I would like to say a few words on the impact of media on intolerance the way I experienced it in my country. I myself, along with some other writers, journalists and intelectuals, was a victim of media intolerance or better to say of a “witch hunt” in Croatia, but I would like to give a more general picture here.

Media in former Yugoslavia in the last fifteen years are the perfect example of the impact of media on intolerance. Ever since the mid-eighties we experienced what in retrospect was named the “media war”. It meant escalation of nationalism in the media, especially in national television programs and the main daily newspapers like Politika and Vecernje novosti from Belgrade and Vjesnik and Vecernji list from Zagreb. The nationalist frenzy started with the attack in the Serbian media on the Albanians in Kosovo, with the so called “Martinovic case”.

When Martinovic, a Serb from Kosovo, was physically attacked by an Albanian, the whole ideology of suffering of the Serbian minority was built up on this example. This case was filling newspapers and television programs for years, until everybody in Serbia was absolutely convinced that the Serbian minority in Kosovo is in jeopardy and it has to be protected by police and the army. A couple of years later (1987/8) this really happened and an apartheid system in Kosovo was created.

Paralel with the “Martinovic case” polemics between Serbian and Croatian media started as well . It had to do with World War II and the fact that we never ever actually learned the truth about the civil war between Serbs and Croats, between Chetniks and Ustashe – but only the official version of truth issued by the Communist Party. Media on both sides competed in discovering mass graves and recounting dead bodies, in bringing witness accounts about either brutality of Chetniks or Ustase. Media also started to create new nationalist mythology: Croats wrote about their thousand years old dream to have their own state, Serbs about themselves as “celestial people”. The people in Croatia and Serbia homogenized more and more, antagonizing their minorities ( Albanians in Kosovo, Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia). There was even more of “hate speech” and a very few lonely voices were protesting.

They were proclaimed “traitors” and expelled from public life. When the war started in June 1991, people were already psychologically well prepared for it by the media. Moreover, the media were fully engaged in the war, almost without exception (Feral Tribune and Radio 101 in Croatia and Vreme and Radio B92 in Serbia ).  Again, television had the most important role in disseminating nationalism and hatred. But the print media followed the “patriotic “ duty to denounce the “enemy”. The most notorious example from the beginning of the war was when a Croatian tabloid ST ( Slobodni tjednik) printed lists of names of Serbs who were Croatian citizens, with addresses and telephone numbers – an open invitation for lynching and killing. Again, nobody protested but the “usual suspects “, that is human right activists from Helsinki Committee and a few intellectuals. Some of the listed people disappeared and it is assumed that they were killed.

By 1991 it was crystal clear who is “we” and who is “they”. Serbs in my country, Croatia, were demonized , they were stripped of all human qualities. This was the main task of the media : to create a picture of Serbs as the Enemy. The life of the Serbian minority in Croatia became impossible. The Serbs lost their jobs, their Croatian neighbors were turning their back on them, they were openly harassed, threatened and killed ( the Zec family, including their 12 years old daughter Aleksandra). The result is that some 350.000 Serbs ( out of half million) left Croatia and only few are returning now.

During the war in Croatia and Bosnia, all media in Croatia became a propaganda agent for the government. The same happened in Serbia. Both Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman controlled media, television in the first place. Without the media help, they would not have been so efficient in their nationalist propaganda and probably would not have stayed in power so long.

Media could be dangerous in inflaming the hatred. Media could forge a war. Media could indeed induce people to kill. Therefore, some people are seriously asking if journalist who fought the “media war” should not be on trial for war crimes in The Hague as well?