Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Serb propaganda


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

Serb propaganda
The result was no consensus for deletion, default to keep. Sandstein (talk) 21:01, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * – (View AfD) (View log)

the article fails to meet:
 * WP:OR as the sources verify only verify the examples of alleged Serb propaganda which the article mentions, not that these are commonly known as "Serb propaganda". In so doing it takes pieces of facts from the sources and uses them to draw conclusions which the sources do not support.
 * WP:SOURCE in that the source which actually discusses Serb propaganda is an article in Serbocroat on a Bosnian web site called "www.islam.co.ba". This can hardly be a good source.
 * Keeping it will open up for any number of politically motivated articles (Bosniak propaganda, Croat propaganda, Hungarian propaganda, Albanian propaganda, Romanian propaganda, Greek Propaganda, Turkish Propaganda, etc.) based on a collection of incidents and then used to beat political opponents over the head with. It will contribute further to Wikipedia being used as a POV nationalistic battleground.


 * This AfD nomination was incomplete. It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 15:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. This article is not in good shape at the time of this entry. However, it seems to me that a good article still could be written from this. It only was created 3 days ago, and it has been throughly tagged for sourcing, POV, and improvement.  I'm also not ruling out that the original premise may itself have NPOV problems. Still there, there was very substantial international particiapation in and observation of this conflict, and I'm reluctant to kill it off before seeing what the community can do with it. Xymmax (talk) 16:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep is an example of the term being used in the media and provides a good background source. There has been enough written about this to create a decent article. --Neon white (talk) 17:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. I see that for such a serious and complex topic it lacks peer reviewed and hopefully unbiased academic source, it is just a collection of newspaper articles and testimonies. It is practically impossible to turn such a haphazard mixture of factoids into coherent and complete overview article.


