ITN libel case: special report

Julia Hartley-Brewer
Wednesday March 15, 2000

The credibility of television news
reporting was in the dock, Britain's libel
laws were under the spotlight and the
truth about the atrocities of the
Bosnian conflict was in question in
Britain's first big libel trial of the
century.

On one side, the might of Independent
Television News, which provides the
news for three of Britain's terrestrial
television channels and boasts millions
of viewers.

On the other, LM, an independent
magazine with a monthly circulation of
just 10,000 run as "a shoestring
operation" and which had once - in its
previous incarnation as Living Marxism
- been the mouthpiece of the
Revolutionary Communist party and
was now, to all intents and purposes, a
one man band.

The stakes were high for both sides.
For ITN, the reputation of the company
in Britain and worldwide, and those of
two reporters, Penny Marshall, for ITV,
and Channel 4's Ian Williams. For LM,
the stakes were even higher. Losing
the libel trial meant almost certain
bankruptcy for the magazine, its editor
Mick Hume, and Helene Guldberg,
co-publisher of the magazine.

The case rested on an eight-page
translation of an article by an obscure
German journalist, Thomas Deichmann,
published in 1997 about his investigation
into a few seconds of footage from a
news report about the Bosnian conflict
that was by then already almost five
years old.

The single image that touched the
consciences of millions of viewers
around the world was that of Fikret
Alic, an emaciated Bosnian Muslim
man standing shirtless behind a
barbed wire fence in a Serb-run camp
at Trnopolje, in northern Bosnia.
Although just a brief moment in ITN's
lengthy reports broadcast on August 6
1992, the emotive image of Alic was
taken as evidence of Serb atrocities
that the western powers had been
waiting for. It quickly zoomed around
the world, prompting numerous
headlines comparing the camps in
Bosnia with the those of the Holocaust.

Awards and accolades followed and the international outcry at those few
seconds of footage was widely held to
have been responsible for hastening
western military involvement in the
conflict and changing the course of the
war.

It was not until much later, in January
1997, that LM first questioned the
pictures of Alic, with a press release
about an article in its February issue
headlined The Picture That Fooled the
World. In it, Deichmann claimed there
was no barbed wire around Trnopolje,
which was a collection centre for
refugees and not a prison, and that
the barbed wire was in fact around the
ITN news crews who were filming from
a small enclosure next to the camp.

The ITN reporters, he argued, had
deliberately misrepresented the camp
and, when the world's media inevitably
interpreted the pictures as evidence of
Serb-run concentra tion camps, they
failed to correct that impression.

ITN's immediate demands that the
allegations be withdrawn, an apology
issued and the issue pulped, were
ignored. Instead, LM held press
conferences to further pro mote the
article - prompting ITN to issue writs
for libel.

Meanwhile, both the PR firm Two-Ten
Communications (a wholly-owned
subsidiary of the Press Association),
which had distributed the press
release, and the Financial Times,
which published an article based on
the claims, had apologised to ITN.

LM called ITN's actions a "crude
gagging order" and succeeded in
turning the dispute into a freedom of
speech debate by wheeling in the sup-
port of some 150 journalists, authors,
comedians and lawyers, including Fay
Weldon, William Boyd, Doris Lessing,
Auberon Waugh, Harold Evans and
George Walden.

Meanwhile, the magazine set up the
Off The Fence fund, which raised more
than £70,000 towards the legal costs
through comedy nights, rallies and
donations. Supporters of LM also
began a campaign against ITN,
picketing its offices, making phone
calls to Ms Marshall and calling on
Bafta and the Royal Television Society to withdraw their awards for the broadcasts.

In turn, ITN accused LM of using the
article as a publicity stunt to draw
attention to the relaunch of the
magazine under its new title.
But the dispute went much wider than
the article, editorial and press release
complained of, with ITN accusing LM
of supporting the Serbs in the Bosnian
conflict.

Accusations also flew around that LM
had been desperate to be sued to gain
the notoriety and credibility, but LM
insists it had little option but to defend
itself.

Conspiracy theories aboun- ded,
including claims that LM was the tool
of the Serbs, who wanted to discredit
the ITN footage - evidence still being
used against Bosnian Serbs accused
of war crimes.

Had the tapes not been used in this
way, after ITN agreed to send the
unbroadcast footage to the Hague,
Deichmann (an expert witness for the
defence of Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic
at the war crimes tribunal in the Hague
in 1994) might never have written his
article.

Outside the court the debate raged over
the rights and wrongs of a mighty
media organisation using its vast
resources to silence criticism and
"destroy" - in Hume's words - a tiny
independent magazine.

But inside court 14, the judge, Mr Justice Morland, insisted in the pre-trial hearing that this was not to be a
debate about the
"journalism of attachment" or the rights
or wrongs of British libel law, but
a look at the facts.

