Retired New York Times reporter David Binder has charged the New York Times and Newsday with "journalistic crimes" for their reporting of the 1990s Balkan Wars. Writing in a forward to Peter Brock's new book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia, Binder states that the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting awarded to both publications "should, in all fairness and honesty, be revoked."
Binder specifically criticizes the Times' John F. Burns and Newsday's Roy Gutman for writing accounts of supposed atrocities committed during the conflict in Bosnia that made use of questionable sources. For example, Burns' Pulitzer entry involved a seven—hour interview with Borislav Herak, a Bosnian Serb, who confessed to dozens of murders and multiple rapes. The problem is that three years after the story was published, the Times admitted that Herak was "slightly retarded" and that he had retracted his confession and claimed that he had been beaten by guards to obtain the information. Brock described Burns' interview with Herak,
...as "a manipulated confession and interrogation in which Burns was the key participant." Brock faults Burns for failing to tell readers that the interview took place with a Sarajevo video production crew present and that "interrogations were conducted by [government] investigators and by Sarajevo film director Ademir Kenovic."
As our national security correspondent Douglas Hanson noted almost two years ago, the press deliberately deceived the American people on the true nature of the conflict in order to actively promote Bill Clinton's "home by Christmas" Balkan adventure. In addition, Hanson revealed that Clinton's foreign policy deceptions resulted in
... a series of astounding and often contradictory decisions concerning vital military and national security matters. Initially, the Clinton Administration agreed to an arms embargo, but then tacitly allowed weapons to be smuggled in from the Middle East to help the Bosniac Muslims. He then went along with regional isolation protocols to prevent outside help from reaching all the belligerents. Then, he turned a blind eye to the infiltration of about 200 Mujahadeen fighters into Bosnia.
Binder also notes these policy deceptions by saying,
...it would take "at least a decade" before historians "clear out that wretched underbrush of lies and concoctions" from "despicable" politicians "like Richard Holbrooke," an international negotiator during the administration of former President Bill Clinton...
Slowly, but surely, the veil is being lifted on Clinton's Balkan quagmire.
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