At a recent session of the parliament "honorable representative" of the HSP Boris Kandare reawakened already somewhat forgotten myth about the "Chetnik Granny". The direct broadcast from the parliament was watched by Ingeborg Glusac, a retired editor of the Croatian TV.
Our heroine was relieved to leave the HTV. Since, this editor had many reasons to leave her job. By definition, editing is forgery, a modification of image and sound. In Inge's case lie was a deliberate choice, rather than a technical choice. As she these days reveals to Feral, she personally carried out media crimes.
"When I saw Kandare, I felt the need to reveal the secret about those fully armed Chetnik Grannies," says Ingeborg. "In order to provide a media wrapper and confirmation for that myth, a surreal scene was filmed once the armies left the scene".
Thanks to a commando reporter who shot even banned images, and thanks to the editor who saw and processed that material, the truth about an attempt to create the "granny myth" was not forgotten. The controversial report was broadcast on September 14, 1993, a day before the signing of the agreement regarding the withdrawal of the Croatian Army from the Medak pocket. The village is called Pocitelj.
"The following scene was recorded," recalls Ingeborg Glusac. "A Croat soldier by force puts a soldier's overcoat on a miserable and confused granny. The coat had those 'stars'. Then the soldier pushes a machine gun into granny's hands. As the editor, I cut that introductory scene, as it was not meant for the wider audience, and for the public I leave a humane story about a good hearted Croatian soldier who treats that Chetnik granny with a whole plate of lamb meat. The scene includes a pale elderly man, whom I remembered by his face and eyes, which had already been as if drained of life. At one moment he shouts 'Do not believe any of this, this is all propaganda!' I cut that out, and after the scene with lamb on a plate, I add a close up of an important HDZ official who claims 'that the civilians were treated well'.
The editor who a year and a half after that event left the Croatian TV believes that the elderly woman who was forced by "Croatian knights" to wear soldier's overcoat and carry a machine gun in front of HTV cameras is most likely dead. "I doubt that they left them behind. Because, after that it was said that all of them were accommodated in hotels. However, there was no footage proving that. They were not filmed in a hotel, therefore, they never made it there. That much is clear."
Ingeborg continued to work at the TV even after the controversial action, when as she says, she "committed a media crime under the auspices of the HDZ". However, waiting for retirement, she tried to work as little as possible on the daily news.
"I left in early 1995, so that I fortunately did not work on the operations Flash and Storm. That would have destroyed me."
The raw footage which shows the prelude to the faked meal shared by a Croat soldier and the granny wearing a soldier's overcoat, naturally, does not exist today. The advantage of electronic technology is that new footage can be taped over a day later.
"I asked one of the editors why we did not tape anything on film, rather than on video-tape," Ingeborg recalls. "Negatives last forever, and this way we were losing material. He responded that it was probably not advisable to leave evidence from that time!"
Ingeborg Glusac today does not want to name anyone who participated in the editing process. Her open confession is actually only her personal repentance for a decade of lies in which she personally participated. And the "editing" of the Chetnik Granny is only one on the long series of HTV's propaganda scandals.
"After I looked over the raw footage, I was told what to cut out. I won't tell you who told me what to cut. I won't denounce people! Many wartime reporters, and that is well known, refused the decorations. I think that by doing that they clearly said what they thought about the work they did. They are not the worst!"
"The instructions came from a journalist, who probably participated in the field in the staging of the scene with the infamous Chetnik granny. Fine, I want to believe that the myth was created just in case, in case a few civilians were killed, and not to provide justification for deliberately killing elderly women after the end of hostilities! That does not make sense."
The reason why Ingeborg does not want to participate in the current lecturing of the participants in media crimes is her deep conviction that many of them were not aware of what they were doing.
"The following system was used. You'd come to work at 4pm and then played cards or dozed until 7... And just at the time when you were getting groggy suddenly all the journalists arrived and everything had to be prepared very quickly for the main news at 7:30pm. Thus, you only realized what crap you had done when everything had already been broadcast. Actually, you were not even aware of what you were doing. But all of us unconsciously participated in a crime!"
From many of her crimes Ingeborg selects one that nearly made her throw up.
"We did something very bad. One night in 1991, in Pakrac, there was a shootout. That was the beginning of the war, and people were still saying that 'reason would prevail'. A journalist went to Pakrac to film the victory of reason. Of course, no one knew who had shot, but Serbs were immediately blamed. Consequently, the journalist talked to Serbs in Pakrac. He filmed a conversation with an elderly Serb man who was waving a rifle and said: 'Son, don't you worry, I fought Chetniks [royalist Serbs] in WWII, I'll fight them again.' Then another one tells him that he did not like at all what was happening, that he did not know who shot, but that one thing is certain: 'those who cannot feed the people, push weapons in their hands.' The third conversation was with an elderly woman who stopped the journalist in the street and told him: 'I've never been to Serbia, don't care about Milosevic, but you work for TV, have influence, and tell our Croatian Police to defend us from the people who shoot, whomever they are'.
