Поучительная история о честном журналисте

[groul]

Не совсем новая, но поучительная история о молодом репортере, имевшим глупость написать правду о том, что произошло во время одного из слушаний в Гаагском трибунале. Интересный штрих: молодой человек на тот момент работал на международную организацию, основная деятельность которой заключается в подготовке журналистких кадров во многих регионах мира, включая Кавказ и Среднюю Азию.

В Армении эта организация тоже известна - IWPR, Institute of War and Peace. Известна в первую очередь руководителем отдела кавказских программ Томасом де Ваалем.

На английском, но настоятельно рекомендую почитать, особенно тем, кто утверждает, что книга Ваала "Черный сад" написана беспристрастным журналистом.

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A Piper Calls the Tune

IWPR Revisited

by Cali Ruchala

December 2, 2004

It was a courtroom drama that could have been written in Hollywood. In the most hallowed court in Europe, two Serbs accused of war crimes in the Bosnian Civil War would face their accuser.

He wasn't a refugee, a frontline opponent, or even a Bosnian Muslim or Croat. He was a former comrade, a Serb named Momir Nikolic, who had struck a deal with the prosecution to obtain a lighter sentence. He would cop a plea to several lower charges and put several of his former collaborators away in the bargain.

He was the prosecution's star witness in the case against Vidoje Blagojevic and Dragan Jokic. And as soon as their attorney rose from his seat, the case began to fall apart.

Defending men accused of war crimes might sound unsavory to some lawyers, but Michael Karnavas betrayed no trace of regret as he waited for translators to decipher Momir Nikolic's answers to his queries. Indeed, he appeared to be relishing his job, at least for today. He maneuvered the prosecution's witness like an animal handler, poking and prodding him until he had him in just the right place. And then he sprang the trap.

Karnavas, buried in the avalanche of paper that a team of motivated barristers can throw at a defendant, had caught the prosecution's needle in a haystack in time to make a difference. Just a few days before the tense showdown, the prosecuting attorneys at the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague had "unsealed" a statement from the same Momir Nikolic, made months earlier but revealed only on the eve of his testimony.

In the neutral parlance of blind jurisprudence, Nikolic had "corrected the record." In language more prosaic but perhaps more realistic, he had confessed to telling several lies. Nikolic, it turned out, had been so overzealous in his effort to strike a deal with prosecutors that he had not only confessed to all of his own wartime misdeeds, but had even confessed to horrendous, gruesome atrocities he had not committed.

Nikolic originally told prosecutors that he could testify against the perpetrators that massacred a thousand Bosnian Muslims in Kravica. In fact, one of the ringleaders of the massacre was standing right in front of them. The exuberance of the prosecutors to this breakthrough must be left to our imagination. So is, unfortunately, their chagrin when they learned that the bloody mastermind of the atrocity wasn't even in Kravica when the massacre took place, and knew nothing else about it but gossip and what he had read in the papers.

If the prosecutors hoped to put one past Karnavas by unsealing Nikolic's confession at such a late date, they clearly underestimated their opponent. He bore in on Nikolic and, in an exchange which couldn't have taken more than a few moments, utterly destroyed the prosecution's star witness.

"You needed to give [the prosecutor] something he did not have, right? You wanted to limit your time of imprisonment to 20 years, that was part of the arrangement, yes? Quid pro quo?"

Nikolic seemed to shrink in his chair. "I did not tell the truth when I said that. Afterwards I said I had made a mistake, I had lied. I apologise. All I can do is confess and say that discussing the crime is a very difficult situation to be in."

Karnavas shot back. "I think we should call it for what it is, a bald faced lie."

Nikolic strenuously denied that he had been offered a quid pro quo by the prosecution in exchange for his confession (both Version A and Version B, With Appendices). Karnavas, however, got him to backtrack on that denial as well. "I'm still a little bit confused," he goaded Nikolic. "How is it that you thought by admitting to one of the most horrendous executions in this area, that this would help you in getting the kind of sentence that you are hoping and praying for?"

