Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [273]
88. LASA, Report, p. 2.
89. This was partially true, as the Sandinistas were trying to alter their image. But the same was true in El Salvador, with the added problem that the election was held in an environment of ongoing state terror. Time never used the word “theatre” to describe either of the two Salvadoran elections.
90. As in 1982, the FMLN carried out no military operations directed at the election-day process, and made no threats against Salvadoran voters. But as in 1982, this has no impact on Time reporting. The real threats, broadcast to voters in Nicaragua by contra radio, and the several contra killings of poll watchers, were never reported by Time.
As we have noted, the stress on superficialities like long lines is part of the propaganda agenda for a demonstration election. So is blacking out the fact that the length of the lines might be a function of the restricted number of voting booths, as was the case in El Salvador. Time provides both the emphasis on long lines and the suppression of relevant evidence on why the lines were so long. See Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, pp. 126–27.
91. Cruz was mentioned by Kinzer in eleven, and quoted, usually at some length, in five, of the fourteen articles he wrote on the Nicaraguan election; disruption and harassment are mentioned or featured in seven of the articles.
92. See particularly his “Sandinista Is Favored but Runs Hard” (Oct. 30, 1984), “Going Through the Motions in Nicaragua” (Nov. 4), and “Sandinistas Hold Their First Elections” (Nov. 5).
93. We will see below that Time even tries to make out a coercive threat that produced the vote in Nicaragua.
94. See the quotation from Warren Hoge given above, on p. 108.
95. These points were discussed in the LASA report, as we note below, but for Kinzer and the rest of the mass media, they were off the agenda.
96. Note that the exact opposite is true in the United States, reflecting the recognition on the part of the general public in both societies of who stands to gain through the electoral process.
97. The rate was, in fact, far higher than in the 1984 U.S. presidential election, in which just over half the electorate participated.
98. “Sandinistas Hold Their First Election,” New York Times, November 5, 1984.
99. Duarte is quoted to this effect by Edward Schumacher in the New York Times, February 21, 1981.
100. On April 23, 1985, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Cruz was on the CIA payroll. Oliver North then took over his financing, hoping that this might divert attention from the fact that Cruz had been funded by the CIA during the period when the U.S. government was trying to discredit the Nicaraguan elections. See Stephen Engelberg, New York Times, July 15, 1987.
101. Stephen Kinzer, “Ex-Contra Looks Back Finding Much to Regret,” New York Times, January 8, 1988. Cruz now expresses the belief that the anti-Sandinista coalition (the Coordinadora) that nominated him “was dominated by people who never intended to go through with an election campaign,” and “sought to embarrass the Sandinistas by withdrawing.”
102. See note 91, above, and tables 3–2 and 3–3, below.
103. Philip Taubman, “U.S. Role in Nicaragua Vote Disputed,” New York Times, October 21, 1984. Robert McCartney, in the Washington Post of June 30, 1984, stated that “Opposition leaders admitted in interviews that they never seriously considered running in the Nov. 4 election but debated only whether to campaign for two months and then withdraw from the race on grounds that the Sandinistas had stacked the electoral deck against them.”
104. Lord Chitnis, a veteran British election observer who attended the Salvadoran election on behalf of the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, noted that “First, and crucial to the whole standing of the exercise, was the fact that no politicians to the left of the Christian Democrats [PDC], and not all of them, were free to contest the election