"Therefore, we get a nice sample of common sense and reason. Then the HDZ's brain trust at the HTV (by the way, none of them work there anymore, they all hid nicely) ordered that all of these statements be taken out, that the broadcast only include a photo of Pakrac and a subtitle saying that the HTV team was chased away by the Serbs."
Only later, by watching the news, Ingeborg and the journalist she refused to name realized that instead of common sense words of loyal Serbs they edited a justification for an attack on and destruction of Pakrac. These bad premonitions soon turned out to be correct and the journalist-editor pair was for months sickened by their participation in the crime.
"We really only realized what was going on when we saw that on the TV screen. At that moment everything goes so fast and the only thought running through your mind is that the report must be ready in time at all cost. That is why it was organized in that way, so that you have to work very fast. That was a clear intention. Because, obviously, there is no reason why something that was filmed hours before had to be edited half an hour before the start of the news."
As far as Kandare's grannies are concerned, they were actually also important characters in the reports of the Serb TV. In 1991, while the HTV was still providing technical services to the Yugoslav TV (!) Ingeborg Glusac edited "propaganda spots" for the "brothers".
"I remember the editing of a footage of a burial, with professional mourners. That was at the very beginning and I still thought that it was all some sort of a joke. So I told the journalist: 'Please, tell them to put something in that coffin! It is obvious that it is empty!' They even had a placard saying 'Ustashe crime - grandfather in 1941, grandson in 1991.' These days, when I see at the rally in Split the sign 'Communist crime in 1971 and 2001', I can guess who the script writer and directors are. But this burial was faked, the coffin was empty, no one had been killed! That was all rather sickening, but it was at the very beginning and we thought that everything was just a sick joke!"
This joke was broadcast, just like many others that contributed to the war. When a circus arrives in town, if it does not have a bearded woman, it will show a woman without a beard. From what Ingeborg Glusac experienced at the end of her career, it seems to her that Croatia wanted a war. For twenty five years she learned how to be a professional lying editor and only today, after many swallowed protests she can competently quote Goebbels: "The bigger the lie, the easier it is to swallow."
Ingeborg recalls "The revolution that goes on", the serial which, according to her, during Communism created the myth about the winner that cannot commit crimes in a liberation war. Pumping up the myth that was later taken over by the current Croatian right, Ingeborg graduated by studying censorship and editing the serial from which all the testimonies of Partisans about their own crimes were removed. These materials are allegedly still archived somewhere in HTV's bunkers, waiting for the day when war will not be anymore glorified as a sacred thing. That will at the same time be the day when the work at wartime TV will not be what it was in the first decade of Croatian independence - civilian service of the mandatory military service.
FERAL: Ms. Mendjusic, do you recall witnessing filming of a staged report about a Chetnik granny?
MENDJUSIC: I do not recall seeing that scene in the field, nor do I recall seeing it later at the editing table. I do not recall it at all.
Fine, do you recall working on that report at all?
I remember those elderly people, but I also recall that they did not say anything extraordinary, so that I did not ask them many questions. But the situation was definitely not the way Ingeborg describes it. It was not like that! In my presence no one ever forced anyone to put on a helmet, or a soldier's overcoat, nor did they push weapons into anyone's hands!
Did that granny wear a big soldier's overcoat?
I checked the material and yes, she did wear a soldier's overcoat. But that was pretty common. People were wearing all sorts of things at the time. The report was produced professionally, and does not mention the word Chetnik or Chetnik granny at any point.
Ms. Ingeborg Glusac did not want to name you, but it is obvious that you prepared that report. However, she did assert that she was ordered to cut out the discrediting part of the footage by the journalist who brought that footage from the field. Obviously, you are that journalist?
I checked the documentation and found out that the editing service in Gospic was set up in 1995. Therefore I simply sent the material to Zagreb, and I do not know who put together the scene with lamb meat and Kostovic's statement. I did not do that!
Fine, but the voiceover in the report was read by you. The voice of Silvana Mendjusic is clearly recognizable. That voiceover sounds to me as if it were recorded in a studio; it is clear, there are no noises, the type of noises you'd head in the field; the footage is accompanied only by your and Kostovic's voices. Did you read your voiceover in an off-room and where, if one did not exist in Gospic at the time?
I do not recall where I taped the off. Either in camera or in the room from where we sent the material. I really do not remember anymore. But I was not in Zagreb.