Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [101]
It is our belief that the invariable enthusiasm and optimism found by the U.S. mass media in client-state elections, and the apathy and negativism found in elections in states disfavored by the U.S. administration, has nothing to do with electoral realities and must be explained entirely by an imposed propaganda agenda and the filtering out of contrary opinion and information.
3.6.2. IGNORING THE SUPERIOR QUALITY OF THE NICARAGUAN ELECTION
In the propaganda format, a great deal of attention is paid to the mechanical properties of elections in client states, but not in states whose elections are being denigrated. This was true in the cases under discussion. Time (Apr. 9, 1984) described in detail the elaborate electoral preparations in El Salvador, the “tamper-proof” procedures, the use of transparent Lucite ballot boxes, and the indelible-ink marking and stamping of ID cards. It turned out, however, that the high-tech, computerized voting procedures weren’t understood by the population, more than half of whom were illiterate. At no point did Time, or its media colleagues, raise any question about the importance of improving literacy as a necessary prelude to an election; nor did they suggest that the Lucite boxes might compromise the secrecy of the vote, or that the stamped ID card might be a coercive instrument helping to explain turnout.
Nicaragua went to great pains to provide for election secrecy, and for an easy and intelligible system of voting. For one thing, they had a massive literacy campaign before the election, making electoral printed matter generally accessible. Both the Irish and LASA delegations mention this as an electoral plus. Nicaragua also put a high priority on getting a complete registration list and getting the voters registered. The Irish delegation noted that “Recent elections in other Central American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala did not introduce such measures, and there was considerable debate concerning the validity of their registers, which were based on out-of-date census figures, incomplete official registers of population changes, and other sources” (p. 5). Nicaragua also deliberately avoided transparent ballot boxes, ID stamping, and any other mechanism that would allow the authorities to identify whether or how somebody had voted. LASA points out that
The ballots were also printed on heavy opaque white paper. The contrast with Somoza-era elections is striking. The Somozas used translucent ballots, so virtually everyone assumed that their ballot was not secret. The same problem occurred in the 1984 elections in El Salvador, where thin-paper ballots were deposited in transparent ballot boxes. The vote in Nicaragua in 1984 was truly a secret ballot (p. 14).
In Nicaragua, also, there was proportional voting, which made it possible for the smaller parties to obtain legislative representation. Parties could also qualify quite easily to participate in the election. In Guatemala, 4,000 signatures were needed to qualify in 1984, a large number and not easy for dissident parties to collect in a society with daily political murders.
Stephen Kinzer and his associates never mentioned these differences. More generally, the substantial merits of the Nicaraguan elections were never contrasted with the procedures in the U.S. client states, a comparison that would have been most revealing and that would have thoroughly undermined the Reagan agenda to which the media were committed in their reporting of the election. Time, as noted, mentions the compromised Salvadoran procedures as if they were meritorious. The Times mentioned the transparent voting boxes in El Salvador only once (Richard Meislin, on March 25, 1984), repeating without question the official line that the purpose of the translucent boxes was to prevent fraud. Any other possibility is unmentioned. Newsweek