Even this week, with NATO threatening to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles as soon as noon today if the peace talks aimed at ending the war in Kosovo province do not reach some kind of settlement, Yugoslavs are gleaning little but brief clips on the talks from the state-run media.
The Kosovo crisis is being portrayed as a battle of good and evil between patriotic Yugoslav Serbs and bloodthirsty ethnic Albanians secretly backed by NATO and the United States.
``America is being unjust,'' said Vladimir Sukovic, a retired boxer and engineer who watches state television. ``Look at what they did to Hiroshima. Will they bomb the Serbian people with nuclear waste? Why are they doing this to the little people?''
Since his rise to power 10 years ago, Milosevic has clamped down on the media and crushed several independent newspapers. Through the Serbian Radio and Television network, Milosevic spins out slanted reality steeped in a nationalism that downplays the country's social and economic devastation. This script propelled Serbs through the Bosnian war and is bolstering Milosevic's popularity in the battle against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.
The nightly state news is a stream of propaganda, relegating world leaders to bit actors with no speaking parts and never mentioning Serbian atrocities. Viewers are instead informed that the CIA is plotting with ``mercenaries and traitors'' to overthrow the government, that the Kosovo Liberation Army is rife with ``baby killers,'' and that Yugoslavia's economy is stronger than the more vibrant economies of Hungary and the Czech Republic.
