(A photo copy of ITN's statement)

Independent on Sunday, 26 January 1997

ITN 'may sue over article'

By Vanessa Thorpe

THE MAKER of News at Ten, Independent Television News, has threatend to
sue the editor of the magazine Living Marxism if he fails to pulp every
copy of his latest issue after taking exception to the journal's
investigation of their award winning coverage of Bosnia.

The broadcast news service claims that an article written by German
freelancer Thomas Deichmann undermines the integrity of its reporting by
claiming that "concentration camp" footage from 1992, which showed
starving prisoners interned by Bosnian Serbs, was seriously misleading.

According to Mr Deichmann, who says he has obtained a video of the full
ITN rushes shot at Trnopolje, the camera crew and the ITN reporter Penny
Marshall walked into an adjacent fenced compound in order to film the
Croat and Muslim refugees through barbed wire.

The striking images of emaciated torsos did much to galvanise
international opinion against the Bosnian Serbs.  British newspapers
used stills from the scene on their front pages with headlines such as
"Belsen 92" and "The Proof".

What has upset ITN is that Mr Deichmann, who says he obtained the
footage through and FBI source, accuses thos British journalists present
on the day of staying quiet once the pictures were widely interpreted as
evidence of Bosnian-Serb starvation camps.  He claims they were refugee
centres.

He goes on to allege that the reporters were all invited to the camp as
a direct result of Radovan Karadzic's visit to Britain that week.  Mr
Karadzic, he said, had especially asked Marshall and Ed Vulliamy of the
Guardian to visit Trnopolje in order to scotch rumours of Bosnian-Serb
atrocities at the site.

"The was was in not explaining how these pictures came about," Mr
Deichmann told the Independent on Sunday.