Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [230]
6. Human rights improving. Congressman Mickey Edwards found that “by all objective observations, the human-rights record in this country has improved tremendously over the last two or three years.” He does not say what objective observations he is referring to. Max Singer also found that “the human-rights record is improving in Guatemala, as near as I can tell,” partly because the guerrilla movement has weakened, and that movement has been a serious threat to the human rights of the Guatemalan people. Singer was asked in the press conference how he determined this improvement. His answer was “From the statements of people living in the countryside.”
7. Reason for the blank and spoiled votes. Some 26 percent of the ballots cast in the Guatemalan election, far exceeding the total for any party, were blank or spoiled. This would seem to compromise the notion that the Guatemalan people had gotten into long lines out of patriotic enthusiasm. Howard Penniman explained, however, that this was a result of illiteracy. Other possibilities are unmentioned. Why the illiteracy rates were so high thirty years after the United States saved Guatemala for freedom is also not discussed.
8. The case for further aid. The observers showed their objectivity, and the labor representatives Kahn and Friedman demonstrated their commitment to liberal principles, by acknowledging that this election was only a “first step,” and that a full-fledged democracy such as that just established in El Salvador (Regula) was still to come. Some of the observers would sanction additional aid immediately, Mickey Edwards urging that the Guatemalan army would benefit from being “exposed to American values and to American training.”4 The others were more noncommittal, but agreed that the election was fair, meaningful, and deserving of U.S. recognition and support.
In sum, this was a caricature of observation, but a fairly typical performance of U.S. “official observers.” The report of this group was cited by Stephen Kinzer in the New York Times and elsewhere in the U.S. press as a serious source of information on the Guatemalan election. The official report of the Latin American Studies Association on the Nicaraguan election, written by specialists in the region after an intensive eight-day investigation, Kinzer and his mass-media colleagues never mentioned.
Appendix 2
TAGLIABUE’S FINALE ON THE BULGARIAN CONNECTION:
A Case Study in Bias
To show in another way the propagandistic quality of the mass media’s coverage of the Bulgarian Connection, we will examine in detail the article by John Tagliabue, “Verdict on Papal Plot, But No Answer,” published in the New York Times on March 31, 1986. This piece, which provides a final wrap-up that enters “history” as the mature judgment of the veteran Times newsman assigned to the Rome trial, is a model illustration of the systematic bias that we believe characterized mass-media reporting of the Bulgarian Connection, with only minor exceptions. A close examination shows how Tagliabue incorporates all of the elements of the Sterling-Henze-Kalb (SHK) model of the connection, selects facts in accordance with the requirements of that model, and bypasses conflicting facts and interpretations.1
The Framing of the Issue: The Case Still “Unresolved”
The court dismissal of the case against the Bulgarians in Rome confronted the Times with a problem of framing. The Times had presented the case as plausible for years, and now had to confront the rejection of the case in a court decision. The solution was to latch on to the peculiar feature of the Italian judicial system whereby a party found not guilty can be declared positively innocent or not guilty for reason of lack of evidence. Thus, as the title of Tagliabue’s article suggests,