A media event “Media Integrity in the Time of Disinformation” was held at the Center for Youth. Roger Cohen, a New York Times journalist, also addressed the participants, comparing Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric to Slobodan Milosevic’s.
Besides Cohen, the legendary Christian Amanpour (CNN), Rémy Ourdan from Le Monde, Javier Espinos from El Mundo,and Ed Vulliamy from The Guardian and Observer also addressed via the video link. Aida Cerkez and Nadina Malicbegovic also addressed the audience, Klix.ba writes.
Namely, Roger Cohen, a New York Times reporter, described how Vladimir Putin’s obsession with history reminded him of the Balkans and compared Vladimir Putin to Slobodan Milosevic. Putin has denied the Ukrainian nation and wants to destroy it, and ironically, his aggression has solidified the Ukrainian nation forever and ever. Cohen recalled thatMilosevic is similar to Putin, and he wanted to destroy the Bosnian nation.
Christian Amanpour compared the war in Ukraine to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and noted that the pattern of propaganda was repeated. Nevertheless, she thinks the world is wiser this time and the journalists have clearly said who is the aggressor and who is the victim. She pointed out that in BiH and Ukraine it was an existential battle.
Remy Ourdan, a journalist at the French newspaper Le Monde, called from Kyiv and noted that he was working on an investigative story about a possible serious war crime in the vicinity of Kyiv.
Furthermore, Aida Cerkez, who was the only domestic journalist working for the foreign news agency AP during the war in BiH, compared that, unlike BiH, the Western world today does not believe in propaganda coming from Russia.
Al Jazeera Balkans journalist Nadina Malicbegovic said that she struggled with false information that came to her while she was in Kyiv. She explained that it is necessary to look at the information in context and check it.
Ed Vulliamy, a journalist who revealed the Omarska concentration camp to the world and testified in nine cases in The Hague, told that it was common for leftists in London and Washington at the time of his reports from Omarska and after them to say that the story of the camps was false.
Vulliamy stressed that it is necessary to tell the truth about the events, but the complete truth, stating that there is silence today that Boris Johnson (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – UK), while he was the mayor of London, used his office to get “Russian money through the London laundromat”. He stated that Brexit was a triumph of stupidity and xenophobia that are characteristic of empires, but that the blame is not only on misinformation. Finally, he warned that Vladimir Putin had allies in the UK.
E.Dz.