Nikolic's answer was hardly inspiring. "I wanted the agreement to succeed."

PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT

The quotes that I have reproduced here were recorded by an interested spectator in the gallery that day - one Chris Stephen, the project director coordinating coverage of The Hague Tribunal for the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Stephen was fixated by the tense cross examination, which seemed to underline the doubts which had been circulating in the international press about the wisdom of the prosecution's plea bargains with men accused of charges so grave as crimes against humanity.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, or IWPR, is a non-governmental organization that combines training for journalists in a number of unstable areas around the world with an Internet publication. IWPR has bureaus in the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iraq, and the Balkans, as well as one in The Hague exclusively devoted to the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Though hardly a presence at all outside the world of pixels, IWPR's news dispatches are widely circulated on the Internet, as they are offered free of charge both by email and on their website. Their content frequently winds up forwarded, posted and reposted in every form of digital communication, with little thought as to where they come from.

IWPR is, in fact, generously supported by old stand-bys in the "freedomology" business, such as George Soros and his Open Society Fund, but has gone much further than most NGOs would in soliciting funds from a number of Western governments, including the US State Department and the British Foreign Office.

Stephen filed his story on September 29, 2003. It was titled "Key Srebrenica Witness Admits to Lying," and was published as part of IWPR's weekly digest of stories from the Hague Tribunal. And then something strange happened.

With astonishing rapidity, the story vanished from the IWPR archive. It has never materialized in that form again, though the story was preserved on a variety of message boards around the internet.

Yet just one week later, Stephen's original September 29th story was replaced by what was essentially the same story, but with a brand new spin - one more flattering to the prosecutors whose witness Karnavas had systematically destroyed, and to IWPR's sponsors, who back the same. From "Key Srebrenica Witness Admits to Lying," the new story's title was changed to "Key Srebrenica Witness Apologises for Lies."

Several weeks later, in early December, Stephen's contract in IWPR's Tribunal office was not renewed. Rumours spread that he had been forced out, and that the prosecutor's office had pressured IWPR through its funders to get rid of him.

A JURY OF THEIR PEERS

IWPR had been caught partaking in a cardinal sin of the media business, albeit a sin much easier to commit in a world of pixels rather than a world of print. IWPR had been caught manipulating their coverage. Redhanded.

It's important to note that Stephen didn't flub a single fact in his original submission. To the contrary: it was written as a straight news story, containing little opinion and not a sliver of conjecture. His story wasn't purged because it was wrong. It was slipped down the memory hole because - and only because - the facts cast a powerful body in an unfavourable light.

These are not light charges to make at an organization which is responsible for training (at the public expense of citizens of America and most of Western Europe) foreign journalists in a code of ethics and professionalism. Yet, over the course of the next four months, IWPR has had four opportunities to deny the allegation that they buckled under. Each time, as the reader will see, IWPR dodged the question in hopes that a reassuring non-answer would make the issue (and a human being) go away.

I first wrote about the subject of Chris Stephen, IWPR and the missing September 29th story in a December 16, 2003 piece for Sobaka - more detail is there for anyone who hasn't read it before.

Before going to press, I solicited comments from who I presumed would be the responsible party at IWPR - the Editorial Director, Yigal Chazan - regarding the rumours that Stephen had been sacked for his unblemished coverage of Nikolic's testimony in his September 29th story.

I received a response back not from Chazan but one Alan Davis, who is listed as IWPR's Operations Director. Davis told me that

Chris recently completed a 3-month consultancy contract with us. It finished on December 1 as scheduled, and he is now busy trying to finish his book on international justice and the Milosevic trial.

He said nothing else. About the other allegations, Davis - and, presumably, Chazan, to whom the inquiry was directed - made no comment.

After publishing the article, I had scant hope of getting any further response. IWPR, after all, is a benefactor of George Soros and the State Department. Sobaka is the benefactor of its subscribers, and while you all may be influential, your names don't sound nearly as good when we drop them in cocktail conversation.

