Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

Even more compromising is its framing of the U.S. policy debate. According to Time, “Yet Guatemala confronts the Reagan administration with one of its toughest foreign policy challenges: on one hand, the country is viewed as a victim of Cuban-sponsored insurgency, needing U.S. support; on the other, the government obviously violates human rights.” The dichotomy offered by Time is a bit uneven: the Cuban sponsorship is a Cold War ploy for which no evidence has ever been given, but it provides a convenient propaganda framework that is regularly deployed by the State Department to divert attention from its support of mass murderers. Time thus elevates it to equality with a real and extremely serious charge—and without an honest citation even to a political hack. The “on the other hand” is, despite the “obviously,” a gross understatement.