ࡱ> 7 TbjbjUU .7|7|lfffffffz    <4z||||||||$ Df|||||Tff||TTT|Ff|f|T|T`Tff|p .Q9z 40^TzzffffPartiality and Non-Partiality Norm in News Programs - War and Peace Prime News Program on Croatian Television - by Hrvoje Turkovi Introduction The problem articulation With the beginning of the war in Croatia, there were some visible changes in the news discourse of Croatian Television (Hrvatska radio televizija) - the only nationwide, state controlled, network in Croatia. The two most prominent new traits were: the thematic change (the predominance of the war related reports) and the presence of overt propaganda rhetorics.1 The first trait was consistent with changes in any news program all over the world when a national (particularly war-related) crisis occurs. The second trait, the propagandistic stance, can be understood as the main distinctive feature of the war discourse, the one that determines all other features. Propaganda is typically understood as a preeminently manipulative phenomenon. First, propaganda is considered to be a top-down process: it is an 'action' (an intent, plan or strategy...) initiated and controlled by the political elite of the state, carried out by the TV-institution and the TV executives and aimed at the social target group, which in the war times is basically the entire population. Second, it is assumed that the audience will be thus guided to adopt some particular stance regardless of their own interests and will that they will be manipulated by the propaganda discourse. Third, the propaganda deliberately abandons the impartiality of the news presentation, favoring a partisan approach. Fourth, there is an assumption that the planned propagandistic strategy of the power elite is the exclusive source of all the distinctive discourse features of the war news coverage. However, these assumptions about propaganda need not be accepted. Despite of all actual criticism of some propaganda modes of the HRT news programs, the 'insiders' (the audience members and the citizens of Croatia) have shared an implicit conviction that 'our own' propagandistic stance, in contrast to the one of the enemy (e.g. the Banja Luka TV program broadcast from the Serbian Krajina in Bosnia and Hercegovina that can be seen in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia) is a 'natural', 'necessary', and a 'normal' one. If introspectively analyzed, the conviction implies that the overt propaganda of the HRT war news is not just a willful act of the governing elite, but also a kind of a professional and civic obligation, a fulfillment of the deep-felt need of citizens caught in the jaws of war. Therefore, its function is not just to manipulate masses, but also to satisfy their needs. The conviction implies further that 'our own' propaganda, although of a partisan nature, generally represents a 'just' expression of the state of affairs, and therefore basically 'the truth about Croatia'. 'Our' propaganda is therefore not adequately described if judged only by the possible infringement of some particular truths, or by deviant selectivity of the facts: there is a conviction that a 'higher', more 'general' truth is at issue. Naturally, such a set of convictions may be interpreted as a propaganda product itself, as an 'interiorization' of its 'ideology', and a result of the identification of the 'ideology' with 'the state of affairs'. However, such an interpretation would be inadequate. The overt propagandistic aspects of the war news programs were felt immediately and defined as the 'necessary' consequence of the internal war situation. There were only some disagreements about the final 'make up' of particular HRT propaganda (what and what not to submit to a propagandistic articulation; what kind of propagandistic 'language' to use, etc). Therefore, the acceptance of the propaganda as a 'natural feature of the news program discourse' cannot be ascribed to the propagandistic indoctrination itself, but should rather be taken as a consequence of the same 'forces' that have pushed the presentation of the news into the overt propagandistic rhetoric. 'What are these 'forces'?' In this paper, the author is trying to achieve two things. First, he is assuming that the 'organizing force' behind the war news can be detected through an analysis of the characteristics of the discourse pattern of the chosen daily TV news. Therefore, the author will attempt feature analysis of the news. Second, an attempt will be made to interpret the pattern in a wider perspective, in order to determine the 'force' that produced it. The Samples Two instances of prime news program (at 19.30 h) of the Croatian Radio Television (Hrvatska radio televizija, HRT) have been taken as a sample to be analyzed. One instance (Vukovar Program) was broadcast in the midst of the war waged over Croatia, a day after the eastern Croatian town Vukovar had fallen, after several months of siege and attacks by Yugoslav Peoples Army, and Serb volunteer. The second instance was broadcast exactly two years after the first, in a situation of a relatively stabile truce situation within Croatia (with occasional skirmishes along the separation lines) and the close situation of war in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both were broadcast at 19.30, the customary time for the prime news in Croatia. The wartime sample (WS) was broadcast on HRT on November 18, 1991. Its duration was 29 minutes and 19 seconds. The peacetime sample (PS) was broadcast on the November 17 1993. It lasted 38 minutes and 17 seconds. The prime news (19.30) was chosen because it have had the most numerous and the widest viewing audience at the time of all news programs and other kind of programs, and it was commonly considered to be the most significant representative of the 'official opinion'. Discourse Characteristics Ambiguity of the PS (peace news sample) For an experienced viewer of the HRT prime news, there is a strong feeling of ambiguity about the peacetime news sample. Compared with the WS, there has obviously been an attempt to give the impression of it not being a 'wartime program' but rather a 'peacetime program'. At the same time it does not want to be taken as ordinary, standard news coverage: it is made clear