Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [102]
3.6.3. REBEL DISRUPTION INTO THE BLACK HOLE; TURNOUT NO LONGER AN INDEX OF TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY
In the Salvadoran election, rebel disruption was a central feature of the government’s propaganda frame. Because the rebels opposed the election, voting by the people proved their rejection of the rebels and approval of the army. Turnout was the index of democratic triumph and rebel defeat. As we saw, the mass media followed this frame without question. In the case of Nicaragua, the propaganda format was reversed—the rebels were the good guys, and the election held by the bad guys was condemned in advance. Rebel opposition to the election—and efforts at disruption—did not make voting and a large turnout a repudiation of the rebels and approval of the Sandinistas.
The U.S. mass media once again followed the government agenda, even though it meant an exact reversal of the standards they had applied in the Salvadoran election. The contras and their supporters urged the public not to vote, and interfered with the election process with at least as much vigor as (and with more killings than) the rebels in El Salvador. Furthermore, voting was more assuredly secret and the citizens were not required to vote, or to have ID cards stamped indicating that they had. And the Sandinistas did not kill ordinary citizens on a daily basis, as was true in the “death-squad democracies.” Thus turnout was far more meaningful in the Nicaraguan election than in the ones held in El Salvador and Guatemala—the public was free to abstain as well as to vote for opposition parties.
The U.S. mass media disposed of this problem mainly by massive suppression. They simply ignored the contra-U.S. campaign for abstention, waged with threats and attacks on polling places and election workers; and they buried the fact of an effectively secret vote and the right not to vote,93 just as, in parallel, they had inflated rebel disruption efforts in El Salvador in 1982 and 1984 and buried the voting requirement and other pressures to vote.
Although the New York Times had gone out of its way to focus on the “challenge” of rebel opposition and alleged disruption as giving turnout special meaning in the Salvadoran election of 1982,94 Stephen Kinzer never once mentioned that the contras attacked a number of polling stations and had issued radio appeals for abstention.95 For Kinzer, neither these facts nor the U.S. campaign to discredit were seen as posing a “challenge” that made turnout meaningful in Nicaragua.
The Irish delegation pointed out that “The Parties of the Democratic Coordinating Committee [based in the business community] opposed the voter registration, and called for a boycott of this process” (p. 5), and it noted that eleven polling stations were closed down by counterrevolutionary activities (p. 7). The public voted in large numbers “despite the possible dangers involved,” which suggested to the Irish delegation that turnout was significant and “showed how important the election was to the people” (p. 6). LASA pointed out the various ways in which the “main opposition” called for voter abstention, and cited the radio warnings broadcast into the country from Costa Rica threatening that voters would be killed by the contras (pp. 16, 28). LASA also pointed out that “voter turnout was heavy,” with “more enthusiasm among voters in low-income areas than in more affluent neighborhoods.”96 Like Time, LASA notes that the turnout did not quite realize the expectations of FSLN officials, but unlike Time, LASA points out that the rate of participation achieved “compares very favorably with the rates achieved in 11 other recent Latin American elections, as well as the 1984 U.S. presidential election . . .” (p. 16).97
In sum, the two observer reports discuss rebel disruption in Nicaragua, turnout, and the meaning of that turnout. The U.S. mass media, which had featured these matters heavily in reference to the Salvadoran election—where they fitted the government’s propaganda agenda—found them entirely unnewsworthy as regards Nicaragua.