[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 13220-13222]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



  CRISIS IN KOSOVO (ITEM NO. 10) REMARKS BY JEFF COHEN OF FAIRNESS & 
                      ACCURACY IN REPORTING (FAIR)

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 16, 1999

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, on May 20, 1999, I joined with 
Representative Cynthia A. McKinney, Representative Barbara Lee, 
Representative John Conyers and Representative Peter DeFazio in hosting 
the fourth in a series of Congressional Teach-In sessions on the Crisis 
in Kosovo. If a lasting peace is to be achieved in the region, it is 
essential that we cultivate a consciousness of peace and actively 
search for creative solutions. We must construct a foundation for peace 
through negotiation, mediation, and diplomacy.
  Part of the dynamic of peace is willingness to engage in meaningful 
dialogue, to listen to one another openly and to share our views in a 
constructive manner. I hope that these Teach-In sessions will 
contribute to this process by providing a forum for Members of Congress 
and the public to explore options for a peaceful resolution. We will 
hear from a variety of speakers on different sides of the Kosovo 
situation. I will be introducing Congressional Record transcripts of 
their remarks and essays that shed light on the many dimensions of the 
crisis.
  This presentation is by Jeff Cohen, a columnist and commentator who 
is founder of the organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). 
Mr. Cohen appeared at this Teach-In with Seth Ackerman, a Media Analyst 
at FAIR. Mr. Cohen is the author of four books and appears regularly as 
a panelist on Fox News Watch. He has also served as a co-host of CNN's 
Crossfire. Prior to launching FAIR in 1986, Mr. Cohen worked in Los 
Angeles as a journalist and a lawyer for the ACLU.
  Mr. Cohen presents a superb critique of how the media is covering the 
War in Yugoslavia, describing the importance of the words and concepts 
that are being deployed. He talks about the reluctance of the media to 
even use the term ``War,'' and the concerted attempt to demonize 
Slobodan Milosevic. He decries the fact that the media has not paid 
sufficient attention to the legality of the war, the destruction of the 
civilian infrastructure, and the steady stream of NATO propaganda that 
the media has adopted without question. Following this presentation are 
several documents--one from London's The Independent Newspaper and the 
other from FAIR--which further document these points.

     Presentation by Jeff Cohen of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

       It's not a glamorous job, but someone has to monitor 
     Geraldo and Christopher Matthews every night, and that's what 
     we do at FAIR. Seth Ackerman, my colleague, and I, and a 
     bunch of staff members monitor the nightly news, the talk 
     shows, the print press.
       We were monitoring Chris Matthews on May 4, and he was 
     railing against President Clinton for trying to dump the war 
     and its failures on Secretary of State Albright. Matthews 
     questions ``is that gentlemanly conduct, to dump this on a 
     woman?'' It was the same show when he was interviewing 
     Senator McCain and Matthews said, ``Are we going back to that 
     old notion of the president as a leader, not a consensus 
     builder?` Senator McCain: ``I hope so.'' Matthews: ``John 
     Wayne, rather than Jane Fonda?'' McCain: ``That's my only 
     chance.'' Matthews: ``Cause, you mean, you're not running as 
     Alan Alda here?'' Senator McCain: ``No.'' Matthews: ``You're 
     running as John Wayne, more or less.'' McCain: ``That's the 
     only way I can succeed.'' Matthews: ``Well, you're doing 
     well. Thank you Senator McCain.'' That's what we call a 
     journalistic wet kiss. It's particularly unusual here from 
     two guys who are trying to be so macho at the time.
       The first problem with the war coverage is that many 
     mainstream media outlets, especially network TV, are loathe 
     to even call it a war. It reminds me of the first day of the 
     Panama invasion before the government had signaled to the 
     media that it was ok to call it an invasion. So you had 
     mainstream media calling it a military action, an 
     intervention, an operation, an expedition, a military affair. 
     One TV anchor even referred to it as an insertion. I think 
     that a more accurate explanation might be ``the most unusual 
     and violent drug bust in human history''--but no one put that 
     heading on it.
       So look at today. What are the logos? CNN: `Strike against 
     Yugoslavia.' Fox News: `Conflict in Kosovo.' The Consensus 
     winner used at CBS, NBC, and ABC: `Crisis in Kosovo.' I would 
     argue that there had been a crisis in Kosovo. It went on 
     throughout 1998, but no one in any of these networks could 
     find time for even a one hour special on what was then a 
     crisis in Kosovo. That's because that was the year of 
     ``All Monica, All The time.'' So when there was just a 
     ``crisis in Kosovo,'' TV didn't cover it. Now that it's a 
     war, TV won't acknowledge it's a war. The White House and 
     the State Department will not use the word ``war''--and 
     then the media adopt the euphemisms from the government, 
     they're acting more as a fourth branch of government than 
     they are as a fourth estate, and that's very dangerous.
       We need only think back to the early years of the 1960s 
     when U.S. government officials would refer to Vietnam as a 
     ``police action.'' At best it was the ``Vietnam conflict.'' 
     And in the early years of the 1960s many mainstream media 
     followed the government lie and did not call it a war until 
     many American soldiers began dying. So words matter.
       Then we have the problem with this war of who the enemy is. 
     As usual in our mainstream media, the U.S. is not making a 
     war against a country, Yugoslavia, but against one 
     individual. His name is Slobodan Milosevic. On TV the air war 
     is not something that's terrorizing lots of people in what 
     were once modern cities. It's basically a personalized soap 
     opera. You had Catherine Crier on Fox News on May 5, 
     seemingly with a broad smile on her face, saying ``The 
     bombing intensifies. Just how much can Slobodon stand?''
       Anchors talk to military experts about how badly Milosevic 
     has been hurt, how badly he has been humiliated. You'll hear 
     an anchor say to a military expert, ``How much have we 
     punished Milosevic?,'' and you expect that the anchor might 
     get up from behind the anchor desk and show that they're 
     wearing a U.S. Air Force uniform, but they're not. They're 
     using the term ``we'' as if they're an adjunct to the 
     military.

