Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [111]
The only credits in the media coverage of the MIG crisis go to CBS News. On November 6, Dan Rather gave the straight administration “news” that MIGs might be on their way and that a strategic option to destroy them was under consideration. On November 7 and 8, however, perhaps out of a recognition that it had once again been “used,” CBS gave substantial coverage to Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto’s rebuttal, which allowed him to point out the absurdity of the Nicaraguan “threat,” the tie-in of the MIG claims to the Nicaraguan election, and the U.S. refusal to go along with the Contadora peace proposals.
The MIG ploy was, nevertheless, entirely successful. A tone of crisis was manufactured, and “options” against the hypothetical Sandinista “threat” were placed at the center of public attention. The Nicaraguan election was not discussed. LASA points out that “The final results of Nicaragua’s election were not even reported by most of the international media. They were literally buried under an avalanche of alarmist news reports” (p. 31). LASA concludes that the Nicaraguan electoral process was manipulated, as the U.S. government claims, but by the U.S. government itself in its efforts to discredit an election that it did not want to take place. The Salvadoran and Guatemalan elections successfully legitimized the U.S.-backed regimes, at least for American elite opinion. The far more honest Nicaraguan election failed to accomplish this, thanks to the loyal service of the media.
3.9. THE ROLE OF OFFICIAL “OBSERVERS” IN REINFORCING A PROPAGANDA LINE
Official observers provide a perfect example of the use of governmentcontrolled “experts” and “pseudo-events” to attract media attention and channel it in the direction of the propaganda line. And they regularly succeed in doing this in demonstration elections, no matter how brief their stay and foolish their comments (see appendix 1). The media take it for granted that official observers are newsworthy: they are notables, their selection by the government from “reputable” institutions adds to their credibility, and their observations will have effects on opinion and policy. This rationale is in the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy; they have effects only because the media accord them attention. As the official observers reliably commend the elections as fair without the slightest attention to basic conditions, the media’s regular use of these observers for comments on election quality violates norms of substantive objectivity in the same manner as the use of any straight government handout by the Times or Pravda.110
The Nicaraguan election was remarkable for the number of foreign observers and observer teams. We pointed out earlier that Time mentioned 450 foreign observers, but the magazine failed to cite any one of them (relying instead, and characteristically, on State Department handouts). As we saw, the State Department was able to get the media to follow its agenda, even though this involved them in a blatant reversal of the criteria they had employed the same year in El Salvador and Guatemala. It was also able to induce the media to disregard the outcome of the Nicaraguan election, with the help of the diversionary MIG ploy. The media also allowed major lies to be institutionalized—for example, that coercion was greater and pluralistic choices less in the Nicaraguan than in the Salvadoran and Guatemalan elections, and that the latter were legitimizing in a substantive sense, in contrast with Nicaragua.
These propaganda lies could not have been perpetrated if such reports as those of the Irish delegation and LASA had been accorded proper weight. LASA actually contacted