The press on El Salvador

...The Tennessee Register played prominently the account of Catholic missionaries" struggles in Latin America, given by Bishop Michael Murphy of Cork, Ireland, after he revisited Peru where he had served through the sixties...

...The Concord (N.H...

...In Boston, The Pilot shook its head in similar fashion over American emphasis on military measures, favoring a political solution instead: "Until the U.S...

...Central American country seems to have obliterated U.S...

...Much is accomplished...

...The most forceful editorial asked for mediation and proposed the Vatican, the UN, or the OAS as mediators -- bet not the U.S., since it has foreign military pecsonnel on Salvadoran soil...

...Complaints have recently been raised in several quarters--on the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, for instance, and in The Nation (April 25) and The Columbia Journalism Review (May-June)--that the U.S...

...You worry us, Mr...

...In some societies, of course, the reception of reformers is denunciation and arrest...

...One very important strength on the GOP side rests on the vast superiority of the Republican organizat.ion over that of the Democrats --in popular-level as opposed to fat-cat fundraising, in the GOP's ability to target and appeal to selected groups of voters with special interests, in the GOP's superior ability to search out attractive potential candidates...

...Root cause of that tiny, tormented country's murderous present conflict is seen by most of the press as the unjust division of its wealth and resources and the long oppression of its poor...

...As secular reporters have acknowledged, the church has been the principal witness to the exploitation of the poor in Latin America and the most reliable source of information about the real situation in strife-torn nations like El Salvadorl While a number of Catholic magazines along with the National Catholic Reporter and nfissionary publications have led the way in telling the Latin American church's story, the diocesan weeklies have also done a noteworthy job...

...What are the Republican chances...

...the next campaign is already under way...

...Manchester...

...There is nothing the GOP would like better than to win control of the House in 1982, and its fund-raising efforts have been stressing the fact that a switch of only twenty-six seats would do just that...

...military aid to El Salvador...

...Dollar for dollar, it said...

...Mary Ellen Leary, a previous contributor, is a West Coast But it is far more revealing of American attitudes to find this journalist and correspondent for Pacific News Service...

...Washington, according to numerous papers, should have summoned together friendly and democratic-oriented countries within this hemisphere, such as Mexico and Venezuela, to search for an El Salvador peace that would serve that nation's people and hemispheric interests, not just U.S...

...Louis Wein, editorial writer of question the government, especially on international relations...

...Register...

...some dominant in metropolitan areas, some published in rural communities, some in the backwoods--disputed the administration's assumption that El Salvador's problems should be viewed primarily in terms of a global Soviet threat...

...New Haven (Conn...

...Deep within the target institution some group of men appears to refuse to listen...

...the Republicans had jumped eight points to forty-one percent...

...policy...

...citizens, the three nuns, one social worker, and two AFL-CIO agricultural advisers...

...In fact they represent a new press attitude, independent and vigorously skeptical about national policy, and often forthright and brusque in criticizing it...

...The four great themes of reform in America over the last twenty years--civil rights, poverty, peace, and the environment--have been accompanied by loud noise and determined practical struggle...

...Some papers suggested Canadian participation in peacemaking efforts...

...selected issues...

...The other approach is to look for some more general explanation, something broadly inherent in human society, a kind of social law of momentum which would do for the world of men what physics does for the game of billiards...

...U.S...

...III This is not to say nothing is ever accomplished...

...She notes the attention paid to El Salvador by The Tidings of Los Angeles, the San Bernadino News Letter, and El Visitante, Commonweal: 296 made to obvious similarities, the surprise was that foreboding about Vietnam parallels was not the central feature of any editorial approach...

...Ideas abound for making things better...

...But the targets of reform do not surrender easily...

...The U.S...

...Similarly, among those who said without qualification that they belonged to one party or the other, the Democratic total had fallen from thirty-eight percent to thirtyfour percent...

...The Newark Advocate r~,erated Archbishop Romero's call for reforms without military means...

...But for all the undeniable progress, who among us would fail to recognize his country...

...As far back as 1972, when the Christian base communities were being established in Salvadoran parishes as a means of training Catholic lay leadership, reports about this effort and its frustrations reached Catholic readers in the U.S...

...But things do not change quickly, and above all they do not change much...

...I I I I Of several minds: Thomas Powers II IRON LAW OF INSTITUTIONS THE PENTAGON PROVIDES A STRIKING EXAMPLE W HY IS the world so hard to change...

...policy would make this crisis the start of a new and constructive Latin American approach...

...A total of twelve papers strongly urged mediation involving other nations and nine additional papers stressed the U.S...

...But the whole question of "Vietnamization" was submerged in the far more positive call for wholly different tactics by the administration...

...The Republicans hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate...