that there is a long-term 'political crisis' at hand, although within the limits of an essentially peaceful situation. In spite of the non-war program agenda, there are numerous tell-tale signs that even in Croatia there are some events considered to be war maintaining. Moreover, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is considered to be almost an 'internal' war, even though it is taking place in the territory of another sovereign country. Let me analyze each of the various indicators. Typical wartime program indicators of WS What are the basic overt differences between a wartime program and peacetime program? Let me first review some basic points of WS. a) The WS is entirely dedicated to the war-related news. Even the international news part of the program is explicitly presented as a review of reactions to the war situation in Croatia, and in particular to the 'imminent' fall of Vukovar ('imminent' because the fact that Vukovar has already fallen is not explicitly stated in the WS). b) Although the WS program consists of an accumulation of 'atomic' news items - a standard discourse feature of news (see Ahmavaara et. al., 1974:165-166) - there is a strong feeling of a thematic unity of the descriptive kind with all individual items of news treated as aspects or parts of the complex but unique situation. The thematic unity of particular series of news items is even introduced by the announcements made by the news presenter, who is also the acting editor ('Let us see what is happening on the Croatian battlefields' or 'Let us hear reports of the world's reactions to the situation in Croatia'). While the prototype news discourse is thematically heterogeneous, the wartime news discourse tends towards homogeneity. c) There is no visible attempt to establish even the appearance of an impartial approach to the war related events: the reports are decisively and overtly biased; they give only 'our side' of the story. d) The enemy is always described using attributes or names with strongly negative connotations ('Chetniks', 'Serbian terrorists', 'occupiers', 'the aggressor's forces', etc.). In the PS there is no fixed standard designation of the enemy - it is obviously a personal choice made by the reporter or editor. e) There is a marked reduction of the images used in support of verbal expositions: stills or freeze frames are used abundantly as the background for telephone and off-screen reports. Some news blocks (for example in the headline, or contents, block) are in WS delivered by the 'talking head' of the presenter without illustration, while in PS there is mostly visual presentation of events accompanied by the announcer's voice-over. In terms of imagery, there is in WS a reduced supply and diversity when compared with the PS (e.g. the PS has 361 shots over a time span of 38.17 minutes - 9,5 shots per minute, and the WS has 173 shots over its 29.19 minutes duration, i.e. 5,9 shots per minute). f) The program is explicitly marked as 'non-standard' by the slogan 'Za slobodu' ('For freedom') which always appears behind the presenter during his delivery. Actually, this was the name for all the first channel daily programs at the time of war, having marked its special (nonstandard) status and function. 'Peace program' indicators of PS The PS shows obvious differences. a) The proportion of the news items not related to the war and those related to the war is much better balanced. There is more news about other countries and their concerns and about economic problems in Croatia that are not directly connected with the war situation. There is a comparatively stronger emphasis on the 'civil' aspects of internal life in Croatia. b) Even when the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is dealt with, there is at least one survey (REPORT: RAKI0 that is trying to give an impartial report of the situation in Bosnia. c) When the news items about the still 'disquiet' parts of Croatia (the borderline with Serbian Krajina, and the UNPA zones) are delivered, they are placed in the less important part of the program and are not announced in the introductory overview. d) Although there are news items in which the opposite side is presented with negative connotations (e.g. obituary of the fall of Vukovar, and reports from the battlefields in Bosnia and Herzegovina), there is a higher proportion of neutral or unmarked designations of the conflicting parties then in the wartime program. Serbs are called 'Serbs', Muslims - 'Muslims '; the armies involved in the conflict are mostly given their official names. The exception is the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is mostly called 'Muslim's Armed Forces' 'Muslimanske oru~ane snage' (MOS). e) The construction of the PS discourse is predominantly heterogeneous, as is usual in the peacetime news. The presenter's introductory comments do not try to link the news items but mostly prepare the audience for changes in topic. There is diversity of the news and of supporting images, and a greater proportion of pictorial coverage with accompanying off-screen voice. There is a very limited use stills and freeze frame illustrations. 'Crisis-bound program' indicators of PS There are, however, indicators showing that the program is not entirely normal, but rather 'crisis bound': a) A proportionally larger set of news items related to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia is placed at the very beginning of the program, immediately after the introductory sequence. These are thematically interconnected as reports on the search for a solution to the crisis that issued after the Socialist Yugoslavia breakdown. The critical questions are the status of the Republic of Croatia, the status of UNPA Zones, the involvement of Croatia in B&H war events. Examples include: The Presidency Council Declaration, activities of the Minister of the Exterior, the Parliament Delegation at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, etc. b) The section on the consequences of the breakdown of former Yugoslavia also shows more discourse cohesion than does the rest of the program with the exception of the field report on the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to the mediating 