Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

Jerzy Popieluszko was an activist priest and a strong supporter of the Solidarity movement in Poland.

2.1.2(a). Fullness and reiteration of the details of the murder and the damage inflicted on the victim.

2.1.2(b) Stress on indignation, shock, and demands for justice.

2.1.2(c). The search for responsibility at the top.

2.1.2(d). Conclusions and follow-up.

2.2. RUTILIO GRANDE AND THE UNWORTHY SEVENTY-TWO

As shown on table 2-1, the unworthy seventy-two on Penny Lernoux’s list of martyrs were subject to a grand total of eight articles in the New York Times, one in Newsweek, and none in Time, and they were never mentioned on CBS News in the years of index coverage (1975–78).

2.3. ARCHBISHOP OSCAR ROMERO

The murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the highest Catholic church official in El Salvador, was “big news,” and its political implications were enormous.

2.3.1. Details of the murder and public response

2.3.2. The propaganda line: a reformist junta trying to contain the violence of right and left

The Salvadoran and U.S. governments contended at the time of Romero’s murder that the killing going on in El Salvador was being done by extremists of the right and the left, not by the Salvadoran armed forces and their agents; and that the government was trying its best to contain the killings and carry out reforms.

there was a “civil war between extreme right and leftist groups” (New York Times, Feb. 25, 1980); the “seemingly well meaning but weak junta” was engaging in reforms but was unable to check the terror (Time, Apr. 7, 1980).

We may note how the title of the article transforms the murder of the leader of the dissident forces (and then of his followers at the funeral) from a moral issue deserving outrage into a question of political advantage, and turns that against the rebels.

2.3.3. Misrepresentation of Romero’s views

As we noted earlier, Romero was unequivocal in laying the blame for the violence in El Salvador on the army and security forces, and he viewed the left and popular groupings as victims provoked into self-defense by violence and injustice.

2.3.4. The loss of interest in responsibility at the top

With Popieluszko, the media tried hard to establish that there was knowledge of and responsibility for the crime at higher levels of the Polish government. Soviet interest and possible involvement were also regularly invoked. With Romero, in contrast, no such questions were raised or pressed.

Any possible U.S. connection to the crime was, of course, “far out,” and could not be raised in the U.S. media.

2.3.5. Murder unavenged—or triumphant

The assassins of Archbishop Romero were never “officially” discovered or prosecuted, and he joined the ranks of the tens of thousands of other Salvadorans murdered without justice being done.

Throughout this period, media coverage adopted a central myth contrived by the government, and confined its reporting and interpretation to its basic premises: the “moderate government” that we support is plagued by the terrorism of the extremists of the left and right, and is unable to bring it under control.

2.4. COVERAGE OF THE SALVADORAN NATIONAL GUARDS’ MURDER OF THE FOUR U.S. CHURCHWOMEN AND ITS FOLLOW-UP

On December 2, 1980, four U.S. churchwomen working in El Salvador—Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel—were seized, raped, and murdered by members of the Salvadoran National Guard.

The difference between the murder of the four women and the thousands of others uninvestigated and unresolved in El Salvador was that the families of these victims were Americans and pressed the case, eventually succeeding in getting Congress to focus on these particular murders as a test case and political symbol.

2.4.1. Details of the savagery

The finding of Popieluszko’s body was front-page news for the New York Times—in fact, the initial failure to find his body made the front page—and in all the media publications analyzed here, the details of his seizure, the disposition of his body, and the nature of his wounds were recounted extensively and with barely concealed relish (see table 2-2).

In the Popieluszko case, both the finding of the body and the trial were occasions for an aggressive portrayal of the details of the act of murder and the condition of the body.

2.4.2. Lack of indignation and insistent demands for justice

In the Popieluszko case, the press conveyed the impression of intolerable outrage that demanded immediate rectification. In the case of the murder of the four American women, while the media asserted and quoted government officials that this was a brutal and terrible act, it was not declared intolerable, and the media did not insist on (or quote people who demanded) justice.

2.4.3. The lack of zeal in the search for villainy at the top

As we saw earlier, in the Popieluszko case the mass media eagerly, aggressively, and on a daily basis sought and pointed to evidence of top-level involvement in the killing.

Gradually, so much evidence seeped out to show that the women had been murdered by members of the National Guard that the involvement of government forces could no longer be evaded.

After a two-month investigation of the murders, the reporter John Dinges filed a story through Pacific News Service that showed the murders to have been preplanned in some detail.

In sum, the leads provided by Dinges, and the testimony of Santivánez, strongly suggest that the killing of the women was based on a high-level decision.

The U.S. government also engaged in a systematic cover-up—of both the Salvadoran cover-up and the facts of the case.

Part of the reason the administration wanted control was to allow it to claim reasonable progress in the pursuit of the case whenever the military government was due for more money.

2.4.4. The trial—five national guardsmen for $19.4 million

The trial of the five immediate killers of the four women should have been presented in a Kafkaesque framework, but the U.S. media played it very straight.

2.5. TWENTY-THREE RELIGIOUS VICTIMS IN GUATEMALA, 1980–85

The modern history of Guatemala was decisively shaped by the U.S.-organized invasion and overthrow of the democratically elected regime of Jacobo Arbenz in June 1954.

Lucas García

The holocaust years 1978–85 yielded a steady stream of documents by human-rights groups that provided dramatic evidence of a state terrorism in Guatemala approaching genocidal levels.

2.6. THE MUTUAL SUPPORT GROUP MURDERS IN GUATEMALA

Human-rights monitoring and protective agencies have had a very difficult time organizing and surviving in the “death-squad democracies” of El Salvador and Guatemala.

Nineth de García

3 Legitimizing versus Meaningless Third World Elections: El Salvador Guatemala Nicaragua

3.1. ELECTION-PROPAGANDA FRAMEWORKS

The refusal of the rebel opposition to participate in the election is portrayed as a rejection of democracy and proof of its antidemocratic tendencies, although the very plan of the election involves the rebels’ exclusion from the ballot.

In elections held in disfavored or enemy states, the U.S. government agenda is turned upside down. Elections are no longer equated with democracy, and U.S. officials no longer marvel at the election being held under adverse conditions. They do not commend the army for supporting the election and agreeing to abide by the results. On the contrary, the leverage the dominant party obtains by control of and support by the army is put forward in this case as compromising the integrity of the election. Rebel disruption is no longer proof that the opposition rejects democracy, and turnout is no longer the dramatic denouement of the struggle between a democratic army and its rebel opposition. Now the stress is on the hidden motives of the sponsors of the election, who are trying to legitimize themselves by this tricky device of a so-called election.