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By Root 2809 0

that the Salvadoran government “unequivocally” was “not responsible” for the murders, evidence was soon available that showed that members of the National Guard had killed the four women. The administration then moved to the position that it was clear that the local guardsmen had “acted alone.” This was asserted and reiterated despite the absence of any supportive investigation, and important leads suggesting the contrary were ignored. A propaganda model would expect that this preferred government explanation would be honored by the mass media, and that in contrast with the Popieluszko case, where useful points could be scored by searching for villainy at the top, the mass media would now be less eager to find that which their government was anxious to avoid.

The difference between the murder of the four women and the thousands of others uninvestigated and unresolved in El Salvador was that the families of these victims were Americans and pressed the case, eventually succeeding in getting Congress to focus on these particular murders as a test case and political symbol. This forced these killings onto the political agenda. A trial and convictions were ultimately required as a condition for certification and aid to the military government of El Salvador. Both the Reagan administration and the Salvadoran military were thus obligated to “see justice done”—in this one instance. It took three-and-a-half years for justice to triumph in this one case, with a lid still kept on top-level involvement. It was a challenge to the mass media to present these murders, and the delayed and aborted outcome, in such a way as to keep indignation low and to downplay the quality of a system that murdered the women and had to be forced to find a set of low-level personnel guilty of the crime (which it took them years to do). The media met this challenge with flying colors.

2.4.1. DETAILS OF THE SAVAGERY

The finding of Popieluszko’s body was front-page news for the New York Times—in fact, the initial failure to find his body made the front page—and in all the media publications analyzed here, the details of his seizure, the disposition of his body, and the nature of his wounds were recounted extensively and with barely concealed relish (see table 2–2). These details were also repeated at every opportunity (and, most notably, at the trial). The finding of the bodies of the four women, by contrast, was a backpage item in the Times, and in all four of the media institutions in our sample the accounts of the violence done to the four murdered women were very succinct, omitted many details, and were not repeated after the initial disclosures. No attempt was made to reconstruct the scene with its agony and brutal violence, so that the drama conveyed in the accounts of Popieluszko’s murder was entirely missing. The murder of the four churchwomen was made remote and impersonal.

The Time account, for example, after giving the names of the victims, says, “Two of the women had been raped before being shot in the back of the head.” The New York Times account, shown in table 2–2, is also quite succinct. The Rogers Commission report pointed out that one of the victims had been shot through the back of the head with a weapon “that left exit wounds that destroyed her face.” The Rogers report also noted that those present at the disinterment found “extensive” wounds and that “the bodies were also bruised.” Raymond Bonner’s account, in Weakness and Deceit, noted that

In the crude grave, stacked on top of each other were the bodies of four women. The first hauled out of the hole was Jean Donovan, twenty-seven years old, a lay missionary from Cleveland. Her face had been blown away by a high calibre bullet that had been fired into the back of her head. Her pants were unzipped; her underwear twisted around her ankles. When area peasants found her, she was nude from the waist down. They had tried to replace the garments before burial. Then came Dorothy Kazel, a forty-year-old Ursuline nun also from Cleveland. At the bottom of the pit were Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford,