Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [271]
62. In the July 1, 1984, election for a constituent assembly, null and blank votes exceeded those of any party and were a staggering 26 percent of the total.
63. IHRLG, Report, p. 54.
64. This procedure was put into the rules at the request of several opposition parties (LASA, Report, p. 15).
65. The media generally suppressed the fact that the number of voting booths was sharply restricted in 1982, allegedly for security reasons but making for longer lines.
66. “Media Coverage of El Salvador’s Election,” Socialist Review (April 1983), p. 29.
67. “Salvadorans Jam Polling Stations; Rebels Close Some,” New York Times, March 29, 1982.
68. See further, Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 164–67.
69. Warren Hoge did quote García, but only to suggest an open election: “Without any lies, you can see here what it is that the people want …” (“Salvadorans Jam Polling Stations,” New York Times, Mar. 29, 1982).
70. Eleven days before the 1982 election, four Dutch journalists were murdered by the Salvadoran security forces. The foreign press corps was trooped into the morgue to see the bodies, whose ripped genitals were exposed to media view. This episode—described in the 1984 documentary film In the Name of Democracy—was suppressed in the U.S. mass media, led to no large outcries and generalizations about the qualities of the Salvadoran government, and may have contributed to the remarkable silence of journalists in El Salvador on the unfavorable media (as well as other) conditions in the incipient democracy.
71. “Salvador Vote: Uncertainty Remains,” April 3, 1982.
72. The Times devoted an entire article to the Salvadoran chief of staff ’s promises that “his troops would provide adequate security for the election of March 25” (1984); Blandon is quoted as saying “I’m giving you the assurance that there will be secure elections for all of the country” (Lydia Chavez, “Salvadoran Promises Safe Election,” New York Times, Mar. 14, 1984).
73. Time, July 16, 1984. “Moderation” is a favorite media word in descriptions of demonstration elections. Newsweek’s article of May 7, 1984, on Duarte and the Salvadoran election of May 1984 is entitled “El Salvador: A Miracle of Moderation.” For a discussion of some of the ways in which the media use the word “moderate,” see Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism, (Boston: South End Press, 1988), chapter 2.8.
74. The Guatemalan extreme right-wing leader, Mario Sandoval Alarcón, often described as the godfather of the death squads in Central America, was present at Reagan’s first inauguration, met with his defense and foreign-policy advisers, and claimed that “verbal agreements” were entered into at that time to cut back on criticism of Guatemalan human-rights abuses and to renew military aid. See Marlise Simons, “Guatemala: The Coming Danger,” Foreign Policy (Summer 1981), p. 101; Scott Anderson and John Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking Exposé of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the Anti-Communist League (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986), p. 175; and Alan Nairn, “Controversial Reagan Campaign Links with Guatemalan Government and Private Sector Leaders,” Research Memo for Council on Hemispheric Affairs, October 30, 1980, p. 11.
75. The Polish election of January 1947 was so designated by the U.S. mass media, although Polish state terrorism was much less severe than that of Guatemala in 1984–85. See Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 173–80.
76. Council on Hemispheric Affairs, News and Analysis, February 6, 1987.
77. We may be quite certain that Time will not assert that “Much of the killing in Afghanistan is linked to General Zakov’s success against the insurgents.”
78. For evidence of the