[[Page 13221]]

       We heard the same thing during the Iraq war. ``How much are 
     we punishing, humiliating, hurting Saddam Hussein?'' We know 
     now that probably one of the only people in all of Iraq who 
     was assured of a safe place to sleep and three square meals a 
     day, and a warm home, was Saddam Hussein. And similarly, 
     Milosevic may well be one of the most safe and secure people 
     in Yugoslavia today.
       Now the understandable goal of the White House and the 
     State Department and their propaganda is to demonize 
     Milosevic. Propaganda simplifies issues as it tries to 
     mobilize action. But journalism is supposed to be about 
     covering a story in all its complexity. On that score, 
     Journalism has largely failed. You'll remember the Newsweek 
     cover photograph, with the picture of Milosevic and the 
     headline: ``The Face of Evil'' Then you had the Time magazine 
     writer who writes about Milosevic almost as a sub-human--with 
     ``reddish,'' piggy eyes set in a big, round, head.'' Now, 
     assumedly, Milosevic had the ``reddish, piggy eyes set in a 
     big, round, head'' going back many, many years. But it's only 
     when the American war machine goes into war mode that this 
     particular writer at Time magazine goes into war propaganda 
     mode.
       The good news with the end of the Lewinsky story is it 
     ended the wall-to-wall parade of attorneys. The bad news, 
     with the beginning of this war, is we've begun the wall-to-
     wall parade of military analysts. On March 24th, for example, 
     Margaret Warner introduced her PBS NewsHour panel with, ``We 
     get four perspectives now on NATO's mission and options from 
     four retired military leaders.''
       The problem with retired generals is that they're rarely 
     independent experts. They have a tendency to become overly 
     enthusiastic about how smart and accurate our weapons are. 
     You remember all the false hype from the militar experts 
     during the Guld War about the Patriot missile, a missile that 
     was an object failure during that war. And you might remember 
     NBC News did a blowing report about the Patriot, and Tom 
     Brokaw said it was ``the missile that put the Iraqi Scud in 
     its place.'' Completely false. Brokaw neglected to mention 
     that his boss, General Electric, made parts for the Patriot 
     missile, as if makes engines for many of the aircraft like 
     the Apache helicopters that are in the Balkans right now.
       Military experts don't remember that it was only last 
     summer when a cruise missile aimed at an alleged terrorist 
     train camp in Afghanistan went four hundred miles off course 
     into the wrong country the country of Pakistan. If we think 
     about it, in the last nine months, the United States has 
     bombed four countries intentionally. It's also important to 
     remember that the U.S. has bombed an equal number of 
     countries by mistake.
       Military experts know a lot about anti-aircraft 
     technologies, they know a lot about bomb yields, but they 
     don't know much about the politics or history of the region. 
     What's needed more in the mainstream media are experts on 
     Yugoslavia and the Balkans.
       And what we need is a real debate about the war. Because of 
     the split among the politicians here in Washington, there's 
     been slightly more debate over the war, for example, the Gulf 
     War. That's not really saying a lot. Our organization, FAIR, 
     has posted on our website (www.fair.org) a full study of two 
     prestigious TV news shows and the range of debate or non-
     debate during the first two weeks of this war. I'm talking 
     about PBS's NewsHour and ABC's Nighline. If you look at that 
     study, you'll see that in the first two weeks of this war, 
     opposition to the bomb war was virtually inaudible and when 
     it was heard it was mostly expressed by Yugoslav government 
     officials with thick accents, or Serbian Americans. On 
     Nightline there was only one panelist who was critical of the 
     bombing, and that a Yugoslav government official.
       It's partly because of the marginalization of substantive 
     critics of the war that there has been not enough attention 
     in the mainstream media focused even on the legality of this 
     war under international law. What will happen under our 
     Constitution next Tuesday when the sixty day period elapses 
     on the War Powers Act and President Clinton has not won 
     Congressional authorization? That should be an issue that's a 
     raging debate in the American media today. I haven't even 
     seen it in a footnote in today's newspapers. Maybe I missed 
     one.
       There's been not enough attention paid in the mainstream 
     media to the environmental damage in the region from U.S. 
     bombs striking petrochemical factories and fertilizer 
     facilities and oil refineries.
       There has been not enough attention in the mainstream media 
     paid to NATO's targeting of civilian infrastructure. Whether, 
     for example, the bombing of the broadcast stations, which is 
     a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, was really aimed 
     at keeping video of NATO's civilian victims off the 
     television sets in the western countries. I have a hunch that 
     was its real motive.
       Not enough mainsteam media attention has been paid to the 
     use, or possible use, by the United States of radioactive 
     depleted uranium rounds.
       Not enough attention has been paid to NATO's propaganda, 
     and a steady stream of claims that have turned out to be 
     false. The Independent newspaper, based in London, on April 
     6, 1999, published an article collecting about eight of these 
     falsehoods. I would argue that from our monitoring, the 
     mainstream media in Europe have been more independent in 
     their coverage of this war, more skeptical in their coverage 
     of this war, than the U.S. mainstream media.
       And there has not been enough attention paid to the events 
     immediately before the war. The best estimate of how many 
     people had died in Kosovo in all of 1998 was 2000 people. 
     That's a serious human rights crisis. It's also less than the 
     number of people who died in homicides in New York City in 
     1992. We need to look at the events that immediately led up 
     to this war.


     
                                  ____
                 [From the Independent, April 6, 1999]

                      A War of Words and Pictures


Nato casts doubt on the veracity of Yugoslav war reporting, but is our 
                own media any less guilty of propaganda?

                          (By Philip Hammond)

