huridocs-tech BALKANS: War Waged on the Web

Edited/Distributed by HURINet - The Human Rights Information Network
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## author     : tkeenan@BINGHAMTON.EDU
## date       : 12.04.99
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[This article has been excerpted.]

CRISIS IN THE BALKANS: THE CHAT ROOMS; War Waged on the Web:
Killers Without Context By AMY HARMON

5.4.99 (New York Times): The on-line chat last Tuesday began
like others on MSNBC, with the host introducing the featured
guest to an Internet audience logged in from all over the
world.

Except...this guest was Arkan, the notorious Serbian
paramilitary leader who is believed to be responsible for
some of the worst atrocities of the Bosnian war and who is
reportedly now back in action in Kosovo. And even for some
of MSNBC's most frequent chatters, the greeting scrolling
across their computer screens was surreal.

"Hi, it's good to be here," it read. "We are under the
bombing umbrella, but we're alive. I'm ready to take your
questions now!"

In many ways, the Internet is personalizing the war in
Yugoslavia for Americans, as accounts from Kosovo circulate
on E-mail, chat rooms offer interaction with all sides and
on-line polls invite voting on what to do next. ...issues of
ethics and taste are arising that underscore the
double-edged nature of the Internet's celebrated immediacy.

"We're all still trying to figure out what to do with this
medium so when you get into a war like this you try out a
lot of new things," said Robert Leavitt, associate director
of New York University's Center for War Peace and the News
Media. "The problem is you want to use all these tools and
we've not thought through what's appropriate and what's
useful."

At MSNBC, the decision to put Arkan on line -- which
elicited a raft of angry E-mail -- came only after an
internal debate. "We felt you put him on television and give
him a general interest news questioner, there's a bigger
chance of him pulling the wool over your eyes," said Michael
Moran, the Web site's international editor.  "We exposed him
to the wrath of people who know him and know what he did, as
well as people who probably admire him.'

The day after Arkan's appearance, the international war
crimes tribunal announced...it had indicted him, and he has
since appeared on several television talk shows.

Critics argue...whatever benefits the Internet offers by
removing traditional journalistic filters may be outweighed
by sacrificing traditional journalistic context.

"I'm not saying he should be censored," said Patrick Ball, a
human rights activist. "But I don't think he should be put
in a chat room where his words can take on the authority of
coming from anyone other than a criminal."

Chris Donohue, MSNBC's chat producer, who relayed the
questions to Arkan by phone and transcribed his answers for
the cyberspace audience, said he sifted through more than
1,000 questions submitted in the 30-minute chat session and
tried to cover a variety of subjects. "There were several
questions about genocide, about what was happening to the
men in Kosovo," he said.

The one question we didn't get to was, "Do you have a
girlfriend?' That one always comes up, it's a good
make-them-smile question. I wanted to get to it, but we
didn't."

Those who...participated in MSNBC's chat and watched the
television interviews with Arkan offer a glimpse at the
different effect of the mediums. "When I saw him on TV I
turned him off because he sounded a little over the edge,"
said Carol Joy, 57, of Delray Beach, Fla. "But in chat when
you're just reading his statements I saw him in a totally
different light. I became furious with our Government for
invading his territory."

Americans are logging on to the Internet to get news about
the war in numbers that have surprised many on-line editors.
With most reporters banned from Kosovo, people may be
turning to the Internet for alternative sources. For
instance, Slate, Microsoft's on-line magazine, is publishing
anonymous E-mail accounts from a reporter inside Kosovo.

"It shows the difference the Web can make," said Michael
Kinsley, Slate's editor. "Unless they want to shut down the
whole telephone system they can't stop information from
getting out, or getting back in."

To supplement its coverage, ABCNEWS.com has been publishing
E-mail journals. "These people are not technically
journalists," said Mary Bruno, executive producer of the ABC
site. "These are people wishing they had a cigarette. But
that's what is really unique to the Internet."

At Time.com, Time magazine's site, foreign correspondents in
the Balkans leave messages on an answering machine, and an
on-line editor can work the information into a report. The
site, which initiated an "ask Time" feature about
Yugoslavia, received 5,000 E-mailed questions about
Yugoslavia in five days last week.

Perhaps the most compelling -- and sometimes confusing --
war news on the Internet circulates in the form of E-mails
from people in Kosovo or on its borders.

"It's all happening so fast it's hard to process," said
Albert Cevallos, an analyst with the International Crisis
Group, a human rights organization. "Some of the stuff I've
seen and read is just overwhelming. You stop and stare and
your computer screen and you have to take a walk outside."





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