Divided Kosovo's multiethnic newspaper

As last-ditch talks over the province's future open in Vienna Wednesday, the paper offers a less divisive view.

from the February 21, 2007 edition

Page 2 of 2

Page 1 | 2

The front page of each issue of the colorful, tabloid-sized paper carries a cartoon by a famous Serbian cartoonist who goes by the name Corax. Inside, there are sports pages and the occasional celebrity story. But the meat of the paper is hard-hitting stories about Kosovo and the region. In December, for example, it featured a piece about a young hard-line Albanian leader, Albin Kurti, who earlier this month was arrested for planning a violent protest in which two people were killed.

Only about 6 percent of Kosovo's 1.9 million inhabitants are Serbs, most of whom live in isolated enclaves protected by NATO troops.

For Serbian reporters, just getting around to cover stories can be a challenge because of security concerns. But things are getting better, says Andrew Clayton, who heads up a program that works with local media run by the International Research and Exchanges Board, a Washington-based independent media advocacy group.

"Things have changed quite a lot over the five years that I've been here working with the Serb and Albanian TV and radio stations," he says. "Up until about 18 months ago, Serb journalists were reluctant to move around, they were concerned about their personal safety."

In recent years, the region's media has often played an ignoble role in the Kosovo conflict. Media on both sides of this restive region's linguistic and cultural divide fueled ethnic tensions by hyping abuses committed against their people, while often ignoring those committed by their ethnic kin. During widespread rioting in 2004, for example, Serbian press focused on attacks by ethnic Albanians against Serb communities, calling the perpetrators "terrorists." The Albanian-language press emphasized the drowning of three Albanian children, whom they said had been chased into the river by Serbs with dogs.

And in 2000, the UN temporarily closed an Albanian-language paper when one of its translators was killed after being named as a war criminal. The paper had published the names and personal details, including addresses, of Serbs they accused of war crimes.

A tough sell for unbiased news

Even now, Bjelica says, it can be hard to find staff willing to write straight news. "It's all about us or them," she says. But, like others on the paper, she remains cautiously optimistic about Kosovo's future. The key, she said, is to build a united, multiethnic identity in Kosovo. At the Civic Herald, she said, Serbs and Albanians work side by side without incident.

But in a region where divisions still run deep, unbiased news is still a hard sell. Many Serbs distrust the paper because of its Albanian connections. Only one news agency in Serb-dominated north Mitrovica carries the Civic Herald and so far, you can't buy the paper in Pristina.

Still, the Civic Herald, is slowly gaining ground among Serb speakers living in enclaves in other parts of the country. Although it still only sells about 1,000 copies of each edition, which comes out twice a month, that's more than many of the Serbian dailies and Albanian papers on sale in Kosovo. But the paper's owners are optimistic about the future of Kosovo and the role a multiethnic press will play there.

"We have hit rock bottom, but now things are starting to look up," says Petrit Selimi, the paper's young Albanian publisher.

1 | Page 2