       It takes two sides to fight a propaganda war, yet critical 
     commentary on the ``war of words'' has so far concentrated on 
     the ``tightly controlled'' Yugoslav media. We have been shown 
     clips from ``Serb TV'' and invited to scoff at their 
     patriotic military montages, while British journalists cast 
     doubt on every Yugoslav ``claim''.
       But whatever one thinks of the Yugoslav media they pale 
     into insignificance alongside the propaganda offensive from 
     Washington, Brussels and London.
       ``They tell lies about us, we will go on telling the truth 
     about them,'' says Defense Secretary George Robertson. 
     Really? Nato told us the three captured US servicemen were 
     United Nations peacekeepers. Not true. They told us they 
     would show us two captured Yugoslav pilots who have never 
     appeared. Then we had the story of the ``executed'' Albanian 
     leaders--including Rambouillet negotiator Fehmi Agani--whose 
     deaths are now unconfirmed.
       When the Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, who was said to be 
     in hiding, turned up on Yugoslav television condemning Nato 
     bombing, the BBC contrived to insinuate that the pictures 
     were faked, while others suggested Rugova must have been 
     coerced, blackmailed, drugged, or at least misquoted.
       They told us the paramilitary leader Arkan was in Kosovo, 
     when he was appearing almost daily in Belgrade--and being 
     interviewed by John Simpson there. They told us Pristina 
     stadium had been turned into a concentration camp for 100,000 
     ethnic Albanians, when it was empty. Robertson posing for 
     photographers in the cockpit of a Harrier can't have been 
     propaganda. Only the enemy goes in for that sort of thing.
       Nato's undeclared propaganda war is two-pronged. First, 
     Nato has shamelessly sought to use the plight of Albanian 
     refugees for its own purposes, cynically inflating the number 
     of displaced people to more than twice the UN estimate.
       Correspondents in the region are given star billing on BBC 
     news, and are required not just to report but to share their 
     feelings with us. As Peter Sissons asked Ben Brown in 
     Macedonia: ``Ben, what thoughts go through a reporter's mind 
     seeing these sights in the dying moments of the 20th 
     century?''
       Reports from the refugee centers are used as justifications 
     for Nato strategy. The most striking example was the video 
     footage smuggled out of Kosovo said to show ``mass murder''. 
     The BBC presented this as the ``first evidence of alleged 
     atrocities,'' unwittingly acknowledging that the allies had 
     been bombing for 10 days without any evidence.
       Indeed, for days, the BBC had been inviting us to ``imagine 
     what may be happening to those left in Kosovo''. After 
     watching the footage, Robin Cook apparently knew who had been 
     killed, how they had died, and why. Above all, he knew that 
     the video ``underlines the need for military action''.
       The second line of attack is to demonise Milosevic and the 
     Serbs, in order to deflect worries that the tide of refugees 
     has been at least partly caused, by Nato's ``humanitarian'' 
     bombing. Parts of Pristina have been flattened after being 
     bombed every day for more than a week. Wouldn't you leave? 
     And what about those thousands of Serbian refugees from 
     Kosovo--are they being ``ethnically cleansed'', too? Sympathy 
     does not extend to them, just as the 200,000 Serbian refugees 
     from Krajina were ignored in 1995. Instead, the tabloids 
     gloat ``Serbs you right'' as the missiles rain down.
       The accusations levelled against the Serbs have escalated 
     from ``brutal repression'' to ``genocide'', ``atrocities'' 
     and ``crimes against humanity'', as Nato has sought to 
     justify the bombing. Pointed parallels have been drawn with 
     the Holocaust, yet no one seems to notice that putting people 
     on a train to the border is not the same as putting them on a 
     train to Auschwitz.
       The media have taken their cue from politicians and left no 
     cliche unturned in the drive to demonise Milosevic. The 
     Yugoslav president has been described by the press as a 
     ``Warlord'', the ``Butcher of Belgrade'', ``the most evil 
     dictator to emerge in Europe since Adolph Hitler'', a ``Serb 
     tyrant'' a ``psychopathic tyrant'' and a ``former Communist 
     hard-liner''.

[[Page 13222]]

