Journalists were crucial in drawing attention to atrocities in Bosnia. Anttoni James Numminen looks at their work and how the war changed reporting


B SNIA 30 years on L


ast December saw the 30th anniversary of the end of the war in Bosnia, a conflict marked by ethnic cleansing, genocide and more than 200,000 deaths.


The work of domestic and foreign journalists


was crucial in bringing global attention to the plight of civilians, and many risked and gave their lives to report on the break-up of Yugoslavia. However, it was also a conflict marked by inaction from the international community, while questions about the role of foreign journalists and the scope of their work remain valid today.


The war was impactful in many ways, as reporting became increasingly digital. Kenneth Morrison, professor


of history and chair in modern southeast European history at De Montfort University, is an expert on the siege in Sarajevo and has written two books about journalism during the conflict. “This was, in many


respects, the first digital war. At the beginning, journalists were still trying to connect crocodile clips to whatever phone lines were still available,” he recalls. “By the end of it in 1995,


people were using laptops, data transmitters and satellite phones that you could put in a backpack and carry around.”


14 | theJournalist Alongside greater security


around journalism, with flak jackets, helmets and armoured cars becoming commonplace, awareness rose of the psychological effects of covering a brutal conflict. The 1990s saw a shift to a


better understanding of the effects of post-traumatic stress on journalists, “particularly on photographers and cameramen who had to be there and they were witnessing some pretty awful stuff”, says Morrison. Dr Martyn Bignold (pictured


right) was bureau chief for Reuters Television in Bosnia at the end of the conflict in 1995–96, based in Sarajevo, covering “probably the biggest story at the time”.


He changed careers in the


early 2000s and is now a consultant clinical psychologist. On arrival in the Bosnian


capital, which had been under siege for almost four years, his “first thoughts were of the devastation and how parts of the city were just obliterated”. He realised “how remarkable


it was that life still went on, even in a city that had been under siege for so long”. Testament to local


Roy Gutman, Newsday’s European bureau chief, won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting that disclosed atrocities and other human rights violations in Bosnia and Croatia. “I made it a point to myself not to follow the


pack. The story in Sarajevo was not only legitimate but also really horrific and dramatic. But I had the feeling that there were terrible things going on elsewhere. From reading the local news media in Croatia, I learned about a huge number of refugees who were fleeing the north out of fear – they even talked about concentration camps – and I decided it was worth going and interviewing them,” he told me. The genocide at Srebrenica – the ethnic


In 1995, in neighbouring Croatia, John Schofield, a BBC reporter with The World Tonight, was killed. His death set several changes in motion, including in how news outlets support reporters in hostile environments. With the aid of family and friends, his wife Susie set up the John Schofield Trust that supports early-career journalists and make newsrooms representative of their audiences. (I am a fellow of the charity.) As most foreign journalists in Bosnia were based in the capital, Sarajevo, much reporting on ethnic cleansing and concentration camps was not immediate. Nonetheless, it played a part in the public pressure that led to NATO intervention.


cleansing of 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in 1995 – is recognised internationally, with a day of remembrance on July 11. Controversially, some journalists went on to provide testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, who was convicted of genocide. However, in recent years, the political situation in parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and pro- Serbia sentiment have led to denials about the massacre, changes to that effect in some school textbooks and calls for the Republika Srpska region to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Digital reporting, security, stress and resilience


resilience was Bosnian daily paper Oslobođenje, which was published throughout the war despite the destruction of its offices and a lack of resources, from ink to electricity. “Domestic journalists were


incredible in their coverage of the war,” Morrison notes. “Photographers, print journalists and TV journalists knew the city and the country an awful lot better than any of the foreign correspondents.” The mindset and attitude


intrinsic to maintaining some sense of normalcy “raised some questions for me, which ultimately prompted the curiosity that led me to retrain”, Bignold says. Being a witness to


traumatic events and seeing


how colleagues coped with PTSD also influenced him. An incident involving a


cameraman who had been “first on the scene at a really horrific mortar attack on a market” stuck with him. “Much of the footage we


wouldn’t be able to put out without a significant warning because of its extreme nature. The cameraman remarked on this, saying filming it had not really impacted him. However, back at the bureau, he engaged with the horror of what he had seen. “There are aspects around


journalism that allow you to witness things professionally but, if they get under your skin and you then relate to them, that lands in a different way.”


DR MARTYN BIGNOLD


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