Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [65]
We may note the failure of Time and the New York Times to mention the bruises (which both of these publications mentioned and repeated, as regards Popieluszko); the failure to mention the destruction of Jean Donovan’s face; the suppression of the degrading and degraded use of the nuns’ underwear;54 the failure to give the account of the peasants who found the bodies. These and other details given by Bonner and suppressed by Time and the New York Times (and also Newsweek and CBS News) add emotional force and poignancy to the scene. Such details are included for a Popieluszko, but not for four American women murdered by a U.S. client state. The Rogers report also pointed out that the forensic surgeons sent to the scene of the crime by the junta, at the urging of Ambassador Robert White, refused to perform an autopsy on the ground that no surgical masks were available. This touch, which would have cast the junta and its agents in a bad light, was also omitted from U.S. media accounts.
In the Popieluszko case, both the finding of the body and the trial were occasions for an aggressive portrayal of the details of the act of murder and the condition of the body. The mass-media reticence on such matters at the time of the finding of the bodies of the four women was exceeded by their restraint at the trial. Lydia Chavez, of the New York Times, who attended the trial, notes that there were eight hours of testimony and seven hours of argument that focused on the women’s work in El Salvador “and on the details of their kidnappings and deaths,” but her article gave no details whatsoever on the medical evidence.
2.4.2. LACK OF INDIGNATION AND INSISTENT DEMANDS
FOR JUSTICE
In the Popieluszko case, the press conveyed the impression of intolerable outrage that demanded immediate rectification. In the case of the murder of the four American women, while the media asserted and quoted government officials that this was a brutal and terrible act, it was not declared intolerable, and the media did not insist on (or quote people who demanded) justice. The media relied heavily on “senior officials” of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments, who expressed a more resigned view of the situation and were prepared to allow the Salvadoran system of justice to work things out. Correspondingly, the media also moved into a philosophical vein—the women, as Time points out, were “victims of the mindless, increasing violence” of El Salvador (Dec. 15, 1980). With Popieluszko, it was live government officials who committed the crime, not blind forces (that are hard to bring to book).
Even the funeral and memorial services for the women in the United States were not allowed to serve as an occasion for outrage and a demand for justice. For the most part, they were ignored and suppressed. The New York Times (Dec. 8, 1981) gave a tiny, back-page, UPI account of the memorial service for Sister Dorothy Kazel, featuring the apolitical statement by Bishop Anthony M. Pilla that “The life of a missionary has never been easy or glamorous.”
We must consider, too, that as Ambassador Kirkpatrick indicated, the victims may have been asking for it. As Newsweek observed (Dec. 15, 1980), “The violence in El Salvador is likely to focus with increasing ferocity on the Roman Catholic Church. Many priests and nuns advocate reform, and some of them are militant leftists. Such sentiments mean trouble, even for more moderate members of the clergy.” (Note here also the impersonality of “the violence”—nowhere in the article is there a suggestion that the U.S.-backed government initiated, and was doing the bulk of, the murdering.) In the case of Popieluszko, by contrast, the media never once suggested that he was a regrettable victim of escalating conflict between the state and rebellious forces (or between East and West). That situation