ABC News Misses the Point

ABC News should go to Florina (Lerin) to interview ethnic Macedonians to ask how it feels living in a country with this type of atmosphere.Amelia Newcomb pick up the ball and get in the game for god's sake.

ABC News: Reporters on the Job:

' …And Writing the Later Drafts: For correspondent Nicole Itano, clashing views of history in the Balkans is not confined to the classroom (see story). The taxi driver she uses to get around Athens, for example, will order passengers to get out if they refer to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM) as simply 'Macedonia.' The reason: Greeks say that the kingdom of Alexander the Great, known as Macedonia, was part of present-day Greece. 'Many Greeks are upset at what they see as an attempt by a Slavic country to appropriate his legacy for itself,' Nicole says.

During a Greek broadcast of a soccer match between England and Macedonia, Nicole says, the station superimposed the letters FYRM (pronounced 'feerim') to 'correct' the scoreboard's rendering of the teams: ENG vs. MAC. 'That's how touchy these issues are,' she says.

Amelia Newcomb
Deputy world editor"