Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [93]
In Nicaragua, while registration was obligatory, voting was not required by law. Voter-registration cards presented on election day were retained by election officials, so that the failure to vote as evidenced by the lack of a validated voter credential could not be used as the basis of reprisals.64 Most of the voters appeared to LASA observers to be voting under no coercive threat—they did not have to vote by law; they were urged to vote but not threatened with the designation of “traitors” for not voting; there were no obvious means of identifying nonvoters; and the government did not kill dissidents, in contrast to the normal practice in El Salvador and Guatemala.
In sum, Nicaragua did not have a potent coercion package at work to help get out the vote—as did the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments.
3.4. EL SALVADOR: HOW THE U.S. MEDIA
TRANSFORMED A “DERANGED KILLING MACHINE”
INTO THE PROTECTOR OF AN INCIPIENT DEMOCRACY
In reporting on the 1982 Salvadoran election, the U.S. mass media closely followed the government agenda. The personalities of the candidates, the long lines waiting to vote, alleged rebel disruption, and “turnout” were heavily featured.65 As Jack Spence pointed out, “every media outlet, particularly the networks, cast the election-day story in a framework of voting in the midst of extensive guerrilla violence at polling places.”66 Warren Hoge and Richard Meislin, of the New York Times, repeated day after day that the rebels were threatening disruption, Hoge asserting that “The elections have taken on a significance beyond their outcome because leftist guerrillas mounted a campaign to disrupt them and discourage voters from going to the polls.”67 This is a precise statement of the government’s propaganda frame. But Hoge and Meislin never once cited a rebel source vowing disruption, and nobody else did, either. On election day no voters were killed or polling stations attacked, and the general level of rebel military activity was below average. In short, the disruption claims were falsifications of both plans and election-day results, but as they fit the patriotic agenda they were given prominence, repeated frequently, and used to establish the contest between the forces of good and evil.68 At the election-day close, Dan Rather exclaimed, “A triumph! A million people to the polls.” Rather did not regard it as a triumph that the Sandinistas got 700,000 people to the polls—a higher proportion of the population, and without a voting requirement. The propaganda frame of the government gave turnout high importance in the Salvadoran election but none in the Nicaraguan election, and Rather followed like a good lap dog.
Neither Rather nor any other media analyst on or before March 30, 1982, noted that voting was required by law in El Salvador, and not one mentioned the warning by the defense minister, General Guillermo García, in the San Salvador newspapers that nonvoting was treasonous.69 The basic parameters were entirely off the media agenda. The destruction of La Crónica and El Independiente and the murder of twenty-six journalists prior to the election were unmentioned in discussing the election’s quality and meaning.70 The army and its allies had been killing civilians on a massive scale in El Salvador, for many months before (and into) March 1982. Would this not create a climate of fear and, in conjunction with a state of siege, somewhat encumber free debate and free choice? The point was rarely even hinted at in the mass media.
Could candidates run freely and campaign without fear of murder? Could the rebels qualify and run? After all, if it was a civil war, the rebels were clearly the “main opposition.” Again, the mass media played dumb. They pretended that this exclusion was not important, or that it represented a willful boycott by the rebels rather than a refusal based on conditions unfavorable to a free election