Blown Coverage.

Remember the NATO bomb that blew up a passenger train on a bridge in Yugoslavia, killing at least ten civilians?

Well, the video of it you may have seen on TV was a distortion.

The bombing occurred April 13 during the Kosovo war. The Pentagon film was sped up by almost three times when it was aired. This conveniently supported the claim of Wesley Clark, Supreme NATO Commander, who said at a much-publicized press conference at the time, while rolling the accelerated tape:

"All of a sudden, at the very last instant, with less than a second to go, he [the pilot] caught a flash of movement. Look very intently at the aim point, concentrate right there [Clark pointed to the cross hairs aimed at the bridge], and you can see how, if. you were focused right on your job as pilot, suddenly that train appeared."

But evidently, the train didn't appear so suddenly, and the pilot had more than a second to react.

I spoke with Lieutenant Colonel Vic Warzinski, a Pentagon public relations officer, on January 14 about the matter.

"There was really no intention to deceive," Warzinski says.

Here's his explanation:

"When we struck the bridge, we were in a rush to get the gun camera footage up to shape, so we used an intelligence product that is usually run at twice the normal speed so they can process it faster. They then loaded it up to the Web, and the Web had a feature that sped it up further. In real time, the film took fifteen seconds, but when played at NATO headquarters, it appeared as though it Matthew. Rothschild is Editor of The Progressive magazine. took about six seconds."

When the Pentagon becomes the producer and the film editor in the newsroom, it's hard to separate fact from fiction. The train bombing was a serious public relations mishap for the Pentagon and for NATO. Having the film speeded--up whether accidentally, as the Pentagon insists, or intentionally (and how will we know for sure?)--helped Clark make his case that the bombing was an unavoidable accident.

This story was broken, incidentally, not by any U.S. media outfit but by the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, which published its piece on January 6. CNN, to its credit, aired a segment about it that same night and featured it on its web page. NBC Nightly News also aired a report. But I searched long and hard and found no mention of the story in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, or U.S. News & World Report.

During the Kosovo war, the networks led many of their reports with the disclaimer: "This report was subject to Yugoslav censorship."

Maybe they should have had a similar disclaimer about the Pentagon's role.

Quick Hits

* Weekly face-off: On February 7, the cover of Time featured an investigative story by Pulitzer Prize winners Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele entitled "Big Money Politics: Who Gets Hurt." Newsweek ran with the urgent "Inside Wrestling Inc.: Why It's #1 in Cable, Videos, Toys, & Books."

* Barbara Crossette of The New York Times had a front-pager on January 18 about the U.N. Security Council's efforts to pick a new arms inspector in Iraq and about the future of sanctions. "Support for economic sanctions is steadily eroding, most of all in Russia and France, where business interests are paramount," she wrote. Nowhere in the piece did she allude to the overwhelming humanitarian reason for opposing sanctions, or to the international movement to lift sanctions so 5,000 kids don't die every month. Not to worry. Those who oppose sanctions are just in it for the money.

Matthew Rothschild is Editor of The Progressive magazine.