Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [96]
The mass media’s sourcing on the Guatemalan election was confined almost entirely to U.S. officials and official observers, the most prominent Guatemalan political candidates, and generals. Spokespersons for the insurgents—what in Nicaragua would be labeled the “main opposition”—the smaller parties, spokespersons for popular organizations, the churches, human-rights groups, and ordinary citizens, were essentially ignored by the media. Time, Newsweek and CBS News almost never talked to ordinary citizens or spokespersons for the insurgents. Stephen Kinzer, in the Times, had only one citation to a rebel source in several dozen articles on Guatemala during the election periods, although on election day in 1984 he did speak with a number of ordinary citizens (who gave a much less optimistic view than Kinzer’s usual sources).
The restricted menu of media sources flows from and reinforces the media’s propensity to adopt a patriotic agenda. U.S. government officials and observers are always optimistic and hopeful in their statements about sponsored elections. The leading contestant politicians are also moderately optimistic, as they have a good chance of acquiring at least nominal power. They do, however, express occasional doubts about whether the army will relinquish power. This allows the election drama to assume a slightly different character from that in El Salvador, where it was the democratic army “protecting the election” versus the undemocratic rebels who refused to lay down their arms and participate. In Guatemala, the frame was: Will the generals keep their promise to stay in the barracks? The triumph is that they do stay in the barracks—a civilian president takes office and now “rules.” The media then quickly drop the subject, so that whether the army really does relinquish power to the civilian leaders is never checked out (just as the “peace” sought by the populace in El Salvador was never considered in retrospect). In Poland, in January 1947, and Nicaragua, in 1984, and in enemy states generally, the focus was on the substance of power, and the extent to which that power shaped the electoral results in advance, as by limiting the ability of important constituencies to run for office and compete effectively. Not so for Guatemala.
If the mass media had enlarged their sources, fundamental conditions would have assumed greater prominence. For example, before both the July 1, 1984, and December 1985 elections in Guatemala, the Guatemala Bishops’ Conference issued pastoral statements that suggested in no uncertain terms and with detailed arguments that conditions in the country were incompatible with a free election. Its pastoral letter of June 8, 1984, focused on the civil-defense patrols as “susceptible to manipulation,” and it discussed the disappearances, “insatiable corruption,” and the fact that sociopolitical structures are “not capable of promoting the welfare of the whole society.”79 Stephen Kinzer mentioned this report in a Times news article of July 22, 1984, but his reference is made after the election of July 1, and Kinzer did not use it to frame the discussion of electoral conditions and to arrive at an assessment of the quality of the election. Furthermore, his summary of the twenty-seven-page report, that it “denounced torture, electoral fraud, concentration of wealth and ‘massacres of entire families,’” ignores the quite specific critique of the conditions bearing on an election. Time mentioned this pastoral letter briefly; Newsweek and CBS News never mentioned it.
In connection with the 1985 election, the bishops put forth another powerful statement, once again questioning whether an election can be meaningful in “a situation close to slavery and desperation.”80 They point out that the civil-defense patrols, the “ideology of national security,” and hunger and impoverishment are not conducive to serious elections:
In order that the longed-for results