Polish media reporting on Kosovo
(2006-2008)

As a Balkan correspondent for the Polish daily newspaper "Gazeta Wyborcza" I have visited Kosovo in the last two years more often than my family scattered throughout Poland. Every time I come to Kosovo, I know more, I understand more, but paradoxically it is getting more and more difficult for me to report on the Kosovo conflict. Why? Because it is more and more difficult to squeeze all that content - and different shades of grey that are so significant in case of ethnic conflicts - into a quarter, half of or even into the whole page in the newspaper. I presume that all journalists present here are aware of this problem. I would like to address the issue of how the Kosovo conflict has been reported by the Polish media, particularly newspapers, as the press still provides more room for a thorough analysis of reality. I will also briefly describe what kind of problems journalists face while reporting on events that - such as the Kosovo issue - cannot be explained in black and white. I am not going to present any profound analysis, just my reflections resulting from my experiences of the last months.

1. About Kosovo in Poland - who and what?

After 1999 and the end of the Kosovo war, the region ceased to arouse interest of Polish and international media. Information about Kosovo in Poland were published occasionally, mainly reporting on unrest and disturbances, say March 2004, crucial political events (e.g. indictment against the prime minister Ramush Haradinaj by the Hague Tribunal), and on the rotation of Polish military and police contingents based in Kosovo. Kosovo returned to the front pages of our newspapers and news services in 2006, shortly after peace negotiations in Vienna conducted by Martti Ahtisaari had been started. Until today all issues concerning this region of the Balkans have been widely described and presented in media.

How did we inform?

Political divisions visible in the Polish media are of no significance as regards reporting on international affairs and don't affect content published. Press, television and radio stations took neither pro-Albanian nor pro-Serbian position in the texts and information materials published or broadcast. However there occurred articles or reports more favourable for one party. Most frequently, however, such clear-cut opinions were included in commentaries published in Poland mainly on the second page, clearly separated from information articles. Political sympathies of the Polish media were significantly noticeable only once, when Poland as 10th member state of the European Union recognized the Kosovo's independence on February 26, 2008. Position taken depended then on the fact, if a given newspaper or TV station was a supporter of the Polish president Lech Kaczyński having more objections to Kosovo's independence or of the prime minister Donald Tusk fully supporting the sovereignty of Kosovo.

Who provided information?

Among national media that influence the perception of the Kosovo issue by Poles the following need to be listed: - 3 all-Poland most influential (opinion-forming) dailies: Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, Dziennik - 3 weekly magazines: Polityka, Wprost, Newsweek Polska - 5 TV stations: TVN, TVN24, TVP1, TVP2, Polsat - 4 radio stations: 3 channels of the Polish Radio, Radio Zet, RMF FM, Tok FM - Internet web sites: Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, Dziennik.pl, tvn24.pl

During the most crucial events in Kosovo, particularly during the preparations to declare independence and at the very moment of the proclamation of this declaration, all these media (except for some weekly magazines and web portals) had their correspondents and photographers on the ground. I estimate, there were even 40-50 of us in December 2007 and February 2008 in Prishtina. The number doesn't however reflect the quality. Only 2-3 persons from this group are permanently assigned to the Balkan region and spent more than 3-4 days in Kosovo visiting also other places besides Prishtina or Mitrovica.
I would like to underline this fact as the randomness of persons reporting on international affairs is becoming in my opinion a great problem of modern media. A team of reporters visiting Iraq, Russia, Georgia and Kosovo within one week doesn't have time or even want to undertake any greater efforts, regardless of their country of origin. Effects of such work mode were very visible also in Polish coverages of the situation in Kosovo, provided particularly by TV reporters. At first they all broadcast from the Mother Theresa Boulevard or roof of the Grand Hotel in Prishtina. Then they added a short account from the bridge in Mitrovica and sometimes a statement of a nun or an Orthodox priest from Gracanica or any other monastery and a comment of a political scientist. In this way they had their report ready.

I don't want to criticize this way of reporting on events taking into account short news programmes, where there is no room for analysis or longer pieces of information. The problem begins however with media broadcasting materials of journalists describing only current affairs and often passing over or simplifying drastically reasons for them. After a few days of watching or reading such reports, a reader or a viewer knows precisely e.g. how many people took part in demonstrations or how many tones of fireworks were fired during the independence celebrations. Unfortunately one doesn't quite understand what is the point of people in Kosovo.
The issue looked better as regards the printed press. Most attention to the Kosovo's affairs was paid by two daily papers: my own (Gazeta Wyborcza), which is the biggest opinion-forming daily in Poland (average daily sale of 425 thousands copies) and the second biggest in this category Rzeczpospolita (average daily sale of 144 thousand copies). These were the only papers that published not only news but also reportages from Kosovo. The third biggest opinion-forming daily "Dziennik" limited itself to longer news articles. A few articles were also published in weekly magazines, most of them were however schematic.

