Mr. Nenad Shebek worked as a journalist for more than 30 years. He was an Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe and a Director of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Belgrade Office. Prior to that, he spent two years as Moscow Correspondent for “The World” (a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International and WGBH in Boston). He covered the Balkans through the tumultuous 1990s, working first for the BBC and then “The World”. He started his journalistic career at Radio Belgrade and joined the BBC World Service in 1986.
„Let me kick off by reacting to some of the things which they said. I think very important is Abit’s reminder of how young our democracies are. And, we are not talking just about post communist countries, we are also talking about what we consider to be mature democracies, like Spain or Greece, which they are actually not. The second thing that Abit mentioned is, let us not look for Russian influence behind every tree because a lot of the hybrid warfare which is linked to Russia is, however, home grown and is more related to internal political situation in the countries that we talk about.“, pointed out m-r Shebek in his speech at the Regional Conference “Attacks on Democracy and Human Rights”, which was held on July 28, 2021, in Skopje.
According to Shebek, Balkan countries are one-party kleptocracies.
“And they’re, let me pick up on something Dr. Ressman mentioned which is that autocratic regimes are all about getting power and getting money because it’s very, very true. Florian Bieber, calling the term for the Balkan countries stabilitocracies. So Bieber calling the term Stabilitocracies, I tend to call these countries single-party cleptocracies. So, Dr. Ressman very very true it’s all about gathering power and gathering power is about gathering money.” said Shebek.
Shebek takes us back through historical events from hybrid attacks to the perception of truth from the Trojan War era.
“Now, let me go a little back at the history of hybrid attacks. First of all, this is nothing new. During the cold war era it was called PsyOps. Psychological operations, both super powers have engaged heavily into it, even going as far as trying out paranormal phenomena, like implanting thoughts via psychics. Now, let me go way back into history and go into what in journalism is considered to be the first war reportage that ever appeared in the media. It goes back to the ear of the Trojan War and we are talking about the Iliad of Homer. Now, for a moment let us assume that Homer actually existed and that the Iliad is a true account of a war which happened. In that case we can consider the Iliad and the Odyssey to be the first war reportages ever written.
Who do we have there? Who is our neutral observer which is what the journalist should be? Well, Homer belonged to Achille side, he was a Greek against the Trojans, so can we really count upon his objectivity, or if we want to go even further back and consider a story from the bible about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. Who are the persons appearing that newspaper story? We have god, we have Adam, we have Eve, we have the snake, and we have the archangel. They are all participants in this story, they are not objective observers. So you know, who was the neutral observer? Who was there? News get slanted all the time and they have happened forever. If we look at the American Civil War for example in the middle of the 19th century, we have the first documented evidence that one side in the war is trying to actually buy influence in a neutral country. In this case the confederacy sent its agent to London with the purpose of buying influence in English media. This agent was very meticulous about noting his expenses.
So, what he did was he actually asked the journalists who were receiving money, bribes, from him to sign receipts. And he sent those receipts back to Atlanta, to where the seat of confederacy was. These receipts are still alive today and they are actually the first document to prove of how you can actually buy media influence. So, what is actually new about hybrid warfare is simply the technology and Abit pointed out to that very, very well.”, pointed Shebek.
“The technology that we have available today allows for a far wider and also far deeper reach than we have ever experienced in the history of the world. In my personal opinion, there are 6 that we need to do to counter these kinds of threats and these six things are: media literacy, media literacy, media literacy, and support to the independent media, support to the independent media, support to the independent media. It’s not two, it’s six because I am on purpose amplifying the importance of these two elements. As long as we have media literacy for example, we are focusing on the Balkans obviously today, as long as we have media literacy at the low levels that we have today, it is no wonder that people will pick up on fake news, that they will not recognize fake civil society organizations so called GONGOS, they will not recognize fake media.
In Serbia for example, there’s an independent outlet called Južne Vesti, and again I am hearing the echo and I am hearing it very loudly. Let me see what I can do. Hope that the technicians can do something about it. And this portal which was an independent portal and still is, basically there was another portal appearing using the same name and a very similar logo and.
So, people without media literacy, people will not be able to recognize the difference between genuine news and fake news. By the way, I hate the term fake news because something is either news or it is a lie, there is no fake news as such but since Donald trump introduced the phrase fake news everybody is talking about that, myself included. And lastly one more thing about Russian propaganda, in Serbia for example specifically, the Russian do not even need to invest money or effort, because there is a huge amount of pro=Russian sympathy already there. Similar, the situation is pretty much alike in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Elsewhere, it doesn’t really work, it isn’t useful. It used to in North Macedonia during the Gruevski time, but it is not the case now. And I think I will stop here a) my time has run out, b) the echo is becoming impossible.”, Shebek referred to media literacy and the way of recognizing fake news.
Camera: Dehran Muratov
Video editing: Arian Mehmeti
Photography: Ognen Boshnjakovski
