CNN DISCLAIMER | 1999-07-03
You can tell Bosnia was a liberal war from the solid support it got in the press. Reporters would always begin a report from Serbia by saying Serbia limited their freedom to report. They would have a standard announcement that Serbian authorities limited where reporters could go and what they could say.
You know, it's funny, but they never said a word about any limitations when they were reporting from a COMMUNIST country. There were a lot of restrictions on reporting from Communist countries, but no reporter ever mentioned them.
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn spent many years in Siberia facing Communist guards, guns, barbed wire and guard dogs. He laughed at the fake courage of the American press. He said that the American press acted very brave when it was dealing with American authorities. He said they didn't act so brave in Communist countries. He pointed out that these brave American reporters hopped to attention and obeyed when some nasty little Red Guard in China told them to.
Now that's odd. I never heard any reporter talk about problems in Red China, from the the Red Guard or anybody else. They never complained about the ever-present travel restrictions in any Communist country. The press didn't want to make the Communists look bad. Liberals did want to make Serbia look bad.
American media are only interested in freedom of the press when it serves the liberal cause.