Kosovo is shaping up as the war that we are not going to see. Or, what we might be allowed to see looks as if it is going to be tightly controlled by the Serb government.
Twenty-nine print and broadcast journalists from NATO countries, including Bill Glauber from The Sun, were detained early yesterday by police. Many of them were ordered out of the country.
Two U.S. journalists, Mark Phillips of CBS and Peter Finn of the Washington Post, were driven to the Croatian border in police vans by Serb authorities after being questioned in isolation for 10 hours, according to CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius.
Of the major television networks only NBC had correspondents left in Serbia at the end of yesterday. Ron Allen and Jim Maceda, along with an NBC camera and sound crew, were allowed to stay in Belgrade and appeared on the "NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw." They were not, however, able to send pictures out, as the Serb government had shut down the European Broadcast Union satellite facility Wednesday.
"No one has asked them to leave and they have not chosen to do so," Barbara Levin, a spokeswoman for NBC News, said last night. She said NBC had no explanation as to why Allen and Maceda were allowed to remain while others were ordered out.
In addition to The Sun, other U.S. newspapers with correspondents in Yugoslavia said their reporters had left Belgrade and Kosovo. These included the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune.
Glauber and several other newspaper correspondents traveled to Hungary yesterday. Others went to neighboring Croatia.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN senior correspondent and star war reporter since the early days of the conflict in Bosnia, was among those ordered out of Serbia. She is now reporting from Macedonia.
CNN has no correspondents left in Yugoslavia, according to spokeswoman Kelly Kean.
"We were called unfair and we were accused of spreading lies [by the local and state-controlled press]," Amanpour said. "That's the background of what happened the last couple of days."
Phillips, the CBS correspondent, heard a knock on the door of his room at the Hyatt Hotel in Belgrade about 3: 30 a.m. yesterday, Genelius said. When he asked who was there, someone said, "Room service." When Phillips replied that he had not ordered room service, a gruff voice shouted, "Security police. Get dressed."
Phillips was taken to police headquarters, where he was questioned for 10 hours and then driven to the Croatian border with Finn of the Post.
Glauber and most of the foreign press crews had been staying at the Hyatt in Belgrade. He and 28 others were taken into custody during the night yesterday and released about four hours later.
Yesterday afternoon in Belgrade the Serbian government issued an order expelling journalists of foreign public media from nations that "took part or allowed their territories to be used in NATO aggression on our country."
Tom Hundley, of the Chicago Tribune, a veteran Balkan correspondent, described the lobby of the hotel as looking like "the Oklahoma land rush."
"People started packing their bags and heading for the frontier," Hundley said.
CNN's Brent Sadler, who had been in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, said roaming gangs threatened journalists from NATO countries.
"We found we came to the end of the line in being able to report from Pristina, not as a result of the officials expelling us from the hotel where we had been staying, but rather the uncontrolled armed elements harassing journalists, making it impossible for journalists to do our jobs," Sadler said.
The consensus among those correspondents in Serbia yesterday who had also been in Iraq is that Baghdad was a "relatively genteel situation by comparison," in the words of Phillips.
As a result of the shutdown of the European satellite facility and the expulsion of most NATO journalists, American broadcast networks and cable channels were reduced to using pictures supplied by Serbian State Television.
While all of the print and broadcast operations said they would press Serb authorities for permission to return, most predicted a vastly different viewing experience of the war for Americans used to seeing coverage from conflicts such as those in Iraq, Somalia and Haiti. The comparison made by most was to the highly restricted and U.S-government-controlled images from the Persian Gulf war.
John Moody, vice president of news and editorial operations for the Fox News Channel, was slightly more optimistic even though his correspondent, Tim Marshall, from Rupert Murdoch's sister operation, Sky TV, was expelled.
"I agree that we probably won't have the on-scene expertise that viewers have come to expect," Moody said. "But remember, they have not expelled all journalists -- only most of the NATO journalists. I think what we all have to do is go to the Belgrade phone books and find some English-speakers."
Pub Date: 3/26/99