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Thomas Deichmann's revelations about ITN's award-winning reports
from Trnopolje camp in Bosnia have already sparked off a storm
of controversy and a major libel case against LM (see 'The Picture That Fooled the World', LM February). Now the German journalist has discovered another
twist in the tale
'Exactly as it happened'?
The British reporters who entered the Bosnian Serb run Trnopolje
camp on 5 August 1992 - Penny Marshall (ITN for News at Ten) Ian
Williams (ITN for Channel 4 News) and Ed Vulliamy (Guardian newspaper)
have always insisted that they gave a straight eye-witness account
of all that they saw there. The famous sequence of pictures, first
broadcast by ITN on 6 August 1992, shows Penny Marshall, filmed
by her cameraman Jeremy Irvin, walking up to a barbed wire fence
where, it appears, the first person she meets is the emaciated
Fikret Alic, who subsequently became the global symbol of the
Bosnian camps.
The images of Marshall shaking hands with Alic through the barbed
wire were seen around the world as proof that the British news
team had stumbled across Nazi-style concentration camps, run by
the Bosnian Serbs. 'We were not prepared for what we saw and heard
there', explained Marshall in her ITN report. In an interview
conducted for a Channel 4 documentary in 1993, she said explicitly
that her cameraman Irvin had 'filmed it exactly as it happened'.
Maybe he did film it 'exactly as it happened'; but that was not
the way in which it was broadcast. There is clear and mounting
evidence that the ITN reports from Trnopolje were edited and presented
in a highly selective fashion. Tapes from a local TV crew, which
accompanied and filmed the ITN journalists during their visit
to Trnopolje, present a quite different account of what went on
there.
The world-shaking ITN pictures of Penny Marshall approaching the
barbed wire fence, behind which Fikret Alic and other Bosnian
Muslims were apparently caged, were broadcast as three shots,
edited together in such a way as to suggest an unbroken sequence.
My previous report, published in the February issue of LM, has
already revealed in detail that these pictures were not all that
they seemed. The image of Alic imprisoned behind barbed wire was
misleading, for the simple reason that it was not the Bosnian
Muslims who were encircled by barbed wire, but the British journalists
themselves. Marshall's team took those pictures from inside a
small agricultural compound which was ringed by a barbed wire
fence, erected long before the war. There was no barbed wire fence
around Trnopolje camp. But by filming Alic and the others through
the barbed wire of the compound fence, the British news team came
away with pictures that the world wrongly interpreted as evidence
of concentration camps in Bosnia.
The film taken by the local TV crew confirms my evidence about
the way in which the pictures that fooled the world were taken.
But it also raises new questions about the way in which ITN presented
their version of events. What really happened when Marshall approached
the barbed wire fence? Why was Fikret Alic smiling? How could
it be that the first thing Marshall said was 'How long has he
been here?'.
Curious crowd
The Bosnian Serb TV crew's film of Marshall's trip shows that
she did not just walk up to the barbed wire and encounter the
emaciated Fikret Alic. She had spoken to several other Muslims
through the fence before he appeared. A curious crowd of men standing
inside the camp, but outside the area encircled by barbed wire,
had gathered at the fence as the news team approached, eager to
discover what was going on. Marshall spoke to one young man in
a black t-shirt. Then, most notably, she and Ed Vulliamy of the
Guardian talked for several minutes to a Bosnian Muslim named
Mehmet, who appeared to be ushered forward because he spoke some
English. Mehmet, dressed in blue dungarees with no shirt underneath,
can be seen standing next to Fikret Alic in the famous ITN shot
that went around the world.
The local TV crew's film shows Mehmet, in slightly awkward English,
telling Penny Marshall that conditions in Trnopolje were 'very
fine, nothing wrong, but it's very hot'. Marshall asked if they
had to sleep outside. 'No, no, inside' he replied, pointing to
the former community centre in the background; in his eye-witness
report, broadcast on Channel 4 News the next day, Ian Williams
stated that 'hundreds of men were forced to eat and sleep outside
in a field behind barbed wire'.
Marshall asked Mehmet if the people at Trnopolje camp had treated
him badly. No, he said, 'very kind'. He further explained that
he had been brought to Trnopolje from his home 'with the bus',
and that he was not a fighter. Marshall asked him if he felt safe
there. 'I think it's very safe', replied Mehmet, 'but very hot'.
