Censorship of the war in Croatia

Wednesday, December 11, 1991 - 11:00

Censorship of the war in Croatia

By Peter Boyle

In late November, Tom Solyuk, news director for SBS Radio (2EA and 3EA) prohibited the use by the news bureau of all telephone news reports from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina and news from the Croatian Information News Agency (HINA).

"Our news will be based on reports from international news agencies which have reporters in many parts of that troubled country", Solyuk was quoted as saying in the November 29 Croatian Herald. Radio 3EA manager Peter Horton told Green Left that the news director decides the guidelines but claimed that he did not have a copy of the policy on reporting on the Yugoslav crisis. 3EA news editor John Worthy said he was not at liberty to comment on the issue. Solyuk could not be reached for comment.

According to some Croatian community activists, the SBS ban does not extend to the official Yugoslav news agency Tanjug, which serves as a mouthpiece for the Serbian government. Apparently, while Solyuk considers Tanjug an "international news agency", HINA (with which SBS has a contract until the end of this year) does not qualify.

While both Serbian and Croatian communities are critical of SBS, there has been a concerted campaign from forces within the Serbian community to censor the media. The campaign gathered around the temporary suspension of a Serbian news reader for making inflammatory statements on air. The news reader has since resumed his job, but the campaign has gone on.

On December 7 pro-Serbian demonstrators marched on the offices of the ABC, the Age, the Herald-Sun and SBS to protest against "anti-Serbian bias". It seems that some people cannot accept that the alleged "bias" may reflect the gross reality of Serbian government's aggressive and anti-democratic role in the conflict, as confirmed by the European Community fact-finding mission.

The censorship forced by Serbian nationalist pressure does not stop here. SBS Television is believed to be sitting on hours of footage of the war taken by its own crews, and a number of "hot stories" unearthed through extensive investigative journalism.