Posted on 09/19/2002 10:50:14 PM PDT by Int
Witness to war crimes: must a reporter testify?
Tracy Sutherland, Brussels
WHEN the former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell was asked to testify at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 1999, he saw it as his civic and moral duty to comply.
The case was against Tihomir Blaskic, head of the Croatian defence force in central Bosnia during the Bosnian war, who was accused of planning the systematic persecution of Bosnian Muslims in 1993.
Bell was called to testify in defence of Blaskic: "I testified in his defence because I thought then and think now that he was innocent," says Bell, 64, who has since left the BBC.
"What we're talking about here are serious war crimes, serious charges carrying virtually life sentences and when war crimes happen the prime witnesses are usually dead because they are the victims, so all you have is circumstantial evidence compiled from people who came on the scene or people living in local villages.
"The International Red Cross, who should be prime witnesses, are forbidden by their own organisation from testifying. That leaves the journalists, and if you journalists decline to testify that increases the likelihood that the guilty will be acquitted and the innocent will be convicted."
During his two-year trial Blaskic did not deny that killings took place but insisted that he did not order them or have the power to stop them.
The tribunal disagreed and he was sentenced to 45 years in prison. An appeal is ongoing.
Despite the experience Bell is unfazed. "My view is you are a citizen first and a journalist second and your obligations as a citizen come first," he says. "If I hadn't testified in [Blaskic's] defence I would have blamed myself for not having tried to save him."
The testimony of Bell and other journalists before the tribunal has sparked debate over the role of journalists in war zones and to what extent testifying in war crimes trials compromises their neutrality and endangers their lives even further.
Recently another BBC journalist Jacky Rowland -- a former Belgrade correspondent -- testified against ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who is before the court on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in the Balkans in the 1990s.
"What we're asking is that journalists who ... witnessed the committing of crimes come forward and give evidence as an eyewitness," says Graham Blewitt, an Australian deputy prosecutor with the tribunal.
"The fact that they were journalists there reporting what was happening in our view is not a relevant consideration and there is no journalistic immunity or privilege when it comes to that," he says, noting that in recent cases at least, the journalists have not been asked to reveal sources.
However, there is strong opposition to this view currently centring on a challenge by ex-Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal against the tribunal's demand that he testify in the trial of Radoslav Brdjanin, a Bosnian Serb charged with genocide.
Randal is the first journalist to refuse to give evidence at the tribunal and his case also marks the first time news organisations have intervened in hearings at the UN court.
A brief submitted to the court last month on behalf of 34 organisations including CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and the BBC seeks to protect journalists reporting in war zones from subpoenas (as has been issued against Randal). The tribunal has already ruled that Randal has insufficient grounds to refuse to testify because he isn't in any danger and has already revealed his source.
Asking an appeals panel to reconsider, the news organisations argued: "Whatever the standard applied by this court is, it will set a precedent, not only in courts, but also on the battlefield.
"Forcing journalists to testify against their sources (confidential or otherwise) will make future sources more hesitant to talk to the press, particularly in war zones."
Others go further, arguing that journalists will be blocked -- even more than they are already -- from entering war zones and those that make it in will be targeted by people who fear they will testify against them. "Journalists are able to work in the way that they do ... because they claim to be and are perceived to be neutral observers," says Aidan White, general secretary of the Independent Federation of Journalists.
Journalists now are rarely deliberately targeted in war zones. There have been exceptions, though, most starkly in the Balkans where, according to IFJ figures, 80 journalists were killed between 1991 and 1999, most of them deliberately. Deliberate targeting has also occurred in Somalia, Chechnya and Sierra Leone.
By turning journalists into police witnesses they become "potentially the victims of targeting from one side or another", says White, who insists the decision to testify must be made voluntarily and not via subpoenas.
Bell has doubts: "I think they should stiffen their spines a little bit -- I mean journalists' lives in war zones are dangerous anyway and I don't honestly believe that testifying to the tribunal will add enormously to the magnitude of the danger."
Many believe it should be a question of personal choice. "No one's saying that journalists should be outside the law and they shouldn't be good citizens," says White. "But you prove your citizenship by the quality of your journalism, and a good journalist who says I want to protect ... the ability of media to function in the public interest is being just as good a citizen as somebody who says he's ready to help the police."
Then, when called upon to present exactly the same, objective information in a court or tribunal, they freak out, as if revealing what they have already publicly reported is somehow unethical or places them at greater risk in the field.
Why does this make absolutely no sense whatsoever to me?
I could understand the issue if it related to confidential sources, but as the article points out, they're not being required to reveal their sources. Can anyone explain this?
"Forcing journalists to testify against their sources (confidential or otherwise) will make future sources more hesitant to talk to the press, particularly in war zones."SOLUTION:
If it's war, you're enlisted, or you're not on the battlefield.
Why does this make absolutely no sense whatsoever to me?
You are making the assumption that these journalists have been reporting facts, as their profession requires them to do. But when testifying under oath in a court of law, and subject to cross-examination, they might be exposed as frauds and liars.
Actually, I tend to assume they're spinning what they consider to be the most sensational story they can cobble together. You're right: "journalistic ethics" have become an oxymoron.
I'm just asking these rhetorical questions to illustrate what is obvious hypocrisy on the part of these hacks who pompously call themselves "journalists".
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