Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [261]
129. We have noted elsewhere that the New York Times regularly relied upon Indonesian officials in “presenting the facts” about East Timor, which was being invaded by Indonesia, and ignored refugees, church sources, etc. In contrast, refugees, not state officials, were the prime source in the Times’s reporting on postwar events in Vietnam and Cambodia (The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism [Boston: South End Press, 1979], pp. 151–52, 169–76, 184–87). On attempts to evade the obvious implications, see chapter 6, under “The Pol Pot Era” (pp. 266–67).
130. Thus when the CIA directs Nicaraguan contras to attack such “soft targets” as farming cooperatives, with explicit State Department approval, the media commentators, including doves, either applaud or offer philosophical disquisitions on whether such targets are legitimate, given that they are defended by lightly armed militia. Terrorist attacks on Israeli kibbutzim, also defended by armed settlers, are regarded somewhat differently. For details, see Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988).
131. The variable use of agendas and frameworks can be seen with great clarity in the treatment of Third World elections supported and opposed by the United States, as described in chapter 3.
132. Classic in their audacity are Michael Ledeen’s assertions that: (1) Qaddafi’s word is given more credence in the mass media than that of the U.S. government; and (2) “Relatively minor human rights transgressions in a friendly country (especially if ruled by an authoritarian government of the Right) are given far more attention and more intense criticism than far graver sins of countries hostile to us . . .” (Grave New World [New York: Oxford University Press, 1985], p. 131; Qaddafi’s superior credence is described on pp. 132–33). See chapter 2 of this book for documentation on the reality of massmedia treatment of abuses by clients and enemy states.
CHAPTER 2: WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS
1. In a speech of July 19, 1986, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, in answering charges of religious persecution, asserted that of 138 religious persons murdered and 278 kidnapped or disappeared in Central America since 1979 (a figure that includes Lay Delegates of the Word), none had been victimized by the Nicaraguan government. (Central America News Update, Aug. 4, 1986). Many had been killed by the contras, however, in an ongoing tradition of Somocista violence. See Andrew Reding, “The Church in Nicaragua,” Monthly Review (July–August 1987), pp. 34–36. The large majority were murdered by the army and security forces of U.S. client states, or the death squads affiliated with them.
2. In The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, 1982), Edward Herman shows that in the years 1976–81, the only massive coverage of the victimization of individuals abroad by the New York Times was of Soviet dissidents, most notably Sharansky and Sakharov (pp. 196–99), although there were numerous cases of comparable or far worse treatment within U.S. domains.
3. Computed by dividing the number of articles and CBS News reports (or column inches) devoted to Popieluszko by the number dealing with the one hundred religious victims and multiplying by 100.
4. Anthony Lewis says that the Soviet dissidents “are enough like us so that we identify with them” (“A Craving for Rights,” New York Times, Jan. 31, 1977), a partially valid point, as the vast majority of victims of U.S. foreign policy are Third World peasants, but invalid in that victims in U.S. client states as much “like us” as Soviet dissidents do not get comparable attention, as shown in the cases mentioned and the reference in note 2.
5. It is not coincidental that the U.S. secretary of state, Alexander Haig, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, actually defended the assassinations of the American women, as described below.
6. Apart from the details by the New York Times