'links' made by the presenter, many of the crisis-related factors are repeatedly mentioned in several items (e.g. the Croatian peace proposal, French and German peace proposal, Minister of Foreign Affairs, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, etc.). c) Even in the reporting of civil problems, there is a tacit understanding that these problems are somehow crisis related: refugee protests, economic problems due to the lack of foreign loans, the presence of the humanitarian aid. Wartime program indicators in PS Although there is an obvious effort to suppress the possible interpretation that Croatia is still at war, either in its own territories or in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are many tell-tale signs symptomatic of the wartime program, that imply the contrary: a) There are still reports that remind us that the war in Croatia is not yet completely over: for example, the report on new refugees from the Serbian-held zone (under the UNPA jurisdiction) in the Zadar region. b) In this same report, the internal part of Croatia (the Zadar hinterland) is still designated as the 'bojinica' Croat for battlefield's front line. The UNPA zones are consistently treated as 'unsolved problems', with the assumption that their unresolved status is a consequence, and therefore a latent generator, of war. c) Although there is an impartially styled overview of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina that suggests its 'foreign affair' status, the additional 'field report' has a strong partiality: Bosnian Croats are implicitly treated as 'our side', and Bosnian Muslims as 'enemies'. This partiality manifests itself in the following features: i) Bosnian Muslims are referred to in negative terms (cf. 'Muslim snipers looking for inattentive victims', 'the Muslim crime', 'horrible Muslim crimes'), while Bosnian Croats are described in a way that implies their status as victims. ii) Only Bosnian-Croat civilians and army people are shown and interviewed, mostly as witnesses. There is no attempt at presentation of Muslim side. iii) Some consequences of the sniper fire on Bosnian Croats are shown directly (e.g. blood on the asphalt). While the slaughter of some Bosnian-Croat priests is not pictorially documented, it is given relatively extensive verbal attention. iv) Only Bosnian Muslims are reported 'to have attacked' Croats, thereby implying that they are aggressors. If a Croatian victory or advance is mentioned, it is described as a 'counterattack', thereby implying it is the result of a defensive action. v) There is a multilayered embedding structure to the Bosnian field report: the presenter announces one field reporter; the first field reporter announces the second, the second announces a third, and then back to the first reporter and again to the main presenter, strengthening the perception of the discourse coherence of the whole report, and presenting it as an interconnected argument about the 'wickedness' the Bosnian Muslims. d) The obituary of the fall of Vukovar brings again some rhetoric of wartime news and is aimed at reminding the public that the war situation is not yet over. Hidden propagandistic aspects of PS Other, hidden, propagandistic features of the PS also support the wartime atmosphere. a) Both the declaration of the Presidential Council of Defense and National Security, and the speech of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as the reported speech of the Prime Minister strongly state the success of official government policy both in foreign affairs and in the home economy. Such statements without reservation or comment, assume complete confidence in the 'positive' value of what 'our party' is doing. b) Even when more gloomy, unresolved problems are addressed, such as the non-existence of the Croatian tourist resorts in British holiday brochures, the problems with domestic heating in Zagreb, or the refugee protests, the impression of the government's lack of success is 'corrected' by the up-beat conclusion of the PS presenter-editor, or by presented optimistic statement by some government representative. c) In an 'impartial' report about the establishment of the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, and in the report on the Bosnian situation, the new federal state of Serbia and Montenegro is not designated by its official name (Savezna Republika Jugoslavija - Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) but by a derogatory substitute ('Zdru~na srpsko crnogorska dr~ava' - 'Associated Serbian-Montenegro state'; or just 'Zdru~na dr~ava' - 'Associated state'). Interpretation The norm change The transition from the peacetime news program to the wartime news program and back, is characterized by a set of changes in the construction of a discourse, all of them being coordinated by the changed norm of news delivery. The basic norm which governs the peacetime news program the norm of impartiality - is not just 'loosened' in the case of the wartime news program, and so permitting some degree of propagandistic manipulation, it is changed altogether into an opposite norm the norm of partiality. Not of course, any kind of partiality, but the partiality to 'our cause'. In the case of HRT news program, this means partiality to the Croatian side - to the Croatian 'cause', to the Croatian nation, to the ethnic Croatian, to the Croatian mother-land, etc). Specifications of 'our side' and the 'enemy side' vary in the identification, range and emphasis of referents, but during the war and any war-threatening situation the distinction between 'us' and 'the enemy' is promoted to the level of a norm, and becomes a part of the norm of partiality. The 'impartiality' of any news is, of course, open to doubt. As Zaller (1992:13) puts it: '... it is never "just information", because it is unavoidably selective and unavoidably enmeshed in stereotypical frames of reference that highlight only a portion of what is going on' (cf. Schlesinger, 1978:163-204; McQuaile, 1987:30-32). But such a criticism was not count out the presence of an impartiality norm that affects news practice. Norms serve as the behavior regulators in particular sets of situations, but their application as it relates to