Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [294]
116. For many earlier cases, see PEHR, 11.6, and Vickery, Cambodia.
117. And, significantly, comparable and ongoing atrocities for which the United States bore primary responsibility were suppressed (and still largely are), with shameful apologetics when the facts could no longer be denied.
CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSIONS
1. Lewis, “Freedom of the Press—Anthony Lewis Distinguishes Between Britain and America,” London Review of Books, November 26, 1987. Lewis is presenting his interpretation of the views of James Madison and Justice Brennan (in the case of The New York Times v. Sullivan that Lewis describes as the “greatest legal victory [of the press] in modern times”), with his endorsement.
2. See, among others, N. Blackstock, ed., COINTELPRO (New York: Vintage, 1976); Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System (New York: Knopf, 1980); Robert J. Goldstein, Political Repression in America (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1978); Morton H. Halperin et al., The Lawless State (New York: Penguin, 1976); Christy Macy and Susan Kaplan, eds., Documents (New York: Penguin, 1980).
3. The diffused-cost cases would include the multi-billion-dollar outlays borne by the taxpayers for CIA covert operations and the subsidization of client regimes, the overhead costs of empire and the arms race, the enormous ripoffs by the military-industrial complex in providing unneeded weapons at inflated prices, and the payoffs to campaign contributors in the form of favorable tax legislation and other benefits (e.g., the huge tax bonanzas given business following Reagan’s election in 1981, and the increase in milk prices given by Nixon in 1971 immediately after substantial gifts were given by the milk lobby to the Republican party).
4. In fact, the scandals and illegalities detailed by the Tower Commission and congressional inquiries were largely known long before these establishment “revelations,” but were suppressible; see Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (Boston: South End Press, 1988).
5. See also the preface. On the persistence of the elite consensus, including the media, through the period of the Iran-contra hearings and beyond, see Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism.
6. Laurence R. Simon and James C. Stephens, Jr., El Salvador Land Reform 1980–1981, Impact Audit (Boston: Oxfam America, February 1981), p. 51, citing Ambassador Robert White and land-reform adviser Roy Prosterman on “the Pol Pot left”; Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit (New York: Times Books, 1984), p. 88, citing Ambassador White, and p. 207, citing Archbishop Rivera y Damas, who succeeded the assassinated Archbishop Romero. Jeane Kirkpatrick, “U.S. Security and Latin America,” Commentary (January 1981).
7. Washington Post, May 21, 1987. The “genocide” to which Buckley refers is “of the Miskito Indians,” of whom perhaps several dozen were killed by the Sandinistas in the context of attacks by U.S. mercenary forces, at a time when the U.S.-backed Guatemalan military were in the process of slaughtering tens of thousands of Indians, but not committing “genocide” by Buckley’s lights.
8. Although, as we noted, with little constraint on passing along useful fabrications and rumors, even relaying tales long conceded to be fabrications.
9. W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion, 2d ed. (New York: Longman, 1988), pp. 178–79.
10. Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), p. x.
11. Edgar Chamorro, who was selected by the CIA as press spokesman for the contras, describes Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times as “like an errand boy, building up those stories that fit in with Reagan’s agenda—one day it’s the church, the next day the Miskitos, then the private sector. In the last two weeks I’ve seen at least eight articles by Kinzer which say exactly what the White House wants. Kinzer always raises questions about Sandinista intentions, whether they’re truly democratic, and so on. When you analyze his articles you see