...it is the stock in trade of a whole class of writers, academics, citizens restless with the humdrum of commerce, aspirants for public office...

...A way must be found to bring the message to their very door, but alas, it is met there by expressions of sympathy, the explanation of difficulties, bland promises to consider, polite thanks for concern...

...which have expressed a willingness to mediate...

...MARY ELLEN LEARY It might be one thing to find such a coinciding pattern of views in the top half-dozen newspapers of widest circulation...

...it is liberal democracies I am talking about here...

...I am not counseling despair...

...Many papers in this February-March sampling featured repeated editorials on the subject and forcefully argued that the wise U.S...

...press has fallen short in its coverage of El Salvador...

...the Spanish-language paper published in San Antonio, Texas...

...The conscious of community attitudes...

...The growing clarity of the latter can bring on a sense of euphoria: things don't have to be this way, the alternatives are so obvious, I can help carry the message...

...interests...

...its new chairman vows to set things right and match the GOP expertise, but accomplishing this by 1982 will take some doing...

...N.H...

...Some consider dioceses heavily populated by Hispanics in California and the southwest particularly attentive to Latin American news...

...Normally the party of a sitting president loses seats in Congress in any off-year election...

...It is too early to say for sure, but this poll and others suggest that a profound change may be underway in the nation's political climate --a change, says the times, which may offer the GOP a chance to effect a classic political realignment comparable to that achieved by the Democrats under FDR in the '30s...

...the Everett (Wash...

...The best do...

...It all sounds reassuring--and so familiar...

...economic development is worth more than military aid...

...Another six had some favorable responses to the administration's actions but were dubious about the "Cold War" approach or insistent that internal El Salvador reform not be neglected...

...this has been the consistent pattern in every off-year election since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term...

...So did allegations by the wealthy that village priests involved in such efforts were "Marxists...

...One is to take some specific target of reform--the failings of public education in the inner cities, say, as reflected in declining reading scores--and analyze the hell out of it...

...Among the thirty-eight papers, five unquestioningly endorsed not only the military aid but the attendant argument that framed this in terms of staving off global Communism...

...Later came the stories of"death-squad" disruptions of churches, schools, social centers--and then assassinations...

...No increased support for a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in the public schools, for example, or for opposition to abortion...

...When the American Friends Service, after completing a seventeen-member, two-month study.tour of Central America, expressed alarm at today's parallels with events in Vietnam, the story was reported in the Catholic press -- but barely surfaced in secular papers...

...But in saying this they tend to overlook certain other distinct advantages the Republicans now possess...

...One of the most powerful statements to appear in any Catholic paper was made by San Francisco's Archbishop John R. Quinn after he t~mrned from witnessing, in San Salvador, the savage assault "on Archbishop Romero's funeral service...

...Bureau County Record...

...But cursory examination of a wide assortment of papers indicates interest is lively in dioceses remote from the Mexican border...

...e~ .'~-~,~W~L...

...Since it is we--in the broadest sense-who create these institutions, why do we find it so difficult to change them...

...However powerful and cogent the message, it is soon apparent that words alone are not enough...

...assumes the government is being led by particularly brilliant What's critical now is for the press to stay with this story...

...Wall Street Journal...

...One diocesan editor who has visited and reported on [] Salvador first hand, Fr...

...If the reformer is not to give up and go away, badly soured, he must turn dogged...

...Herald said "I am confident that press New no newspaper any longer assumes the government is attention and editorial reaction has surprised the administradisclosing all the truth about a situation and none any longer tion and compelled it to take another look at what it's doing...

...go it alone" approach...

...Pfiol" to the Vietnam War it rarely occurred to the press to Does it make a difference...

...The KnightRidder paper, the San Jose (Calif...

...At this point the world turns cussed...

...For instance, the Twin Circle Publishing coraparty's National Catholic Register usually centers upon news of the terrorist tactics on the left, and it shares admin...

...The Witness of Dubuque, Iowa, lamented the U.S...

...the Democrats lead in the House 243-to-192...

...need to develop a long-range policy towards all of Latin America...

...Much has been accomplished...

...American finesse, not force is required" said the Miami Herald...

...military aid ought to be conditioned specifically on containment of El Salvador's right-wing military forces as well as the leftist guerrillas and on continuation of needed internal reforms, political and economic...

...candidate Carter concentrated funds and attention on his own personal political fortunes to the detriment of the traditional Democratic party machinery...

...There are two ways one might answer this question...

...According to the poll, an increasing number of Americans from most population groups are calling themselves either Republicans or Republican-leaning independents...