actual behavior is complex and often opaque. For example, the question may arise as to which norm is applicable in a particular situation; which norm should take precedence if norms come into conflict; whether the chosen norm is really adequate at all. There are also some questions of the norm application skills, and successfulness of an application, etc. In view of all these difficulties, what is commonly asked for is a genre declaration - that the participants in a situation to which a particular norm is applicable publicly acknowledge ('signal') their acceptance of the norm by manifesting certain patterns of behavior and by using certain stereotyped signals associated with the norm compliance. The validity of a particular norm, therefore, does not simply depend on its 'just application', but on the stereotyped 'signaling pattern' that indicates that it is in play. There is a legitimate distinction in genre between the news governed by impartiality norm and that governed by the opposing norm of partisanship. Such a distinction implies standardized procedures ('routines'), and standardized genre discursive 'signals'. Thus, for example, in standard, impartial, news, factual statements will prevail; there will be a clear distinction between factual statements and evaluative comment; designation and naming of parties will be stylistically unmarked; where opinion is involved, a variety will be presented, etc. (cf. an analysis of such 'professional routines' for the regular news governed by the impartiality norm in: Schlesinger, ibidem) Analysis of the 'partiality norm' The norm of impartiality as applied to the news program has been, in general, adequately analyzed in existing literature on the media. The presence of the partiality norm has, however, not even been noticed, let alone analyzed. I will attempt to point out some components of the partiality norm as signaled in the observed news programs. These components can be taken as a kind of 'sub-norms' that help to signal the general partiality norm: a) The norm of unconditional conformism. All public acts (including the news and its articulation) have to conform to the officially stated 'national goals', 'national needs', 'national interest' as well as to the very particular 'orders', 'requests' that are publicly formulated to be 'of national interest'. This norm justifies the introduction of all kinds of censorship, both governmental and self-censorship, and the blocking of the dissenting voices access to the public media. The presence of this norm is signaled by the use of stereotyped designations and words with strong evaluative connotations. These include the use of the newly created elements of speech in Croatian like 'glede', 'u svezi' - archaic-sounding synonyms for 'in regard to', 'in connection with') as well as labeling of the enemy. b) The norm of success. This norm can be formulated as a 'norm of optimism' too. According to it, no one has the right to voice doubt publicly about the eventual success of the national policy (for example: President Tudjman's general policy; the military policy of Croatia in Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.). The actual national policy is the only one possible in the given circumstances, and its fundamental successfulness must be reiterated. This explains the 'success syndrome' which permeates public politicians discourse, from the speeches of President Tudjman to those of army commanders, from official statements by the Prime Minister Valenti" to the comments of the editor-presenter in the news program, which often 'corrects' the pessimistic implications of the given report. c) The norm of righteousness. Anything 'our side' is doing is morally right and justifiable. Atrocities caused by 'our side' are not mentioned, or, if mentioned, have to be set against some incomparably greater atrocity committed by the 'enemy'. Any ethically 'wrong' act by our side is contingent, a one-off, something completely untypical for the general behavior of 'our side'. This norm permeates reports from the battlefield where the Croatian forces are involved. The application of the norm of righteousness can therefore be an indicator of which party in ongoing battles is considered to be 'our side' in Bosnia and Herzegovina. d) The norm of the enemy's inhumanity. This is the counterpart to the norm of righteousness: anything the 'enemy side' is doing is essentially ethically wrong and unjustifiable. But it is not just simply 'wrong': the enemy must be characterized as fundamentally non-human, below 'the lowest possible level of humanity', or as something 'outside humanity', 'opposed to civilization'. Only in such a way can 'we' explain how it can be that they are against 'us', and why they are as destructive as they are reported to be. The application of this norm can be recognized in the obligatory ascription of all known massacres (even those that are unconfirmed) to the enemy side. Although normally avoided, the visual presentations of massacred bodies are permitted as evidence of the 'viciousness of the enemy', as in, for example, the case of the obituary of Vukovar fall. But, the presence of this sub-norm can also be seen in the careful avoidance of presenting information that might suggest the enemy side is 'human' and 'normal", is as civilized as we are. There is a systematic absence pictures and information about everyday life inside Serbia and in Serbian Krajina. If such scenes are presented, they tend to deepen the impression of the 'troubled', 'subhuman', 'bizarre' or 'unethical' life lead there. e) The norm of national centeredness. The presentation of the domestic agenda is always paramount in prime news programs everywhere. During a war situation it is, moreover, considered almost 'indecent' to deal with the problems of other nations when there is such internal pressure. The news is expected to deal exclusively with the crisis at hand. This norm, however, implies something more: the refusal to render relativistic 'our situation', which would otherwise be the necessary consequence of drawing attention to events in other countries. If too many of the problems of outside world were brought in, there would be a danger that our problems would appear