The Web vs The Printed Press

by Wm. Dorich

What the Web has done for the average American is circumvent the newspaper editor and the awsome power that people like your, Mr. Gwertzman, have to practice censorship, omission journalism and even yellow journalism. The Web, for the first time in history puts newspaper editors and the special interest of the publisher on notice that the truth, like rich cream will rise to the top in spite of your hideous sharp editing knife.

Pulitzer Prize winner, Roy Gutman, is a classic example of why we need the Web and not newspapers. In the introduction to his book, "Witness to Genocide," he wrote the following sentence. "Having set such lofty standards, I immediately made an exception and wrote about the Omarska camp, which I had not visited, based on the secondhand witness account." (Page XII). In other words, Roy Gutman is a liar, a fabricator, a novelist, pretending to be a journalist. The only difference was that he forgot to tell his readers in Newsday that it was just supposition that demonized an entire nation of Serbian people with collective guilt. Giving his book this obnoxious title when he was never a ^Ñwitness to genocide," was intentended to give his lies legitimacy and to give himself credit as disgustingly as he gives himself permission to step down from lofty standards!

Finally, the Web has given the Serbian people a way of fighting back when you, Mr. Gwertzman, and your editoral staff managed to muzzle them for 5 years. The Web, finally allows people the opportunity to respond to vicious attacks by newspapers whose only motive these days is to satisfy advertisers and to sell newspapers not dwell on anything that resembles the truth. Even worse, it now appears since the publication of James Baker"s book, that the State Department utilized the media to promote American interest in the Balkans and to promote the "Muslim cause." How many other conflicts in the world were manipulated and how many other small nations were subverted by Advovacy Journalism? The Web will be the death of the major newspapers because your good-old-boy network will finally meet its master, the TRUTH!

Bernard Gwertzman your skirt isn't clean either. When Anthony Lewis wrote in the New Republic, "Bosnian Serb broadcasts told viewers and listeners that Serbian fighters were being roasted alive on spits. For many, this was the only source of news, and they believed," that same week, Roger Cohen wrote a piece in the NYT on March 19, 1995, in which he in essence said the same thing,

I sent Anthony Lewis, Roger Cohen and you, Mr. Gurtzman a set of color photographs of several roasted Serbian soldiers taken by photo journalist, Yasunari Mizuguchi, surely a neutral source. You and your editorial staff ignore that correspondence, sent by Federal Express. I have the proof that you received it. The Times staff elected to remain silent, they cleverly avoided writing a retraction of Cohen's remark because my evidence smacked you square in the face, exposing the partisan press that they have become.

In the past 5 years and over 1,800 OpEd, articles and letters to the Editor, I can count on one hand how many of those articles and letters to your editor were reproduced from Serbian scholars, authors, and political leaders of the Serbian people. Dr. Alex Dragnich, author of 14 books on Yugoslav history and politics and recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Award for Outstanding Scholarship at Vanderbilt University, wrote 42 OpEd pieces on Bosnia, and I have copies of each of them. The Times never printed a single one. How outrageous that this is what Advocacy Journalism has come to mean.

Advocacy journalism at the New York Times has also come to mean, freedom of the press is only free for those who own the printing press. Anthony Lewis told the world 5 times in one year that the Serbs destroyed Dubrovnik, that turned out to be an outrageous lie. Then, the Croatian propaganda machine convinced the world that they rebuilt 588 destroyed buildings in 4 months, setting a new world record for construction. Food and medicine were not getting through to Dubrovnik but marble, sand, and cement were, what concoctions! Even Pamela Taylor of Voice of America said that the damage was "impreceivable, giving credence to the Serbian lie that not all that much damage was done in the first place." An example of where Advocacy Journalism can lead us.

Mr. Gurtzman you are a hypocrite for withholding the evidence of Serbian soldiers that were indeed roasted like animals on a spit because it flies in the face of your hideous collective guilt that you and your paper have perpetrated against 10 million Serbian people. You editorial staff acted like they were in Bonn, 1939, instead of New York, 1991.

John Burns, yet another hypocrite of your staff and a winner of his Pulitzer for Bosnian coverage, never wrote a single article about an atrocity against a Serb or a Serbian village, yet this Bastard wrote an article about how the dogs were surviving the war in Sarajevo. This is the same omission journalist who wrote about 12 victims freezing to death in a Sarajevo nursing home. His story was full of all those usual anti-Serb remarks and insinuations but, John Burns, this sleight of hand word smith, this arrogant liar, forgot to tell his readers that all 12 victims were Serbs, that they came from a Serbian nursing home and that they were buried in a Serbian Orthodox cemetery in Sarajevo. Your motto at the New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print" is a mockery of truth.

Wm. Dorich, President,
SAVA, Serbian American Voters Alliance,
One Fifth Avenue,
Pittsburgh,
PA, 15222