But I was wrong. Our article received widespread circulation, particularly on an internet mailing list frequented by avid Tribunal observers and a number of IWPR contributors as well. Several wondered aloud if IWPR's funders had turned the screws on Stephen and, indeed, where a news outfit's loyalties were logically invested when, rather than being supported by readers, an "independent" publication is subsidized by governments. The difference between the two stories was so transparent and striking that the answer seemed just as clear as it was disheartening.

The issue was pressed until Anthony Borden, IWPR's Executive Director, was forced to issue a statement on the affair. Borden wrote that

The original version of the IWPR article implied that the fact that Nikolic had lied during his confession was revealed for the first time during a defence cross-examination. While the lie was only made public in the week preceding the cross-examination, the court had known about it for several months - and before the plea agreement was finalized.

The simple reality is that we got a basic component of the story wrong, and took steps to correct it - just as a responsible newspaper would do in a late edition.

But the niggling matter of when the prosecutor knew Nikolic was lying wasn't an issue at all, neither in Stephen's September 29th story, or in my piece on the controversy. Borden had written two paragraphs of nothing. In the parlance of the Nixon years, the statement was a "non-denial denial," just like Alan Davis' before it.

Apprised of Borden's statement, I wrote to him directly to ask the questions he had avoided. Two weeks later, when no response was forthcoming, I emailed it again. He replied back with a curt response that he had nothing else to add. (Anyone who is interested in the correspondence relating to this issue, one-sided as it was, can receive it from me by request.)

This story might have ended there. But in his desire to push the issue under the rug, Borden had left the indelible impression in the reader's mind that Chris Stephen was little more than a hack. Truthfully, he had little choice: either Stephen was wrong, or what we had written about IWPR caving in to pressure and pulling a factual story with no justification was true. It's a tough position to be in, but IWPR crawled into that hole on their own.

In response to Borden's statement, Stephen issued one of his own. In an uncanny coincidence, his five-word rebuttal echoed the same simple, staccato press release issued by the editor of the Washington Post when the paper was catching hell for its Watergate coverage a generation ago. "I stand by my story," he, and the editor, wrote.

Ben Bradlee's words, of course, spread a protective cloak over Woodward and Bernstein, two young reporters working a case against the most powerful man in the world. IWPR, on the other hand, couldn't trip over themselves fast enough to run away from one of their own.

TONY'S ARK

To paraphrase General Patton, anyone that eloquent deserves a helping hand rather than a kick in the ass. I thought I would let this story go (and maybe Stephen would have preferred that I did), but it simply wouldn't die.

After Stephen's statement made the rounds, sources began falling out of the trees. His colleagues recounted how he had carefully sounded them out before he published the September 29th story, making sure he got his facts straight. Others who had been in the courtroom that day told me his story was dead-on.

Even employees of IWPR itself wanted to talk to me about it. It wasn't a leak but a veritable flood of memos, emails and other information pouring out of IWPR's offices. Much of the material vindicated the letter-writers, it's true. But when taken together, they create an in-depth picture of what really happened after September 29, 2003, and a grotesque portrait of IWPR - the news outfit funded by governments, training "independent" reporters - itself.

Immediately after Chris Stephen's article on the Nikolic testimony was published, spokesmen from the prosecutor's office at The Hague slammed into damage control mode. Stephen's article, it turned out, had been picked up and republished by the Serbian-language daily Danas. A spokesperson contacted Danas immediately and asked them to retract Stephen's story. (Note that the spokesman didn't ask for the right of reply, but a total retraction.)

IWPR was faced with a similar demand from The Hague. Written in broken English, the correspondence from the prosecutor's office actually went beyond what happened in the court and got personal, slamming Chris Stephen's work ethic and professionalism. Again, the prosecutor's office didn't demand a right of reply, or for IWPR to note that the prosecutor's office knew of Nikolic's falsehoods in advance (which was wholly irrelevant to the story). They demanded the story be withdrawn from circulation without comment. And they got it.