2. Not only short news - what did we do?

I don't like to perceive affairs solely from the political perspective. It seems to have little sense as regards international journalism. There is no point to delude oneself that Poles or Frenchmen have any interest in change of the government in Afghanistan, Macedonia or Kosovo. The same applies to citizens of these countries as they most probably don't care about resignations of Polish ministers. My daily has always made attempts to describe the world by depicting social problems and so called "human stories". Political events shall only serve as a background for them. And in this manner we tried to present the Kosovo issue.
Through reportage we succeeded to portray problems of Kosovo Albanians and Serbians in a more profound way. We managed to depict emotions affecting the today's situation, remind of a history that divided two nations. Without this knowledge it is difficult to understand both the Albanians' joy and delight in their own country and sadness of Serbians because of the loss of Kosovo. To reveal the complexity of the issue we wrote about life in Serbian enclaves, the entrance to which are guarded even today by armed transporters and about villages such as Krushe e Madhe, where Serbian troops murdered and then burned 206 Albanians. Widows of the victims have still been waiting to collect the remains of their husbands, brothers or sons from Belgrade. We portrayed a Serbian woman, who 8 years after having left her home town came back to find her parents' grave on the cemetery totally vandalized by Albanians. We printed articles criticizing (sometimes very widely) the administration of UNMIK in Kosovo, or stories about people making there their professional and financial careers. We published also an article about Serbian refugees from Kosovo that lived in Serbia for 8 years in miserable conditions, in one of the centres near Belgrade nursing a grudge against their homeland. In their opinion it "has focused on having them still being registered in the Kosovo territory, and done almost nothing to help their families stop crowding in bunk beds in rooms separated from each other only by a blanket curtain". We devoted much space to interviews with politicians, intellectuals, historians and commentators representing both sides of the conflict, i.e. Kosovo Albanians and Serbians. In order to arouse more interest of readers we made use of Internet. We started a special Internet service about Kosovo gathering on one place most theme-related articles published within our daily. The website contained also slideshows accompanied by background music prepared by our photographers.

3. International press and propaganda

While reporting on Kosovo I saw many times foreign journalists sympathizing even completely unwittingly with one of the conflict side, e.g. by using Serbian or Albanian name of the same town. On the on side it may seem to be trifling. Very often however our reports have been deliberately used as an object for others' purposes. I will explain that on my own example presenting my negative experiences with the Serbian press agency BETA. Unfortunately I cannot give any account as regards the Albanian press, as the language barrier is in my case much greater.
Although I wrote a lot about Kosovo, the Serbian agency, which has its correspondent in Warsaw, each time quoted only sentences taken out of context favourable for Serbian authorities. Usually aiming at frightening the society. This was the case of an interview with Nait Hasani, a Member of Parliament for PDK, one of the founders of KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) quoted also by the Kosovo media. I conducted an interview with Hasani in December 2007. He then admitted that his dream was to have all Albanians living together. He also said that if inhabitants of Kosovo would wish to carry out a referendum after regaining the independence on the joining with into Albania, it should take place. But it was not him to announce this referendum, he just expressed his opinion to my question. This fact was however omitted by the agency. A similar story occurred as regards an interview with Visar Imeri, one of the leaders of Vetevendosje!, movement of young activists, which rejects the plan of Ahtisaari and the EULEX mission in Kosovo. The agency used the same mechanism and quoted only selected fragments of the statement. The same BETA, wich is generally good source of information, never mentioned of our articles describing e.g. crimes committed by Serbian in Kosovo and their consequences. It carefully selected sentences of fragments from the Polish press favourably describing the Serbian side. The role of media is however entirely different.
Such selection of quotations from the international press reminds me of propaganda methods used in the Soviet times, not very well remembered by people in Poland. This weakness is present not only in some of the Serbian media. I have to admit that one of the crucial tests for all Serbian, Kosovo or Albanian press during the last weeks were announcements of Carla del Ponte concerning the allegations of a trade in Serbian human organs conducted by Kosovo Albanians. If such a story had been revealed in Poland without providing sufficient evidence, as it was with the book of Del Ponte, the issue would be discussed on the front pages for weeks. Crowds of journalists would come to the place, where the crime had been allegedly committed trying to sniff out every trivial detail. Carla del Ponte, even if she stayed at the end of the world, would have to comment her announcements. Media would force the government to verify in detail all suspicions. Neither Serbian nor Kosovo media haven't brought anything new to the issue yet. They only wrote about it. And unless we are not ahead of some results of journalists' investigations, this proves only their weakness. I also need to admit that some of international and Polish titles (including e.g. "Dziennik") reported on the issue completely uncritically.

4. Summary

In my judgement, the Polish press has generally reported on the Kosovo issue in an objective and unbiased manner. I would like to emphasize at the same time that it results partly from the distance we feel as regards the Kosovo conflict, from the fact that we have no strong emotional relationship to the matter and that it actually doesn't affect our national interests in reference to international policy. But on the other hand the Polish media were not able to maintain such objectiveness while having reported in November 2004 on the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, our neighbour country. Most media favoured unequivocally the camp of the president Victor Yushchenko. The greatest problem journalists faced while reporting on the Kosovo issue was the lack of ideas to present it in an interesting manner not only for a small group of interested in the Balkan issues.

In conclusion I would like to quote a sentence from "Between East and West", a book written by Anne Appelbaum (awarded the Pulitzer Prize award for her book "Gulag"), who perfectly recapitulates journalists' difficulties related to reporting on the Balkan issue.: "What some called nationalism others called patriotism, and still others called freedom (...)".
If we have it in our mind while submitting articles to the editorial staff, we will have a chance to do our work honestly.

The abstract of my speech you can find also in the book "Kosovo and the media" (from page 245)