       The Mirror also noted significantly that he smokes the same 
     cigars as Fidel Castro. Just as they did with Saddam Hussein 
     in the Gulf war, Panorama devoted a programme to ``The Mind 
     of Milosevic''.
       Several commentators have voiced their unease about the 
     Nato action from the beginning. But press and TV have 
     generally been careful to keep the debate within parameters 
     of acceptable discussion, while politicians have stepped up 
     the demonisation of the Serbs to try to drown out dissenting 
     voices. The result is a confusingly schizophrenic style of 
     reporting.
       The rules appear to be that one can criticize Nato for not 
     intervening early enough, not hitting hard enough, or not 
     sending ground troops. Pointing out that the Nato 
     intervention has precipitated a far worse crisis than the one 
     it was supposedly designed to solve or that dropping bombs 
     kills people are borderline cases, best accompanied by stout 
     support for ``our boys''. What one must not do is question 
     the motives for Nato going to war. Indeed, one is not even 
     supposed to say that Nato is at war. Under image-conscious 
     New Labour, actually going to war is fine, but using the term 
     is not politically correct.
       The limits of acceptable debate were revealed by the 
     reaction to the broadcast by SNP leader Alex Salmond. Many of 
     his criticisms of Nato strategy were little different from 
     those already raised by others, but what provoked the 
     Government's outrage was that he dared to compare the Serbs 
     under Nato bombardment to the British in the Blitz. Tony 
     Blair denounced the broadcast as ``totally unprincipled'', 
     while Robin Cook called it ``appalling'', ``irresponsible'' 
     and ``deeply offensive''.
       The way Labour politicians have tried to sideline critics 
     such as Salmond is similar to the way they have sought to 
     bludgeon public opinion. The fact that Blair has felt it 
     necessary to stage national broadcasts indicates the 
     underlying insecurity of a government worried about losing 
     public support and unsure of either the justification for or 
     the consequences of its actions.
       Audience figures for BBC news have reportedly risen since 
     the air war began. Yet viewers have been ill-served by their 
     public service broadcaster. The BBC's monitoring service 
     suggested that the ``Serb media dances to a patriotic tune''. 
     Whose tune does the BBC dance to that it reproduces every new 
     Nato claim without asking for evidence? Just as New Labour 
     has sought to marginalise its critics, so TV news has barely 
     mentioned the protests across the world--not just in 
     Macedonia, Russia, Italy and Greece--but also in Tel Aviv, 
     Lisbon, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sydney 
     and elsewhere. Are we to suppose that these demonstrators are 
     all Serbs, or that they have been fooled by the ``tightly 
     controlled'' Yugoslav media?
                                  ____



        [From the Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, May 5, 1999]