ITN put forward all seven of the
award-winning team which visited the
camps, and the ITN executives who
sent them there. But LM's subpoenaed
star witnesses, including BBC foreign
affairs editor John Simpson, found
their evidence ruled out as hearsay,
leaving just Hume and Deichmann
because, Hume explained, LM "could
not afford to bring witnesses across
London let alone from Bosnia".

In the end it was Idriz Merdzanic, a
Bosnian Muslim doctor interned at
Trnopolje, who was the star witness.
He had appeared in the original ITN
broadcasts and his terrified eyes
spoke volumes.

The testimony of this slight, dignified
figure in the witness box, given through
an interpreter, made clear what previous
and current war crimes tribunals at the
Hague have already heard, that Trnopolje
was a camp where Muslims were undoubtedly
imprisoned, and that many were
beaten, tortured, raped and killed by
their Serb guards.

ITN insisted that it would not back
down without an apology from LM.
Legal action was, according to ITN
chief executive Stewart Purvis, "the
only way of nailing the lie once and for
all".

http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,146942,00.html

"Poison in the well of history"

Kim

Hi! Kim.
I was referring to the acquittal of Tadic in context of that the unpublished ITV footage was sent there and was used as evidence.
As to the "deliberacy";o) issue - I stand my ground. The LM article wasn't an irresponsible off-hand blah, but a fairly consistent investigation into the Tropolje coverage issue.
As the BBC's Nick Higham reported on the evening of the verdict: "Summing up, Mr Justice Morland told the jury that LM's facts might have been right, but he asked, did that matter?"
* How can one treat that?

What Deichman reported he saw may be true, but
he was not there at the same time. The claim
that Marshall deliberately misrepresented the
facts, which was claimed by Deichman, could only be proved by an eyewitness, which LM didn't provide.

"Filming from inside the barbed wire, Marshall asked if anyone spoke English. One man replied, Yes. Marshall
spoke to him. Are you a prisoner? No, said the man; we're refugees. Marshall was clearly impatient. She
pressed the man to criticize the Serbian officials. The man insisted: the Serbs treat us well; they give us food;
the only problem is the weather is too hot. Much too hot.

Then Marshall spotted a tall, emaciated man. What is wrong with that man, she asked. The Bosnian refugee
shrugged, said something about it being personal. (In fact the emaciated man's appearance resulted from
having had Tuberculosis as a child.)"

Who made this statement to Deichman?

We clearly saw more than one "emaciated" person

Kissie, have you read the second article?

Kim

I start to suspect something really is brewing up in Kosovo - no "mass graves" found, Albanians conduct border provocations, KFOR does nothing, Serbs now won't tolerate any Albanian "bullies" on Serb territory, a handy ITV to whip up anti-Serb hysteria (throw in the Newsunlimited - reads like the Shea briefings.)

The Guardian??
Now you're grasping at straws.
The newspaper that appeals to the leftwing
intelligencia and students.
(Ran an amusing series of comic strips taking the piss out of Shea).
Why is it always a media conspiracy?
Kim

No mass graves, maybe not in Kosovo.
By the way, a third oposition TV station
was shut down in Serbia, wasn't it?
Putin seems to be clamping down on the press
in Russia.
All LM had to do was substanciate their claim,
not fear for their lives.
Kim

I'm not grasping at straws:o)
As the BBC's Nick Higham reported on the evening of the verdict: "Summing up, Mr Justice Morland told the jury that LM's facts might have been right, but he asked, did that matter?"
* How can one treat that?

Genocide? What
genocide?

Serbian atrocities were not the
only ones Living Marxism tried to
deny. They targeted Rwanda too

Chris McGreal
Monday March 20, 2000

Genocide is such a hard crime to deny
that those who insist on doing so
usually put themselves on the outer
fringes of historical debate. How many
people had heard of Living Marxism
(LM) before the ITN reporters decided
to prove the magazine lied about the
camps in Bosnia?

Obscuring the truth about Bosnia was
not LM's only bid to rewrite history in
favour of the murderers. It has also
conducted a long campaign to deny
there was a genocide in Rwanda. But
while the magazine is of no great
consequence, it is articulating a lie
perpetuated by a host of more
powerful interests, from the Catholic
church to European politicians.

LM says the use of the word
"genocide" to describe the
orchestrated murder of about 800,000
Tutsis in 1994 is an "emotional
overreaction" and an "obsession". The
survivors are all but told to get over it.
Eighteen months after the genocide,
Fiona Fox, a press officer for Cafod,
the Catholic Church's relief agency in
England and Wales, visited Rwanda.

