BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- NATO attacks have finally struck home, taking out transmitters of the state's main television station as well as several local stations in Belgrade. As a result, the media choices are rapidly declining and with them the regime's ability to pump out its propaganda.
Before the air strikes began, television viewers in Belgrade had 13 channels to choose from, although most were either directly controlled by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, members of his family or his cronies. But when NATO missiles hit the 20-story tower in New Belgrade this week -- a tower that had long symbolized the Milosevic regime since it also housed Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia and, for a time, his wife Mira Markovic's Yugoslav United Left -- it destroyed the transmitters of three of these stations, taking them off the air.
More importantly, the television signal of Serbian State Television can no longer reach all of Serbia. Its signal in Belgrade has become patchy, and its transmitters in Vojvodina and Kosovo have, according to official reports, been knocked out. Its other transmitters around Serbia reportedly have also been destroyed.
As a result, the regime's ability to manipulate information and public opinion has, for the first time in a decade, been seriously weakened.
The air strike against the party headquarters has, in fact, had a bigger impact than attacks against many military targets. This was the first time that NATO has hit something directly belonging to the Milosevic family. Many people in Belgrade could not hide their pleasure in seeing the building in flames. The next day, NATO compounded the affront by hitting a presidential command post, essentially one of Milosevic's residences.
But the key blows are those against the television stations. For 12 years, Milosevic has used the media for the most vicious kind of political manipulation. It was the media, many analysts have argued, that created the hatreds which made the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo possible. The power of this propaganda has been so strong that many people in Serbia became accustomed to forming any political opinion only after they had watched the report on TV.
Without the power of television, the regime may be in serious trouble. It will have no clear way to guide its supporters or get feedback from them. Gossip about the duration and impact of the NATO attacks will spread. The situation in Serbia is becoming very different from what it was four week ago: Milosevic is losing the power to tell people what to think.
The name of the author, a correspondent for the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting, is withheld to protect them from reprisals by the Yugoslav government.