       Slanted Sources in NewsHour and Nightline Kosovo Coverage

       A FAIR analysis of sources on ABC's Nightline and PBS's 
     NewsHour during the first two weeks of the bombing of 
     Yugoslavia found an abundance of representatives of the U.S. 
     government and NATO, along with many other supporters of the 
     NATO bombing. Opponents of the airstrikes received scant 
     attention, however; in almost all stories, debate focused on 
     whether or not NATO should supplement bombing with ground 
     troops, while questions about the basic ethics and rationales 
     of the bombing went largely unasked.
       FAIR's survey was based on a search of the Nexis database 
     for stories on the war between March 25 and April 8, 
     identifying both guests who were interviewed live and sources 
     who spoke on taped segments. Sources were classified 
     according to the institutions or groups they represented, and 
     by the opinions they voiced on NATO's military involvement in 
     Yugoslavia.
       Of 291 sources that appeared on the two shows during the 
     study period, only 24--or 8 percent--were critics of the NATO 
     airstrikes. Critics were 10 percent of sources on the 
     NewsHour, and only 5 percent on Nightline. Only four critics 
     appeared live as interview guests on the shows, 6 percent of 
     all discussion guests. Just one critic appeared as a guest on 
     Nightline during the entire two-week time period.
       The largest single source group, 45 percent, was composed 
     of current or former U.S. government and military officials, 
     NATO representatives and NATO troops.
       On Nightline, this group accounted for a majority of 
     sources (55 percent), while providing a substantial 39 
     percent on the NewsHour. It also provided the largest 
     percentage of live interviewees: 50 percent on Nightline (six 
     of 12) and 42 percent on the NewsHour (24 of 57). (Numerous 
     U.S. aviators who appeared on Nightline's 3/29/99 edition 
     were left out of the study, because their identities could 
     not be distinguished.
       Overall, the most commonly cited individuals from this 
     group were President Bill Clinton (14 cites), State 
     Department spokesperson James Rubin (11) and NATO 
     spokesperson David Wilby (10). Of course, these sources were 
     uniformly supportive of NATO's actions. A quote from the 
     NewsHour's Margaret Warner (3/31/99) reveals the homogeneity 
     of a typical source pool: ``We get four perspectives now on 
     NATO's mission and options from four retired military 
     leaders.''
       Former government officials were seldom more critical of 
     NATO's involvement in Yugoslavia. Cited less than one-third 
     as often as current politicians, former government officials 
     mainly confined their skepticism to NATO's reluctance to use 
     ground troops. Bob Dole (Nightline, 3/31/99) voiced the 
     prevailing attitude when he said, ``I just want President 
     Clinton . . . not to get wobbly.''
       Albanian refugees and KLA spokespeople made up 18 percent 
     of sources (17 percent on the NewsHour, 19 percent on 
     Nightline), while relief workers and members of the U.N. 
     Commission for Refugees accounted for another 4 percent on 
     NewsHour and 2 percent on Nightline. Sources from these 
     groups also provided 4 percent of live interviewees on the 
     NewsHour and 25 percent on Nightline.
       These sources stressed the Kosovar refugees' desperation, 
     and expressed gratitude for NATO's airstrikes. Said one KLA 
     member (Nightline, 4/1/99), ``The NATO bombing has [helped 
     and] has been accepted by the Albanian people.'' Although one 
     refugee (Nightline, 4/1/99) suggested otherwise--``We run 
     away because of NATO bombing, not because of Serbs''--all 
     other sources in this group either defended or did not 
     comment on NATO's military involvement in the conflict.