 * If the text is kept please rename it. Otherwise it will be the starting point for flow of "XYZ propaganda" articles. E.g. "Media propaganda by Serbia during Bosnian war" or something even more specific. Pavel Vozenilek (talk) 23:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. Give it some time, and we'll see.  It seems like this could become a fine article as long as it is watched for POV violations.  Malinaccier (talk • contribs) 00:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete Coatrack and extraordinarily POV (such as claiming that all Serb fears of persecution by newly-independent states were result of nefarious propaganda from Belgrade, when there is overwhelming - videotaped - evidence that the Croats planned a purge, evidence validated at the Milosevic trial). Note also that "Dragon of Bosnia" has removed the AfD tag from the article and is in general on a POV-pushing rampage through our project. &lt;eleland/talkedits&gt; 00:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete. WP:COATRACK, WP:OR and WP:POV violations. The article uses primary sources (icty documents) to provide examples of instances which are then used as claims for Serb propaganda. For the article to stick it would require a serious peer reviewed source speciifically about Serb propaganda, rather the odd examples collected by the author here. Note also that User:The Dragon of Bosnia has recently removed the Afd tag on the article.Osli73 (talk) 01:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong keep. Please remain civil regarding your accusation. I am just improving the article with the International court (ICTY) findings from five different verdicts, and other relaible sources per WP:RS. The tag is not needed anymore. The article is improved and sourced according to Wikipedia guidelines. The Dragon of Bosnia (talk) 01:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. The problem is, you have used the concept of Serb propaganda as a launching-point for an extended diatribe about the fundamental nature of the Bosnian war. That is a classic WP:COATRACK. A serious article will need not just primary sources like ICTY verdicts, but scholarly books and articles from scholarly journals which are specifically discussing Serbian and allied Serb propaganda. You will also have to make a case for why Serb propaganda distinctly needs its own article and should not be covered by, say, Propaganda in the Bosnian War. See WP:POVFORK as well. &lt;eleland/talkedits&gt; 01:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment You should first read the sources. I read them all. According to the ICTY verdicts, Serb propaganda was a part of the Strategic Plan by Serb leadership for creating Serb state in Bosnia. I was very carefull when using the terms. I just included the findings by the courts and the law terms adjusted to common language which should be appriciated by Wikipedia. Wikipedia contains much more unrelaible articles. Btw Wikipedia is not place for wars, this is place for valuable information. You don't have to go around behind my back and ask for this and that, yes you can request anything accroding to Wikipedia guadlines, but we are here to make good articles not to fight. Regards. The Dragon of Bosnia (talk) 01:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Your first ICTY source talks about the SDS (Serb Democratic Party, of Serbian Krajina in Croatia) propaganda campaign, not about something called "Serb propaganda". The second talks about Radio Prijedor propaganda, not "Serb propaganda". The third ICTY source does use the term "Serb propaganda" twice. And the fourth doesn't even contain the word "propaganda".
 * However, these are ICTY judgments about specific individuals, all Serbs, convicted of crimes. They relate to very specific people and places, and yet you're using them to write an article about something called "Serb propaganda" as a whole. We should be relying on secondary sources which are mainly about "Serb propaganda" in order to do that. Right now it really seems that you've stitched together a number of disparate sources in order to write a generalized essay about the moral, political, etc nature of the Bosnian war. &lt;eleland/talkedits&gt; 21:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep The article uses many solid sources and obviously the phenomenon exists and can be made into a quality article. I would suggest, however, that the article be moved to a more specific title such as "Serbian propaganda during the Yugoslav wars". Live Forever (talk) 02:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete as per Eleland. Terrible precedent to have such articles. This is just an invitation to nationalist edit-warring and WP:COATRACK POV-forking of various other articles. Even if, in a better world, a perfect neutral encyclopedia might be able to do a competent article on such a topic, our experience with things like the "Anti-X'ism" series shows that Wikipedia just can't. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletions.   — FayssalF  -  Wiki me up®  16:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong delete This is blatant POV trollery. Unless, in the interests of fairness, equivalent articles are also created for "Croat propaganda", "Bosniak propaganda", "Albanian propaganda", "NATO/UN propaganda", etc. (Laughter) --Hereward77 (talk) 16:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You seem to misunderstand the subject of the article. Serbian propaganda was a major concern of nato and the international community during the yugoslav, the article is can be based on these reliable sources. --Neon white (talk) 04:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * NATO was a combatant, hardly a neutral source since it illegally sided with insurrectionists inside the borders of sovereign Serbia in 1999. And I would hardly categorise NATO as the international community, since I seem to remember that nations such as Russia, China, India and South Africa were rather sympathetic to Serbia. --Hereward77 (talk) 16:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong delete This is another anti-Serb article which proves my point that there is a great discrimination of Serbs on wikipedia. This article must be deleted! Or you put albanian propaganda articles that resulted in burning a Serbian baby (name Sava) allive in Prizren. I have picture of this crime and thousands of other commited by albanian and croat propaganda. If you don't want Serbs to open articles like that delete this! --Србија до Токија (talk) 20:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep A Google search reveals a number of articles on the subject, so it clearly exists and is notable. If there is POV pushing it can easily be neutralized by editors here who seem to know about the subject and are interested in it, like the one previous to me. Not a problem. -Bikinibomb (talk) 04:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll also add, similar to how Nazi propaganda exists, Slobodan Milošević was tried for war crimes, which makes it unique to other propaganda claims like those for "NATO/UN propaganda" etc. In other words, the propaganda itself would likely be a mechanism used to carry out war crimes. -Bikinibomb (talk) 04:57, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If you did your research you would learn that Milosevic was never actually convicted of anything, he conveniently died before the "court" of the UN.Org (which is an ideologically-driven internationalist political organisation rather than a neutral jurisdiction) could pin anything on the him after five years of trying. --Hereward77 (talk) 16:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep This article should stay. The phenomenon is well know. If you google "Serb propaganda" or "Serbian propaganda" you'll get around 800,000 results in total. But I agree with Live Forever's suggestion regarding the name. The article should be moved to a more precise name such as "Serbian propaganda during the Yugoslav wars". Here is an example from The Guardian: Nato targets Serb propaganda. Grandy Grandy (talk) 16:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * An article from the communist Guardian newspaper should not be a basis for a Wikipedia article. The Guardian is violently anti-Serb, as are many other sources on the web. --Hereward77 (talk) 18:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion: I have created a new article titled: Role of Serb media in the 1991-1999 wars in the former Yugoslavia, which I suggest replace this one. It is largely based on the Expert Testimony by French professor Renaud de la Brosse for the Prosecution at the ICTY trial of Slobodan Milosevic on the role of media in inciting war crimes. Not only is it based on comprehensive material on the specific topic of Serb propaganda during the war by a noted scholar on the subject (though not peer reviewed and created specifically for the Prosecution), in my opinion, the article is also written in a much more NPOV way. I suggest that we delete the current "Serb propaganda" article, reroute it to the new article and then continue building on that. It would definately have a less controversial starting point and would be easier to source. Comments?Osli73 (talk) 09:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't like this either, just another propaganda piece based on the testimony of some non-notable French pseudo-intellectual. It turns out that al-Qaeda was heavily involved in the Yugoslav wars after all, watch this 2006 report from Tim Marshall of Sky News (which contradicts the UN.Org's lies and has been repeatedly censored by Wikipedia): --Hereward77 (talk) 20:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete - terribly POV, OR, and probably unsalvageable currently. This is the kind of thing that will require historical distance to write a proper NPOV article about, and it's something that needs secondary sources to write from, not the original court documents themselves. We don't need to set a precedent that this kind of emotionally-laded OR is ok, no matter the topic. This is not about being pro-Serb or anti-Serb, but about being neither and instead relying on historical, scholarly assessments. -- phoebe/ (talk) 00:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Commenet

The article is substantially improved. The sources are the International court for war crimes verdicts related to propaganda campaign by Serb leadership. Other sources are also relaible per WP:RS, and there are also a few video links as an example of the most bizzar propaganda activities by Serbian national television such as:


 * Radio Television of Serbia admits lies about Serb babies allegedly slaughtered by Croats in Vukovar during the Serbian attack
 * Radio Television of Serbia fabricates a story about Muslim extremists who allegedly throw Serb babies to lions in Sarajevo ZOO during the Serbian siege

For more information about propaganda campaign during the Bosnian war read these:


 * The ICTY findings from the Radoslav Brđanin verdict about the propaganda campaign as part of the Strategic Plan by Serb leadership in Bosnia and Herzegovina
 * The ICTY findings from the Milomir Stakić verdict about the media role during the war crimes in Prijedor
 * The Guardian: NATO targets Serb propaganda
 * Radio Free Europe - I novinare pred sud za ratne zločine
 * Novinari ratni huškači

Regards. The Dragon of Bosnia (talk) 11:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 *  Delete  - as already well stated by eleland and others, this article is a classic "coatrack" article. // laughing man 15:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.