to be no more important than those of others. Therefore, 'the world' is permitted to enter the wartime news program only insofar as it is concerned with 'our situation' and 'our problems'. There is a latent, and often expressed, generalized xenophobia at times of war, and the presentation of war news. Such xenophobia can even become a sub-norm of the norm of national centeredness. f) The norm of aggressiveness. In wartime, there is an implicit requirement that unrelenting aggressiveness be displayed not only towards the enemy but also to anything that transgresses the sub-norms of partiality. Such transgressions are considered as a 'contribution to the enemy cause', and the transgressor as the 'enemy of the nation', as a 'traitor'. All peace movements during the war - as the intentional transgressors of the norm of aggressiveness are, for example, automatically seen in this light. In the prime-time news program this norm is manifested in the form of obligatory support for military advances of 'our side' on the battlefront, and support for its occupation of enemy territory. Examples include the occupation of Muslim villages, regaining Bosnian-Croat regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the regaining of Serb-occupied territory at Maslenica in Croatia, as well as wholehearted celebration of all military 'victories'. Also, when people on the streets ('the voice of the people') are interviewed about the Croatian military actions, and about the possibility of cohabitation ('su~ivot') with Serbs after the war, those are selected who argue against the cohabitation, requesting that those with 'blood on their hands' be brought to trial, and those are selected who wholeheartedly support the Croatian military actions. Attitudinal social homogeneity as wartime requirement Since the impartiality norm seems to be the 'prototype norm' for the news, the partiality norm takes the dominant normative position only in very special situations such as revolution, extreme social and political conflict, under repressive regimes and in war. (It is interesting to compare Schlesinger's analysis (1978: 205-43) of the partial abandonment of the impartiality norm by BBC in its treatment of Northern Ireland). As I pointed out in my introduction, the 'takeover' of the news by the partiality norm may be, and usually is, very rapid, with the crisis imminent, and is an 'internal affair'. These general conditions are 'accepted' by the media 'manipulators', but not produced by them. The partiality norm, as described above, in fact contributes toward the homogenization of public attitude. And although this homogenization is very useful for the governing elite, and they will do what they can to aid and control its process, the process itself seems to be caused by the crisis, and by the spontaneous social strategies for handling a crisis, and not by the propaganda manipulation alone. Montagu (1976:259-282) states that violence in war situations is not due to the 'natural aggressiveness' of men but rather to specific social conformism that is induced in army recruits. It seems, however, that this conformism is required not only of recruits but of the populace in general. War, as a general threat to the order of everyday societal life, challenges the existing routines of social conformism, requiring their revision in the desire to restore the crisis resistant social order. The partisan attitude, which aims to strengthen the endangered social integration and to create a new homogeneous consensus against the enemy, is fundamental to this. Meanwhile, many of the norms that usually regulate social intercourse and private life appear to be suspended. The media, acutely sensitive to societal tendencies and supportive of the main social order, are quick to respond to these forces and eager to contribute to them. The change of governing norm of the news is the consequence of media compliance with the citizens' need to restore a manageable and identifiable, crisis resistant, 'world order' at the times when the standard 'world order' is manifestly falling apart. Addenda: Propaganda as an answer to a need for socially approved orientation in globally disorienting situations Having experienced, through my professional work, that the most inspiring theoretical generalizations are those that spring from personal experiences and the need to order them, I shall try in this essay to reconstruct this very thing: I shall present my personal - life/television - experiential situation during the war in Croatia, aiming to derive some generalizations about the relationship between daily life-orientation needs and the role of television in their satisfaction and articulation. That may hopefully serve as the basis for the extraction of particular hypothesis to be checked through methodical research. * Basic situation. An air-raid alarm is sounded in Zagreb, capital of Croatia. Zagreb is darkened. Inhabitants of the building where my family and me live in and people from surrounding houses that don't have a shelter we all are down in the cellars. Some are on the second underground flour where there is an "atomic" shelter of limited capacity and individual sheds prepared as temporary hiding places (mostly older people, children), and others are on the first flour underground - which is a huge garage. The forces of Serbs and Yugoslav army are already as close as 30 kilometers from Zagreb, and hollow sounds of artillery can be heard from the distance. Within the town there are occasional machinegun fires, canon and grenades explosions from the nearby place where Yugoslav military barracks are surrounded by Croatian police and civil-guard forces. Airplanes that are attacking may be coming from the military airfields within Croatia and from Bosnia and Herzegovina (from Pula airport, Zemunik airport, Biha airport). In the town there are some sniper shots (fired by Yugoslav army secret service people and their collaborators) at people running into the shelter, and moving through the streets of Zagreb. Now, we in a garage shelter are mostly gathered around the ones having radio. We desperately want to know what is happening: where from the Airplanes are coming, how many of them, what are their planned