Reporting the Siege of Sarajevo by Kenneth Morrison and Paul Lowe

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reporting the Siege of Sarajevo by Kenneth Morrison and Paul Lowe James Gow Morrison, Kenneth and Lowe, Paul. Reporting the Siege of Sarajevo. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2021. xxvii + 231 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Chronology. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £85.00; £76.50 (e-book). This is a fine history of international journalism inside besieged Sarajevo. It is. of course, also a history of the siege itself through the prism of international journalism — not so much the output, but the experiences and dilemmas of practitioners, their recollections and views. It is a richly detailed volume that goes well beyond the ‘media and conflict’ literature to examine in rich detail how international journalists came to their mission to report on Sarajevo, how they and the organization around them evolved, and how they dealt with a range of challenges, not least of which was the array of ethical questions they faced at different stages. The book progresses through seven chapters, beginning with a solid and broadly reliable account of the immediate historical context for the onset of war in Bosnia and Herceogovina, and the siege that was a central feature in that conflict. The work develops through examination of the early days of reporting — in effect, a kind of ‘wild West’, as the relatively easy access to a European country saw a range of freelancers, stringers and some more established journalists find their way to the city. In the next chapter, we see the fascinating tale of how organization and infrastructure — and, crucially, greater protection and security, came to be. This is one of the truly significant contributions to emerge from the book, interpreting the emergence of the famed Holiday Inn as a hub for international reporting that became organically cooperative and eventually a ‘pool’, as well as the established use of local TV and post-telegraph facilities, and, crucially, the developed use of armoured vehicles and training in operating in hostile environments. These last features were to become essentials in all subsequent reporting from areas of armed conflict. This is an acutely important contribution — beyond the book’s focus on Sarajevo — in the history of journalism and war reporting However, in the treatment of the emergent reporting infrastructure, the single most important feature is the work of locals — stringers and fixers and interpreters, without whom the international journalists would largely have struggled. Indeed, perhaps the only significant disappointment in this book is that this aspect does not get discrete treatment in a chapter of its own. If many of the international journalists, well known and not, were to be credited with some kind of heroism, their local aids were surely the true heroes of the story. More on them would have made for an even richer history, in my judgement. Beyond this, the authors look at how reporters — and, as a sub-text, Sarajevans — lived under siege conditions, and how they reported on that experience to the wider world, and finally, they interrogate [End Page 388] the ethical, as well as practical, issues of witnessing life and death in the Bosnian capital. This last element is a sharply interesting analysis of the issues — summarized in one of the section titles: ‘Vulture, Voyeur, Saviour.’ Those three words brilliantly summarize the identities and roles, as well as the questions faced by international news and image makers. They clearly exploited the situation — as the volume notes, many names were made in Bosnia. And all who witnessed the suffering were indelibly engaged in a questionable form of voyeurism — capturing and making a spectacle of suffering. And, yet, despite the element of vanity that it reflected, the reporters were, and were seen as, saviours — in many respects, their words and images in the wider world, while changing nothing substantively, were a lifeline of hope for those trapped in the city and a thread of attention (as the Bosnian government surely hoped for and appreciated) around the globe, ensuring neither the city, nor the country for which it was a great synecdoche were forgotten. Moreover, the book exposes some of the strong ethical concerns surrounding acts of saving that exceeded reporting, contrasting two parallel events involving saviours. The first notes the discomfort that many...