       Those most likely to criticize NATO--Yugoslavian government 
     officials, Serbians and Serbian-Americans--accounted for only 
     6 percent of sources on the NewsHour and 9 percent on 
     Nightline. Overall, only two of these sources appeared as 
     live interviewees: Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesperson 
     Nebojsa Vujovic (Nightline, 4/6/99) and Yugoslav Ambassador 
     to the United Nations Vladislav Jovanovic (NewsHour, 4/1/99). 
     This group's comments contrasted radically with statements 
     made by members of other source groups, e.g., calling NATO's 
     bombing ``unjustified aggression'' (Nightline, 4/6/99), and 
     charging that NATO is ``killing Serbian kids.'' (NewsHour, 4/
     2/99).
       On Nightline, no American sources other than Serbian-
     Americans criticized NATO's airstrikes. On the NewsHour, 
     there were seven non-Serbian American critics (4 percent of 
     all sources); these included schoolchildren, teachers and 
     college newspaper editors, in addition to a few journalists. 
     Three out of the seven American sources who criticized the 
     NATO bombing appeared as live interviewees, while the rest 
     spoke on taped segments.
       Officials from non-NATO national governments other than 
     Yugoslavia, such as Russia's and Macedonia's, accounted for 
     only 2 percent of total sources (3 percent on the NewsHour, 0 
     percent on Nightline) and added only four more critical 
     voices overall. Only twice did a government official from 
     these countries appear as a live interviewee (NewsHour, 3/30/
     99, 4/7/99).
       Eleven percent of sources came from American and European 
     journalists: 7 percent on Nightline, 13 percent on the 
     NewsHour. This group also claimed 17 percent of all live 
     interviews on Nightline and 40 percent on the NewsHour. In 
     discussions with these sources, which tended to focus on the 
     U.S. government's success in justifying its mission to the 
     public, independent political analysis was often replaced by 
     suggestions for how the U.S. government could cultivate more 
     public support for the bombing.
       Three independent Serbian journalists also appeared--two on 
     the NewsHour and one on Nightline--but they did not add any 
     voices to the anti-bombing camp. Instead, they spoke about 
     the Serbian government's censorship of the independent media. 
     Of a total of 34 journalists used as sources on both shows, 
     only four opposed the NATO airstrikes. Three of these four 
     appeared as live interviewees, and all four appeared on the 
     NewsHour.
       Academic experts--mainly think tank scholars and 
     professors--made up only 2 percent of sources on the NewsHour 
     and 5 percent on Nightline. (Experts who are former 
     government or military officials were counted in the former 
     government or military categories; these accounted for five 
     sources.) On the NewsHour, the only think tank spokesperson 
     who appeared was from the military-oriented Rand Corporation, 
     while Nightline's two were both from the centrist Brookings 
     Institution. Just two experts appeared in live interviews on 
     the NewsHour, and no expert source was interviewed live on 
     Nightline. While these percentages reflect a dearth of 
     scholarly opinion in both shows, even the experts who were 
     consulted didn't add much diversity to the discussion; none 
     spoke critically of NATO's actions.
       On a Nightline episode in early April that criticized 
     Serbian media (4/1/99), Ted Koppel declared: ``The truth is 
     more easily suppressed in an authoritarian country and more 
     likely to emerge in a free country like ours.'' But given the 
     obvious under-representation of NATO critics on elite 
     American news shows, independent reporting seems to also be a 
     foreign concept to U.S. media.





                          ____________________