Media : Is Seeing TV Believing? Maybe : Serbia’s rulers have a virtual monopoly on the nightly news. Everyone watches despite doubts about its truthfulness.

Village houses smolder in the background as black-clad Serbian women in southeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina grieve over their slain loved ones before a television camera.

In this night’s chapter of wartime tragedy, TV Serbia informs its viewers that Croatian “terrorists” have attacked Serbian villagers from new bases on the Prevlaka peninsula, a strategic finger of Croatian territory recently abandoned by the Yugoslav army.

The news then flashes back to the army’s “unilateral gesture” of retreat from Prevlaka, conveying the message that this negotiated withdrawal led to the Croatian sacking of nearby villages.

Neither piece of carefully choreographed footage mentions the brutal army assault on the region earlier this year that cleared it of all Slavic Muslims and Croats, giving local Serbs exclusive control.

Next, to put the retreat in perspective, the camera pans back to negotiations in Geneva, where the agreement to withdraw the last federal troops from sovereign Croatia was reached after a yearlong impasse over who would control Prevlaka.

There stands Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic, unwittingly taking a bow for the resulting scenes of suffering and carnage.

The brief news clip aired recently lacked the gore and savagery of hundreds of others over the last 18 months that have shown headless, mutilated corpses to convince the people of Serbia that they and their Serbian brothers in Croatia and Bosnia are the true victims of the Yugoslav war.

But the cunning juxtaposition of the Prevlaka withdrawal and the image of Panic as the one who sold the Serbs out packed a double punch by blending the usual nightly dose of war disinformation with political propaganda designed to boost the reelection chances of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

This puppet of Western conspirators, the television news seems to be saying of Panic, can never be counted on to protect Serbian interests the way Milosevic can.

Through means both subtle and obvious, the ruling Socialist Party in isolated Serbia has spoon-fed a distorted version of reality to its 10 million subjects through the all-powerful means of television, over which it enjoys virtual monopoly control.

And as Serbia and Montenegro close in on a Dec. 20 date for elections, the vital importance of television in the impending vote has been impressed with sobering clarity on Milosevic opponents.

“It’s like building a bomb,” Zoran Djindjic, campaign manager for the opposition Democratic Party, said of TV Serbia news. “When you are building it there are a lot of parts that are not in and of themselves a bomb, but when you put them all together they explode and inflict tremendous damage.”

The sole broadcast medium capable of reaching all of what remains of Yugoslavia, TV Serbia is watched by virtually everyone in the country--even the sizable proportion of the population that insists it doesn’t trust it.

MF Agency, an independent public opinion research firm based in Belgrade, concluded after polling Serbian voters in late October that 43% considered TV Serbia “the propaganda headquarters of the Socialist Party,” with only 21% of the respondents describing the network as objective.

Despite widespread doubts about the reliability of the nightly news, virtually everyone in the country watches it, and most absorb at least some of the political message with which it is heavily laced.

“It’s the most dangerous weapon that exists, because it belongs entirely to Slobodan Milosevic,” said 30-year-old Miroslav Milanovic, a cafe owner in the town of Svilajnac, about 60 miles southeast of Belgrade. “If the television fell to the opposition, within 24 hours Milosevic and his regime would be gone.”

Because of its power to shape a loyal constituency eager to believe Serbia is the innocent in a global plot against it, television will remain the most staunchly guarded weapon in Milosevic’s considerable arsenal, Milanovic predicted.

Like many who profess to be opposition supporters, Milanovic watches TV Serbia news almost every night.

“It’s the only station we can get here,” he said with a shrug. “That’s why whoever controls television is going to be victorious in the election.”

TV Serbia’s influence has been enhanced by the economic difficulties gripping the republic. A shortage of newsprint has forced independent and state-run newspapers to cut back circulation, and the relative expense of more objective publications excludes most of the population.

There is also the cumulative influence of 45 years of Communist propaganda to overcome.

“You can’t trust the newspapers. There are too many people putting their own opinions into those stories,” insists Milisav Starcevic, a 50-year-old policeman and ardent Milosevic supporter. “Television is better because it is more censored. You can’t say just anything on television, plus there are pictures to prove what is said. Pictures can’t lie.”

Belgrade’s few objective media have minuscule circulations or reach only those segments of the population already interested in opposition views--mostly in the capital and other large cities.

Most Serbian voters live in the countryside, out of range of Belgrade’s tiny alternative TV station--the independent, late-night Studio B--and also outside the circulation areas of all but newspapers controlled by the Socialist Party.

“We know we are reaching only a small audience of urban intellectuals who have the time and the interest to read newspapers,” said Jasmina Teodosijevic, a reporter for the moderate daily Borba. “Most of the regime voters come from the south of Serbia and get all of their information from television. They don’t have the habit of reading newspapers and they are now too expensive for most people, anyway.”

TV Serbia news director Dragoljub Milanovic concedes that his medium is the most important influence on political opinion in what is left of Yugoslavia, but insists his staff’s presentation of news is “absolutely objective, as much as possible given that every individual sees events through his own eyes.”

Milanovic, a card-carrying Socialist and no relation to Miroslav, the cafe owner, says his news program carries frequent and extensive coverage of the Serbian president “because of the nature of his job.” He concedes that Panic, the federal prime minister, is accorded far less attention and most of it unflattering.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a campaign against Panic, but there is a lot of criticism of him,” Milanovic said of the nightly news. “He brings this on himself. His daily actions are controversial, and that is what provides the material we report.”

Panic and the coalition of opposition forces known as DEPOS launched a major bid to break the broadcast monopoly when the election campaign was announced in late October.

Milosevic then appeared relatively weak, as the two men he had installed to lead the powerless federal government--Panic and renowned Serbian writer Dobrica Cosic--had both turned against him. The Serbian president was also under fire then from the Serbian Orthodox Church, writers and intellectuals, students and the outside world.

But Milosevic managed to turn back the tide against him, thanks in large part to the influence of television.

TV Serbia gave thorough coverage to a relentless series of attacks on Panic, including two parliamentary no-confidence motions in which Serbian nationalists lambasted the transplanted Californian businessman as unpatriotic and out of touch with the Serbs he abandoned when he fled Communist Yugoslavia 36 years ago.

Zoran Basaraba, a top aide to Panic, accuses the television network of engaging in a “smear campaign” against Milosevic’s most formidable opponent.

Milosevic still controls a vast police and security network, but his popularity has been flagging amid six-digit hyper-inflation and hardships brought on by his bankrolling of the Serb-led wars in Bosnia and Croatia.

Panic enjoys the support of more than 40% of the population, according to his own opinion polls. But Milosevic has recently been successful--again, with the help of television--in convincing Serbs that their troubles are the result of U.N. sanctions being applied to impoverish and destroy all Serbs.

“All of the Milosevic supporters have started beating up on Panic. Exactly those political forces that brought him here in the first place have begun accusing him of being a foreign agent, a spy, a traitor to the nation--the old Communist lingo,” said Milos Vasic, a prominent Belgrade commentator with the independent weekly Vreme. “Suddenly he was made out to be the man who sold his soul to the great Satan.”

Vasic describes the nightly news as “crude, outrageous and utterly shameless” in its attempts to ensure Milosevic is reelected.

Foreign governments, including the United States, have already begun complaining that the vote is unlikely to be free or fair.

Most Serbs outside of the inner circle of the Socialist Party agree.

“Television will have more influence on the election than will the police,” DEPOS activist Matija Beckovic complained in a recent speech. “The best use for most of the television sets in Serbia would be to gut them and use them for ballot boxes.”