the MEC was just as bad. But this, of course, was in the nature of the DPA. The "parties" were always responsible for everything. Such a structure guaranteed, however, either paralysis or rule by the lowest common denominator. The latter tended to prevail. And given the dissension to be expected between servants of these particular governments, that common denominator could only be low indeed. Moving by consensus meant hardly moving at all. Decisions were regularly deferred as more information was sought, more or better translations were requested and the return of frequently absent members was awaited.

The list of decisions which the MEC made and failed to carry out - and of tasks it set itself and failed to accomplish - is long:

• * The regional sub-commissions were assigned to monitor the media in their areas. They did not do so for want of funds, staff and equipment.
• * The MEC agreed to form print and broadcast media subcommittees. They never met.
• * No MEC accreditation was issued, despite weeks of discussion and the actual establishment of an office to perform this function.
• * Expressing discontent with the quality and style of the media monitoring reports reaching the MEC (principally those from IWPR/Media Plan), the RS Minister of Information was regularly pressed - and just as regularly promised - to set up a system of media monitoring in RS. No such system was created.
• * Despite agreeing to invite journalists to attend MEC meetings and to hold periodic press conferences, no journalists attended and no press conferences were called.
• * Members decided on 27 June to produce within one week lists of inflammatory terms for the guidance of editors. The Federation B&H submitted such a list on 18 July. The RS representatives never did so.
• * Discovering on 8 August that the PEC and MEC had neglected to provide clear guidelines distinguishing between access and political advertising, the chairman asked the secretariat to clarify the rules. This did not happen.
• * Confronted with a detailed complaint of bias and favouritism against SRT from the Democratic Patriotic Block, the MEC agreed on 8 August to invite SRT's editor-in-chief, Drago Vukovic, to meet them. He never did so.
• * Despite repeated assurances by the RS representatives that IFOR press cards were sufficient for journalists to work in the RS, complaints on this score continued to preoccupy the MEC throughout the campaign.

The futility of the MEC's exertions eventually moved Mirza Hajric, foreign affairs adviser to President Izetbegovic and a former journalist, to quit as the B&H government representative on 8 September.15

That he and the MEC soldiered on for as long as they did, and actually accomplished a thing or two en route, was the result of the Serb side's interest in doing - or seeming to do - the bare minimum required keep the show on the road. These, after all, were the elections to confirm RS statehood. They had to happen. A show of reasonableness on the MEC could help. In these circumstances it is all the odder that the MEC, OSCE, OHR and the foreign press woke up so late to the fact that statehood was what the elections in RS were all about. As this report has emphasised, the RS media never sought to disguise the fact.

It should be of interest to track here two cases of media misbehaviour mentioned above which came before the MEC, as well as the OSCE's eve-of-poll attempt to discipline the RS government for treating the poll as a referendum on RS independence.

The Guzina case

SRT Director Ilija Guzina's 29 June commentary on "Novosti u 8" has been cited in the previous chapter. It was quoted in Monitoring Report no. 5, issued on 3 July. The Federation representative on the MEC raised the matter at the Commission's 11 July meeting. The MEC decided that the secretariat should, by the time of the next meeting, acquire a transcript or video recording of the complete text and, on that basis, prepare a letter to Guzina which would demand an on-air retraction, correction and apology.

No such copy had been obtained - and no letter to Guzina drafted - by the 18 July meeting. A decision was deferred to the next meeting.

The MEC viewed the offending commentary on 25 July. Rejecting the RS representative's suggestion that Guzina should be invited to explain himself before action was taken, members approved a letter demanding that Guzina make a public retraction and apologise to those whom he had traduced. "Further measures" would be taken against SRT in case Guzina failed to comply.

Fail he did. The MEC accepted the chairman's suggestion on 1 August that the MEC ask the PEC "to impose appropriate penalties or to take any action as it deemed necessary against the Director General of SRT", but only after giving Guzina another seven days to comply. The MEC was informed on 8 August, however, that the letter notifying Guzina of the one-week extension had not been delivered until the day before. Guzina thereby got another week.

The MEC learned on 15 August (which was now the deadline for Guzina's retraction) that another letter, confirming this deadline, had been delivered to Pale on 9 August. Guzina's deputy, Marica Lalovic, had not wanted to receive it, claiming that it might be a letter bomb. The MEC decided to protest at this affront to the RS government.

Guzina, meanwhile, had given a defiant interview to Belgrade's Nedeljni telegraf which was published on 11 August. Declaring that not only would he refuse to accede to the OSCE's demand for an apology and retraction, he also claimed to be ready to put Karadzic back on the air if the former president so requested. For good measure, he noted that SRT had rejected some of the OSCE's broadcasting guidelines, justified his plan to charge opposition parties DM 2,000 for a 20-second advertising spot and threatened to stop Bildt TV from transmitting in RS.

The MEC did not react. The "letter bomb" issue had muddied the waters, as had doubtless been intended. The MEC received on 22 August a letter from Marica Lalovic in which she protested at the "arrogance, not to mention rude lies and untruth" of the MEC's emissary. No apology or retraction by Guzina had yet been broadcast.