Senior staff at IWPR's London office were not of one mind about how to handle this rather outrageous demand - the editorial staff, in particular, was opposed to caving in. They were overruled by IWPR's "administrative staff" - in other words, by the moneyhandlers.

As for Chris Stephen, IWPR editors instituted a draconian regimen, requiring every story submitted by their chief in The Hague to be vetted by other editors before publication. In a sentiment described with varying degrees of vehemence by a number of IWPR staff, Chris Stephen was exiled into "professional hell," abiding by the restraints and suspicion of credibility that usually binds cub reporters and dubious sources.

The crucifixion of Chris Stephen's reputation continued even after the September 29th story was "disappeared," with nary a word of it refuted by IWPR. Sobaka obtained copies of a communication sent by the prosecutor's office to the Serbian-language daily Politika in response to an article they published in November 2003 on Chris Stephen's termination from IWPR. It repeats the same denunciations of Stephen as the earlier communications. It may be scant consolation that The Hague's spokesmen write in Serbian as poorly as they do English.

When Stephen's contract expired on December 1st, as Alan Davis stated, it was not renewed. This was about the only truth forthcoming from IWPR throughout this entire affair. The organization which is rewarded with public funds from almost every government in the Western world to train reporters in the standards of the trade may do better by offering Public Candor courses to ambitious but scandal-plagued politicians instead.

But even more disquieting than the fate of a good reporter drummed out of his job is the portrait formed of IWPR itself. Through the thicket of correspondence and documents, off-the-record commentary, the airing of office politics and squabbles, the impression forms of an organization structured like the anatomy of a Mr. Potato Head doll, with its eyes where its mouth should be and every part individually distinguishable but altogether out of sync.

It's no secret that under Borden's watch, IWPR has chased down money from sources where no journalist would have thought possible - or permissible. IWPR is almost wholly devoted not to fulfilling a mission to the world, like most NGOs, but in pursuit of further revenue streams.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, IWPR positioned itself to benefit from the "money offensive" of the War on Terror. IWPR received a State Department grant for "training" reporters in Central Asia, and Borden submitted testimony to Congress after the Iraq War on the media needs of that country, presumably as a precursor to IWPR getting more. In unrelated testimony before Congress, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressly tied these initiatives to the military side of the War on Terror, as proof of the Bush Administration's commitment to fostering democracy in countries otherwise being used as airstrips and missile silos.

It can be argued that this is noble work; it can also be argued that IWPR is acting as little more than a media equivalent of a private contractor on par with Halliburton and Blackwater, doing the work of the United States government which no other newspaper would.

It could also be argued - and, at least by IWPR editorial staff, it has been - that the organization is being used as a pawn by the Bush Administration to propagate the notion of a "gentler" side of US intervention, in the wake of several tons of military hardware driving through Central Asia and the Middle East, and a steel ring of new military bases established in the same.

This, however, is what IWPR does now. The organization long ago abandoned the idea of becoming the independent voice that it purportedly inspires its poor, backwards brothers from the far-flung corners of the globe to aspire to. The only consistent thread through the years is the pursuit of the money trail. When journalism and money come into opposition, as they did during the Chris Stephen affair, the familiar villain wins. Even among the self-appointed teachers.

Though IWPR won't deign to issue comments to me, I can guess what their response to this would be. The tawdry truth of the Chris Stephen affair they would deftly deny; their backing by more state institutions than the old Soviet propaganda rag Pravda they would evade; their commitment to human rights and democracy they would trumpet. And IWPR, due to Borden's frequent forays into "advocacy journalism" on behalf of Bosnian Muslims, Kosovar Albanians, democracy in the benighted nether realms and freedom of press everywhere except where it matters most, has plenty of friends who will vouch for them, regardless of what happened to Chris Stephen and, ultimately, to the truth in the case of Momir Nikolic.

Fellow travellers aside, after the Stephen debacle, IWPR's credibility is worth even less than the people they work for. And that's a sad place to be.

Источник:

http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2004/iwpr.html

[groul]

Первая часть истории тут:

http://www.diacritica.com/sobaka/2003/breakdown.html