Index on Censorship 3/1999 [antikvár]

EDITORIALSilencesThis issue of Index includes our first-ever examination of censorship in scíence. Just what are we not being told - about such niatters as genetic engineering, about the food we eat, about the implications of cloning? And why is somé research marginalised by the scientific community?Alsó in this issue, the first analysis of the social and political implications of the Asian economic meltdown, exposing the cynicism of so-called 'Asian values' (see Index 3/98).We, like many others, have been overwhelmed by the urgent momentum of the Kosovo crisis. So much has been said and written on this terrible war. But there have alsó been silences, now and over the past 10 years, and silences are Indexs business. Milosevic revoked the rights of Kosovan Albanians in 1989, yet the Dayton Agreement of 1995 ignored Kosovo. The issue of Kosovo was not confronted during the demonstrations opposing Milosevic on the streets of Belgrade two years ago. And though parallels are made between the Serbs' treatment of Kosovans and Hitler's treatment of the Jews, there seems to be generál amnesia, and few lessons learned, about Bosnia in the 1990s the place where Milosevic developed the techniques, the routine brutality of ethnic cleansing.Meanwhile, the rhetoric of war tends to drown out the reality of what lies ahead. Whatever the outcome of this war, the média have featured large. According to Richárd Holbrooke (p20), what is or is not reported has 'profoundly affected' policy-making over Kosovo, as it did over Bosnia (though Michael Ignatieff argues that 'television did little or nothing to drive the Bosnia policy of the White House'). Has the communications revolution meant that fewer military secrets are kept from us? Flóra Lewis (p22) doesn't think so. Has the média reflected the biases ofits audiences or has it 'manufactured consent'? We look at notions of neutrality and objectivity in reporting. Why has the média so rarely, except in the case of rape, given details of the worst excesses of ethnic cleansing (eyes gouged out, penises cut off, men stripped naked before being shot) (pl5)? And is there ever a case, where all the independent média have been suppressed, for silencing state média which use their monopoly to stir up hate? (Index 1/98) War, as usual, brings up somé of the most difficult questions surrounding free expression. ?