She wrote the first article of LM's
campaign (Massacring the truth in
Rwanda) under a pseudonym. Ms Fox
describes finding Kigali airport still
pocked by bullet holes from the
accompanying civil war. She
concluded Rwanda was "a country
determined to put the evidence of
what is known as 'the genocide' on
display for all who visit". Most of the
rest of us saw it as evidence of a poor
country without the resources to
rebuild in a hurry. The men who
organised the genocide were well
practised in denial long before the
killing was over. Time and again mem
bers of the Hutu extremist government
trotted out the same explanations. It
was spontaneous bloodletting, they
said. There were crimes on both sides,
as if Dresden excuses Auschwitz. And
then there is the old trick of implying
that the victims must have been guilty
of something.

LM and the other apologists for mass
murder in Rwanda have dutifully
trodden the same path. "Both sides
were responsible for human rights
abuses and massacres," Ms Fox says.
"Those targeted by government militia
were Tutsis and Hutus suspected of
supporting the (Tutsi rebels)." This,
presumably, included the thousands of
children butchered individually, by
machete. And the massacres at
hundreds of churches, mostly Catholic
churches at that. Not to mention the
systematic gang rapes of Tutsi women
and girls which led the international
tribunal to define rape as an act of
genocide when part of an
extermination campaign.

The genocide, while it coincided with
the civil war and was clearly driven by
the politics around the conflict, was
mostly carried out by civilians against
civilians far from the front. There was
no "other side". There were the
murderers and their unarmed, helpless
victims.

In another issue, LM concluded that
because Hutu extremists had failed to
employ the technology of the Nazis
there cannot have been a genocide in
Rwanda. "The idea that the
beleaguered Hutu-led government
could plan and execute the deliberate
annihilation of an entire people, at a
time when it could not even organise
to sell the coffee beans on which its
economy depended, seems little short
of incredible."

Leaving aside the racist overtones of
such a statement, it is indeed
incredible that a part of Rwanda's elite
could plan and almost succeed in
exterminating one in ten of the
population. But that does not mean it
did not happen. The genocide deniers
are as diverse as their motives.
Elements of the Roman Catholic
church have a vested interest in
underplaying the political organisation
and extent of the slaughter. The more
the killings are portrayed as chaotic,
spontaneous and committed by both
sides, the less responsibility the church
has to take for the role of its
archbishop, who was a de facto
member of the Hutu government, and
those bishops and priests who
encouraged mass murder. There are
still bishops in Rwanda who refuse to
call the slaughter by its true name.

Similarly, supporters of the men and
women on trial at the international
tribunal in Tanzania are keen that the
genocide be seen as a tribal
bloodletting that no one could have
planned, let alone prevented. It is
nonsense, as proven by the verdicts
and life sentences already handed
down by judges who have sat through
months of compelling testimony to the
contrary.

Some politicians and academics in
Belgium and France expend
considerable energy on denying the
truth of Rwanda, usually because of
political or personal ties to the former
Hutu regime. But much of the genocide
denial has little to do with what
happened in Rwanda. The
international court in Tanzania is trying
the largest number of men and women
accused of crimes against humanity
since Nuremberg. It has virtually the
entire cabinet from the Hutu extremist
government in its grasp.

Those who want an end to the pursuit
of Slobodan Milosevic and his cohorts
to stand trial in the Hague have an
interest in discrediting both
international tribunals. Therefore they
must pretend there was no genocide
in Rwanda even if it means yet again
denying the suffering of Africans.

I repeat,
What Deichman reported he saw may be true, but
he was not there at the same time. The claim
that Marshall deliberately misrepresented the
facts, which was claimed by Deichman, could only be proved by an eyewitness, which LM didn't provide.

That is the format of a libel trial.

"Summing up, Mr
Justice Morland told the jury that LM's facts
might have been right, but he asked, did that
matter?"

This quote has been twisted to Hume's advantage.

Kim or someone else may be able to answer this. Is it the case during a Libel suit if the people who accused someone else of libel and looses the court case they have to pay for the defendants cost to defend against the libel suit?

Kim , why does it always have to be a media conspiracy....simple don't like the message attack the messenger.

>Putin seems to be clamping down on the press
in Russia.

I don't see any Western newspapers/magazines or radios printing/broadcasting Bin Laden's requests to kill American citizens ... why should Radio Liberty or anyone else should be allowed to broadcast Chechen bandits' requests to kill Russian citizens?

"Carolina Adoption Service" sold 77 Russian kids ...

... and Putin flew in and out of Grozny on Mig-29.

"why should anyone be allowed to broadcast Chechen bandits quotes." Simple it is called freedom of the press. If one thinks it is OK for there government to stop the flow of information they feel does not reflect the government in a good light they should be prepaired to loose there own freedom of speech. In other words do you want to live in a country that your opinion or what you say can be considered a crime against the government and be thrown in jail.