targets, how long will the air-raid last, what is the situation on the front nearby Zagreb, and how do improvised defensive Croatian forces (civil police, national guard and civilian guard) fare faced with the coordinated Serb-Yugoslav military advance all over Croatia. * The need to be informed about wider context. This is trivial but important: Obviously, in a situation of generalized danger there is an acute need to grasp the overall situation, to be informed not just about the immediate situation in the scene where we are placed and where we are able to move around (the one - in the garage - is actually very common, uninformative one), but to be informed about the situation in wide region surrounding our shelter garage where the things are happening whose consequence is our stay in a garage. We need wider information because on them we can base our understanding of the general pattern of events, and on this understanding base our decisions as to our future life (whether to stay in town or flee to the more secure place; whether enlist in the defensive forces or stay at home, at work; whether bring valuables in the cellar or leave them in the flat...). Actually, radio and television - besides the fragmented individual rumors by neighbors - are the "natural" - socially instituted, given - sources of such needed wider information. So we turn eagerly to them. When the air-raid alarm is sounded off, we all climb upstairs to our flats and watch television for needed news, listening to the radio as well, in-between the TV-news. * The need for a complete and truthful information. Now, television and radio do, on the first sight, satisfy this information need. They do inform us what towns are encompassed with the air-raid alarm, where the Serbs and Yugoslav army are attacking, where the fight is going on, how the negotiations between Croatian representatives and Army representatives are evolving, etc. Still, a lot of needed information is missed. For example, there is no prompt information about the loud explosion in Zagreb after the fight-planes have passed over the town. There is no information about the situation at the nearby front. There is a break in information about the brave defense at some recently often mentioned place in Croatia - the fall of the place can be smelled out but it is not brought in the news. There are discrepancies between those information we receive from the television news, and those we hear from the soldiers, who, being back home for awhile, are caught by the air-raid alarm and hiding with us in a garage - they talk about their battle experiences, and give us firsthand information about the behavior of both warring sides at the front. Some of the information failures are due to the limited information service not adapted to the war situation. But some information is obviously purposefully temporarily suppressed, and some are systematically suppressed or twisted (e.g. the armistice infringes are regularly ascribed to the Serbs and Yugoslav army side, never to the Croatian soldiers, though such perfect asymmetry is highly improbable). Because of it there is a growing dissatisfaction among the "garage people" with information value of the news from the Croatian television. The dissatisfaction points to the two information assumptions: a) the information has to be reliable (i.e. truthful - from the false information one cannot derive reliable pattern), b) they have to be sufficiently exhaustive (encompassing enough of diversified facts) to enable the derived pattern to be of satisfactory scope for life decisions. * The need for an expert overview of war situation. But, there is another dissatisfaction, difficult to voice. The TV-news mostly consists of the listings of individual facts, individual politician statements, and emotional or high-spirited reactions by commentators to the events of the day. The picture one can gain from all this is fragmented, clogged with atomic facts and anecdotal events. Only pattern that is derivable is a statistical one. But when in an interview some Croatian military commander gives some detailed strategic description of Serb and Yugoslav army intentions and moves, suddenly we are all ears: that is missing from the news. I.e. the interpretation of the general situation in rational terms (i.e. in terms of general intentions and strategies of involved parties, and probable course of events in closer and farther future) is missed. Namely, being insufficiently informed, and not sufficiently skilled at the extraction of the political and war patterns, we are not able to construct the reliable pattern of events out of the accessible information, though we are trying to do it all the time, and not always admitting to ourselves our interpretation insecurity. But we are - not having all relevant information - interpretatively insecure. Again, we expect TV and radio (and newspapers) - as public social institutions made to do it - to offer us a comprehensible patterned general model of events and their probable course. We expect the offer of global interpretations of the facts we know, and we expect this interpretations to be based not only on the information we posses but on the relevant information that are not accessible to us. In another words, we expect the interpretations to be made from the point of view that is not limited in a way our own is bound to be. We expect the socially legitimated (and public broadcasting gives such legitimation) expertise assessment of the pattern of events. * The need for avoidance of bad news. There is still another side to the information addiction. During the air-raid days, news is mostly bad news. Serbs and Yugoslav army are advancing on most front lines against the improvised, often uncoordinated, poorly armed Croatian defense. There are pictures of destroyed towns, villages, dead bodies, news of massacres in war regions, frightened refugees. There is no sign that the world dominating states will actually help. All this contributes to the growing desperation, depressive feeling, a defeatist pessimism, and feeling of powerlessness. Watching TV-news becomes nerve-racking experience; news is a fuel either to the almost hysteric reaction, or to the depressive