Guzina finally appeared on "Novosti" on 27 August. His apology was far from apologetic, being merely an impersonal summary of the MEC's charge sheet. He did not repent his views, but affirmed that they were personal, and not those of SRT or the RS government. Since every senior SDS candidate was at this time busily hailing RS statehood and warning that a vote for the opposition would deliver that state into Alija Izetbegovic's hands, this retraction cannot have been taken seriously by anyone save the MEC itself. SRT's Marica Lalovic, for her part, was now busy refusing to broadcast OSCE voter information spots.

The MEC heard of the successful closure of "one of its most complicated cases" on 29 August. The minutes continue:

The Chairman congratulated all the MEC members on the successful conclusion of the case and suggested a press release on the case in which the MEC and the Election Appeals Sub-Commission will express satisfaction with the compliance of the SRT, and remind the public of the mandate and common goal of the media to further the successful implementation of the Dayton Accord, and the need for balance and responsible journalism in accordance with the Rules and Regulations of the PEC.16

It had taken the MEC two months to produce this great victory.

The Cerkez case

Reference has been made above to the commentary delivered on Croatian Radio-Radio Station Mostar by Veseljko Cerkez on 29 July. Cerkez's stomach-turning editorial was far worse than Guzina's, constituting, in fact, not only an incitement of racial hatred (of Muslims and west Europeans!) but an incitement to violence against Croats disloyal to the HDZ. This commentary was flagged by Monitoring Report on 8 August and brought up at the MEC meeting the same day by the representative of the Federation Ministry of the Interior.17

The MEC asked the secretary to draft a letter to Cerkez for their perusal the following week. No letter was ready by 15 August, but members were told it would be tabled at their next meeting on 22 August. It was not. Nor, it seems, was any letter of protest ever sent, let alone fines imposed or charges laid. The Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna remained without the law.18

A state by any other name

Biljana Plavsic appeared three times on Srpska Television on the evening of 13 September to read out a statement denying that the imminent elections would ratify RS statehood. She did so on the orders of OSCE, but not of the MEC. It played no part in this last-minute drama. This itself is indicative of the MEC's real relevance; but it also speaks volumes for the effectiveness of international supervision of the media in the course of the campaign.

In the first place, by requiring Plavsic to make these statements, OSCE was itself guilty of violating the electoral silence which was meant to prevail. More importantly, the context and the wording made it apparent that the RS president was acting under duress. This was yet another advertisement on her and her party's behalf. Finally, the claims to statehood and sovereignty which she was now asked to repudiate had been constant features of the SDS campaign and SRT's coverage of it. No meaningful attempt had heretofore been made to "correct" this understanding of the elections in RS. The reason, alas, may be that the international community's interpretation of the elections was not so different.

9. GRAPHS AND TABLES

The graphs and tables below provide comparative representations of the number and frequency of appearances by the main political parties and coalitions on the central daily newscasts of RTV B&H and SRT radio and television between 8 July and 8 September. They also offer overall assessments of whether that coverage was favourable, unfavourable or neutral. Table 3 and Graphs 5A and 5B compare the parties' and coalitions' appearances with their performance at the polls in the contests for the B&H House of Representatives.

In Graphs 1, 2, 5A and 5B the scores of the coalitions and their member parties are aggregated. In other words, the number of appearances and the resulting assessment scores of both the coalition as such and of its individual members are added together. These are then disaggregated in Graphs 3A, 3B and 3C.

Monitors were asked to count the number of items on an individual newscast in which a party or coalition - or one of its leaders - appeared. They were further asked to assess whether that item had been positive, negative or neutral in tone or content. Positive references were marked +1; negative references received -1; and neutral items were accorded a 0. The party's or coalition's "treatment" score thus represents the total of these marks, and provides an indication of the network's editorial stance towards that party or coalition in relation to all other parties appearing. For example, the closer a party's or coalition's score was to zero, the likelier it was that the network was impartial, all the more so if the number of appearances was high.

A large element of subjectivity necessarily enters into this exercise. Most obviously, opinions on whether a given news item is favourable, neutral or unfavourable to a party may differ. It is more difficult still, however, to decide whether the mention of a party or politician in the course of a news item constitutes an "appearance" to be counted and assessed. It was also necessary for monitors to decide whether a politician's appearance in a wholly state function (eg, President Alija Izetbegovic meeting US Secretary of State Warren Christopher at Sarajevo airport) was simultaneously a party political appearance. Monitors tended to err on the side of caution, counting and assessing party and coalition appearances which were self-evidently political in nature. It should be borne in mind, however, that incumbent leaders everywhere possess the advantage of being able to "make news" and, hence, to command the attention of the news media.

The following 30-40 minute newscasts were tracked daily over nine weeks for the purposes of this statistical exercise: Radio B&H at 15.00, TV B&H at 19.30, Srpska Radio at 16.00 and Srpska TV at 20.00 (or 19.30).

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