Power of the press

By: Ken Liebeskind 'Baby Arta' not unloved long

Unwanted in her native Kosovo, child of raped teen-ager avidly sought here

An Associated Press report about an unwanted 3-month-old baby girl in Kosovo prompted hundreds of calls from Americans eager to adopt her.
The story, filed by AP May 8, was splashed across newspaper pages with a color photo of the baby, Arta, in a Yugoslav hospital where she is awaiting adoption. The problem is that no one in Kosovo wants to adopt her because she is the daughter of a teen-age mother who was raped by a Serbian soldier during the Kosovo war.
"No one really wants these children. They say, 'Who knows about the father?'" a doctor in Kosovo told Danica Kirka, an AP reporter.
Long Island, N.Y.-based Newsday was flooded with calls from readers who wanted to adopt Arta after it ran a cover story Tuesday. The paper didn't know what to tell them, so it recorded their names and phone numbers and promised to respond, according to Mary Burke, an editorial assistant who answered many of the calls herself. On Wednesday, the paper published the phone number of the U.S. State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs, which provides information on international adoptions.
Many calls also came into the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald after it published the story Monday afternoon on its "World" page. "They said, 'We're interested in this little girl, and we want to adopt her,'" said National Editor Dee Jack. Callers were given the AP phone number because the World-Herald had no other information. "AP stories usually have a Web site [address] at the bottom for more information, but this one didn't, so we directed them to AP," Jack said.
"The information wasn't available then, but it is now," said
Jack Stokes, director of employee communications at the AP. A follow-up story released Wednesday included the Web addresses of two organizations associated with international adoptions.
"We got dozens of calls about adopting the kid," Stokes said. AP gave callers a Kosovo phone number for Gary Westwater, a legal-affairs officer at the U.N. mission there.
Westwater was quoted in the AP follow-up story with bad news for prospective adopters. "If we can find a Kosovo family, that's our No. 1 priority," he said.

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(copyright: Editor & Publisher May 15, 2000) [Caption]