stupor. One cure to such feelings and reactions is - the abstinence of the news. I tend to avoid watching all news, and when still attending them, I tend to jump and go to another room, or switch the channel, when another bad thing start to be described. It seems that there is a limit to the amount of bad news one can take in and still keep his/her vitality, life energy, and normalcy on the level. From this point of view, is the positive selection bias of the TV-news (suppressing the bad news) so entirely devoid of my personal psychological needs? Still, I prefer to be offered all news, and select by myself the ones I am able to digest. But, TV news are, in principle, behaving as I am behaving myself - they offer a biased selection in order to prevent defeatist reactions in people who depend on TV-news for their life orientation in the times of general crisis. The selection is, of course, only partial: still a lot of bad scenes are shown and bad tiding brought up. * The need for identification of the guilty party for the present situation. In our being driven into the shelter, and in the fact that lot of other towns and regions are equally or even incomparably more drastically (like Vukovar) endangered and destroyed, there is something unacceptable. It is emotionally difficult to accept that the whole civil existence throughout Croatia is endangered because of the things most of us have had no influence upon and doesn't feel responsible of. But behind the air-raids, behind the army advances on the front throughout Croatia, we feel there are people who are personally responsible for the decisions, persons who do decide to fly, to attack, to bomb, to kill us, and who order all of this. More and more of "garage people" are cursing the Serbs, the Yugoslav army generals and any member of the army (though a lot of Croatian youngsters are still within the army on regular obligatory military service). One does not defend oneself only by obliterating some bad news. There is an obvious need to defend oneself more actively, more aggressively. The first step in it is: a) a clear generalized identification of "the enemy" (Serbs, Yugoslav army, "Yugoslavs" - i.e. those politically insisting on integral Yugoslavia), b) personalized "pick up" of some "responsible" representatives of it (some identifiable generals are mentioned, Slobodan Miloaevi even some individual Serb neighbors - army officials or just known to be of "Yugoslav", non-Croat, political affiliation), and c) curse-marking of the identified and personalized enemy with all the most derogative and offending attributes one can think off. Now, Croatian TV does the same in a more standardized way: Yugoslav army and Serb forces and their moves are mentioned with varied derogative attributes ("Criminal forces of Serb-Chetnick Army...), some of them tending to be standardized for a while. Evaluative, morally indignant, attributive marking of everything which concerns Serbs, Yugoslav army, and the Serb-Montenegro "remains of Yugoslavia" becomes obligatory discoursive form of every news item that are concerned with domestic war situation. This TV derogatory mannerism (at that, a highly unimaginative one, especially in comparison with the inventiveness of garage curses) is occasionally parodied and laughed off among the garage people, and it is positively felt to be propagandistic. But at the same time the derogation is considered to be acceptable one, as being adequate type of evaluation stance, consistent with our own. TV mannerism is basically considered as being - justified, legitimate. * The need for the solution of the informational and evaluation contradictions. At the time of the air-raids, on Croatian TV (HTV) there is a regular program late in the night - "Slika na slici" ("Image On Image"), later renamed "Slikom na sliku" ("Image Versus Image"). It is basically a compilation program of foreign TV-news of the day of emitting, presented usually with the comment. There are shown also some Belgrade (ex-Yugoslav and Serb capital), Novi Sad (North Serbian town), Montenegrin, and Sarajevo (Yutel, and TV Sarajevo) TV news and reportages. Now, in spite of accompanying comments, the makeup of Serb news is quite unsettling. They present some facts, which are not presented by Croatian main news: fall of some Croatian city, number of killed Croatian soldiers, and success of Serb and Yugoslav army forces. That is expected. But, frequently they present the same facts as Croatian TV, but with opposite ascriptions: destructions of buildings are ascribed to the Croatian side, and dead people laying on the streets and slaughtered civilians that were presented by Croatian TV earlier that night as Serb crimes, on Belgrade TV are presented as Croatian crimes. Attributive mannerism is similarly elevated and derogative, but "negatives", "enemies" are now Croats, and Croat political and military representatives (named indiscriminately as "Ustae"). Even the "aggression" is ascribed to Croatian side - aggression on Serb populace and on their homes in Croatia. Taking both sides at the same time on their face value is not possible, because they are contradictory. It is not possible to be "neutral" and say that both are equally deceptive, nor it is possible to confirm that one side is regularly lying and another mostly truthful; the reason for this impossibility is simple: you cannot systematically check the authenticity of every presented fact, and the adequacy of their ascriptions, so no conclusive evaluation of the truthfulness of news, adequacy of ascriptions, is possible. For foreign correspondents the reporting contradictions are just another (political) fact in this war situation. But for us, the shelter people, it cannot be accepted just as a fact. For us the contradiction has to be resolved. It is a moral question: whose side is "right", whose side is ethically "positive". We need a moral justification of the whole situation we are in. Because we feel to be innocent and still being attacked, because Croatian forces are generally defensive, fighting on the Croatian territory and defending it, and because it is difficult ethically to write off yourself, we garage people tend to take it as a matter of elementary belief that - in spite of evidenced unreliability of Croatian news - they are "essentially" just, right, and Serb news "essentially" wrong. Furthermore, we even unconsciously expect of TV to give us a permanent justification of our being "on the right side" of moral. When some public person in televised dispute dare posit the possibility of the Croatian "co-guilt" in all ongoing events, and point out morally unacceptable things done by Croatian soldiers and civilians, most of garage people start to feel animosity toward him, there are numerous phone calls to TV-station protesting against such a person being presented on TV at all. Every "doubt" about the "rightness" of "our" side is felt to endanger basic self-respect - the only thing that shelter people are trying to keep up in the global situation where your individual and social personalities and existences seems to be perfectly dismissive, not taken in any account. Therefore, we intensively hate Belgrade news, because we feel they are not only taking our territory, our possessions, our lives, but that they are trying "to steel" our self-respect, our integrity. The same thing is noticed on the Serb side: They hate Croatian TV with the same intensity as Croatian soldiers they are fighting, and those in the rear, far from the front, even more then Croatian soldiers. * Concluding generalizations. Though some of the above depicted "needs" may seem in conflict, and may actually be - as shown - in conflict, there is something that binds them all together. They all are connected with the basic need to secure the socially established general (long-term) orientation within the situation where the routine orientations are shaken, or not applicable any more in their entirety. The orientation has to fulfill some of traditional norms: a) It has to be applicable to the "scenes" of everyday life and reliable (and therefore it has to be sufficiently informative, factual - truthful). b) But it has to be orderly selective in regards to the "scenic" facts, otherwise it would not be of orientation value in everyday life. Omission of some information, and especially an avoidance, or resolution of conflicting information is assumed. c) The function of selective order is not only to economize the life management. It has also to fulfill the function of psycho-social legitimation of current life situation - it has to offer the social measure (ethic, morality) against which to measure those events and circumstances (and those information) which escape usual measures which have been internalized during the earlier peaceful, stabile, civil society. d) Actually, what is asked for is a "shelter" from the confusions caused by the break of some otherwise reliable basic social, cultural, ethical, and individually habitual conditions of everyday life. The most effective "shelter", basically, consist in communal self-assertion and active (operative) discrimination: "There are justified we, community of people of the same fate, the fate consists in each individual being unjustifiably endangered just because he/she is a part of the given community" (- statement of self-assertion); "There are unjustified they, who are identified by endangering us just because we are a part of the given community, and they are not to be believed, trusted, tolerated etc." (an active, operative, discrimination). References Ahmavaara Y., K. Nordenstreng, P. Peltola (1974) 'Informational News Criteria', in K. Nordenstreng (ed.) Informational Mass Communication, Helsinki: Tammi Publications. McQuail, Denis (1987, 2nd edn) Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction, London: SAGE Publications. Montagu, Ashley (1976) The Nature of Human Aggression, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schlesinger, Philip (1978) Putting 'Reality' Together: BBC News, London: Constable. Zaller, John R. (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, New York: Cambridge University Press. 1 This paper is based on the close analysis of the two samples of HTV prime-news programs ("Vukovar program" - the "war sample (WS)" as was designated in the Report, and on the one among the programs from the "peace sample (PS)" (see Report, and a note in the introductory part). The close analysis was based on the previously prepared shooting script (i.e. the technical verbal description of visual part of the program, shot by shot, together with the "dialog list", the transcription of the verbal part of the program). The shooting script was made by the two cinema students (Jelena Paljan and Tihomir }arn, cinema editing department) under my supervision. There is also an Addendum to this paper: the essay "Propaganda as an answer to a need for socially approved orientation in globally disorienting situation". The essay offers a firsthand introspective report of the author's attitude toward TV news during the time of air raids in Zagreb with the aim to expose covered expectations that the war-struck population tend to relate to the wartime TV news. The essay was written in the preparatory phase of the research and some of the ideas brought up in the essay influenced the formation of the hypothesis and some of the inferences made in the close analysis paper. A variant of this paper was presented at the conference Turbulent Europe: Conflict Identity and Culture, held at EFTSC, London 1994, and was subsequently published under the title "Controlling National Attitudes: War and Peace in Croatian TV News" in a book edited by J.Gow, R. Paterson and A. Preston (1996) Bosnia by Television, London: BFI Publishing. $(  (\\ e AHQk( ()),,0022G3p355N6X6@9b9;;CC DDDKD\EcE+F,FdIfIIIJ"J3JNNPPVVWܿ󽿪󽿪󽿪$CJOJPJQJ^JmH nHsH tHo('CJOJPJQJ^JmH nHo(sH tH0JPJmH sH 0JmH nHo(sH tHPJmH nHsH tHPJmH nHo(sH tHC  (\H qFPQk xxT #$%())*r+,I.1G3p33_6Y8@9b9d:9;~<=>Q?B@=ABCCxC DETGJJ"J3JKVNQVVWqX[^_-b7dKghjfkemq'rst|vxWWZZrZzZw[{[[[]]]]J^L^c!ceecgogohqhhhhhhhiiWkckllll!m3mvqqq'r-s/sHwIwwwww%{.{{5}@}~ ~~ Յ܊״״״-6CJOJPJQJ]^JmH nHo(sH tHPJmH nHo(sH tHo('CJOJPJQJ^JmH nHo(sH tH$CJOJPJQJ^JmH nHsH tHG|vy${%{.{{~ ~0&1ȐpEGx89ܖEGiĚƚuŜ˜͜4!PW$&r ɮ3>z|̻λ"Wb6FSTֿֿֿֿֿ-6CJOJPJQJ]^JmH nHo(sH tHo($CJOJPJQJ^JmH nHsH tH'CJOJPJQJ^JmH nHo(sH tHKТ^W$&Vw̻λf60x7 0x^`0xSTx 0x^`0,1h. 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