Apparently dissatisfied with his answers, Marshall then indicated
the young man in a black t-shirt standing next to Mehmet, pointing
out that 'This man is very thin'. Mehmet replied: 'Yes, he is
very thin but I think that all the people is not the same.' Mehmet,
like many others in Trnopolje, did not look anything like the
exceptionally emaciated Fikret Alic.
One of the British reporters then asked Mehmet whether Trnopolje
camp was a prison. 'No, I think it is a refugee camp, not a prison',
Mehmet replied. Next Ed Vulliamy asked the rather absurd question,
given that they were in the middle of a war zone: 'If you wanted
to get on a bus to Banja Luka could you do that this afternoon?'
Mehmet responded that he believed it would depend on the 'civil
government' and that he could not leave 'now'. Vulliamy pressed
him again: 'You say you were taken from your home and brought
here on the bus and you can't leave but you don't think it's a
prison?' Mehmet shrugged: 'I think it is not a prison, it's a
refugee camp.'
It was around this time that Fikret Alic first appeared in the
background of the shot. He inched through the crowd towards the
fence, curious like the others as to what was going on there,
holding his t-shirt in his right hand. Another Bosnian Muslim
pointed to Alic, who stood out because of his protruding ribs.
Somebody in the British news team can be heard on the film pointing
out 'the two very thin ones to the right'. Penny Marshall made
eye-contact with Alic. From there on, the local TV crew's film
shows what was broadcast by ITN: Fikret Alic smiled at Penny Marshall
and came up to the fence, standing next to Mehmet, in whom the
journalists were no longer interested. Marshall shook hands with
Alic and asked her translator 'How long has he been here?'.
'Tell us the truth'
The sequence filmed by the local TV team raises further questions
about what the ITN team really found at Trnopolje camp, and the
editing that went on after the camp visit. Nothing of Penny Marshall's
exchange with the English-speaking Mehmet which is outlined here
was included in the ITN broadcast. Instead attention focused on
the dramatically emaciated Fikret Alic. The very short bit of
Marshall's interview with Mehmet which was broadcast gave a rather
different impression of his whole statement: 'Tell us the truth'
Marshall asked and Mehmet replied 'I am afraid'. That is all that
was presented of Marshall's conversation with Mehmet in the ITN
reports.
In 1993, Penny Marshall was interviewed for a Channel 4 documentary
on the media and Bosnia, entitled 'Journalists at war'. In this
unbroadcast exchange, Marshall was asked if she had filmed the
Trnopolje report 'exactly as you found it? For example the barbed
wire was quite prominent in the report. Was there barbed wire
all around this camp or did you choose...?'. Marshall replied
while watching the famous film on screen:
'We filmed it exactly as it happened. And this is extraordinary
for me because I've worked with lots of different camera persons
and this cameraman Jeremy Irvin was super in that he really did
unfold. There was... a shot of me walking to the barbed wire...
It just happened... It happened as it unfolded. That's where I
walked up. I mean it's a huge area. I cannot tell you. That's
where I walked up and there was barbed wire. I don't know what's
behind the fence behind that house, because they wouldn't let
us see it. But it's exactly as it happened. Exactly as it happened
and chronologically and we didn't have time or anything to think
about style....'
Marshall not only forgot to answer the question as to whether
there was barbed wire all around the camp, she also seemed to
have forgotten the actual sequence of events that occurred during
her famous report from Trnopolje.
Penny Marshall was then asked if Fikret Alic was at the barbed
wire when she got there, or whether he had been brought forward
by the others. Marshall said: 'I can't honestly remember. But
if you look at the shot you'll see. Yes he was at the wire. Yes
I think, you'd have to look at the shot. They might have pushed
him forward. I can't honestly remember....' Somehow Marshall had
already forgotten the circumstances of her meeting with Fikret
Alic just a few months before - the most important event of her
career. All she could say was 'look at the shot'. But did she
mean the shot that was actually taken at Trnopolje camp on 5 August
1992, or the selectively edited one that was broadcast by ITN
in her report the following day?
The world saw Fikret Alic greet ITN's Penny Marshall, but in fact
she had already talked at length to Mehmet, far right
This article first appeared in LM 100 |