The media have played a curious role in the conflict. The Yugoslav authorities moved quickly, removing most western journalists from their country almost immediately. When they were allowed back in, their broadcasts were strictly monitored. We won't find out for some time how much of what we saw and heard on TV and radio was propaganda, engineered by the Yugoslav authorities or NATO, and how much was really true.
PR Disasters
NATO certainly seems to have been the more open of the two sides, regular media briefings by Jamie Shea, whose intelligence shines through what he says. Whether by accident or design, his style has made NATO seem the more approachable. Serbian leaders, by contrast, often come across as surly and intransigent, inevitably colouring the way we feel about the conflict.
NATO's had its fair share of PR disasters - the accidental bombing of a train on a bridge, or of a hospital, or of the Chinese embassy were all (eventually) admitted, and Yugoslavia made sure western media had plenty of access to the resulting carnage.
Yugoslavia's kept its PR problems pretty much under wraps. Although Kosovar refugees have all spoken of the horror of ethnic cleansing, or being forced from their homes with no notice, and sent across the border to crowded refugee camps, we've had little in the way of pictures. Not surprisingly, Yugoslav authorities are hardly likely to invite CNN to cover the ethnic cleansing of a village in Kosovo.
Over the next few months, the media coverage of the war in Kosovo will be analysed until we're all sick of it. The spin doctors' role, from both sides, will no doubt be the subject of umpteen erudite academic papers.
Propaganda's not new
Propaganda is defined as a message that is intended primarily to serve the interests of the messenger. Politicians and governments were quick to realise the importance of having control of radio and television, which have become, for most people, the main source of news. By gaining control of the broadcast media, it was thought that it would be possible to gain control of what people really think.
World War 2 was, arguably, the first war to be fought using propaganda as well as conventional weapons. Perhaps the most
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