...A consensus emerges from degree of change this constitutes in the American press was the metropolitan dailies, from rural Massachusetts, Washingemphasized by Frances Fitzgerald, author of Fire in the Lake, ton state lumber towns, mild-mannered Salt Lake City, when she wrote: Caribbean-attuned Miami, and Mexican-alert California...

...Paui-Minneapolis~for "'tottgh lines" to be taken with the El Salavador junta as a condition for aid...

...This is having a profoundly unsettling effect on many Catholics who normally consider themselves conservative and backed President Reagan to regain conservative values...

...The great themes of reform of the last generation will be the great themes of the next...

...To what extent did this cross section of editorial opinion reflect some "lesson of Vietnam...

...the Iranian hostage issue re-erupted just before the election, opening old wounds over Mr...

...There ripples through many letters from readers and through some editorials in diocesan papers a similar concern about Communist expansion in Latin America...

...It is in news coverage, whether of events in [] Salvador, local controversy over administration policy, or the background conditions in Latin America generally, that the Catholic press has stood out...

...Editorials in diocesan papers, however, have generally not been as blunt and directly critical of administration policy as those in NCR, in Catholic journals like Commonweal, and in the daily secular papers...

...The Democratic organization, on the other hand, is in a bad state of disrepair...

...marts supplies to the junta and urging peace negotiations instead...

...The Sacramento Catholic Herald has had three editorials lately opposing U.S...

...Target and program tend to emerge together...

...Given this fact, plus a very personable and popular Republican president, the Democrats might be making a big mistake if they are overly optimistic al~out their prospects in 1982...

...But editor Dan Mort-is of the Oakland diocese Catholic Voice said he has not seen a 9 single Catholic paper which actually endorses the Reagan administration's view of [] Salvador as the appropriate place to confront the Soviets or which favors sending the junta arms...

...Even more significant is the changing tide of voter opinion...

...the Democratic administration had shown itself incapable of handling the economy and especially of checking inflation...

...However a survey of editorial opinion in thirty-eight widelj diverse newspapers shows that an independent and skeptical eye is being cast on official U.S...

...Said the Sacramento Bee "Alarmist rhetoric based on simplistic East-West fears, without regard to the complex problems plaguing Central America, could create a situation neither we--nor they--can control...

...Little has been settled once and for all...

...has more choices than simply to back a military junta with arms shipments" said the Stockton Record, at the edge of California's rural Central Valley, a Mexican farmworker center...

...It was mentioned, yes...

...I Ill The press on E1 Salvador I VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE EDITOI~AI.ISTS & THE ADMINISTRATION O NE INDEX TO Critical American sentiment about the Reagan-Haig policy toward El Salvador and one measure of the degree to which American opinion-makers have learned any "lessons of Vietnam" was the outpouring of editorials during February and March of this year...

...concern about bringing to justice those who killed six U.S...

...it said, and called this "a limited view of national interests...

...MARY [] :!~N LEARY I I I 22 May 1981:297 themselves acknowledged, as a consequence of "feeling same pattern expressed all across the nation, often in papers of burned" first by an administration deceptive about Vietnam only 20,000 to 50,000 circulation, locally owned and highly and then by an administration trapped in Watergate...

...This illustrates an accumulated change, many of the editorial writers he added: "American Catholics are beginning to perceive what many in the church sense: that the center of Cathoficism is moving away from Europe to Latin America with an ever-stronger emphasis on service to the poor...

...This is the view of Joan McCarthy, twelve years a missionary in Latin America and now commanding the Latin American desk for the San Francisco archdiocesan Commission on Social Justice...

...The U.S...

...The reforming instinct, initially scattershot, begins to focus on one thing: This is the problem...

...Princeton, (I11...

...Reagan," said the Salt Lake Tribune...

...The Portland Oregonian noted that Duarte seemed willing to meet with mediators, and urged the administration to pursue this opening...

...The single point most frequently stressed in these editorials is that U.S...

...The administration was not bereft of support...

...Yet there seems to be a growing firmness of tone...

...they turn a deaf ear to the clamor without, and go their own sweet way...

...The Green Bay Catholic Compass, like many other diocesan papers, gave special prominence to the demands of Archbishop John R. Roach of St...

...1 With all the tinkering.it gets the machinery of society is rarely the same from one year to the next...

...military effort:"What a waste...

...Not all Catholic papers reflect these emphases in their reporting...

...Democratic loyalists who want to sound an optimistic note like to point out all these factors...

...Democrats still outnumber Republicans, but the Democratic lead is only half as big now as it was when last year's presidential campaign began...

...Mercury News warned "'President Reagan...

...The reason becomes plain...

...All the rest raised serious questions or sharp criticism...

...We can tell by the letters we get that this is altering previously conservative views...

...What gives the world its great power of resistance...

...Once human institutions have a grip on life--once businesses are making money, churches have a congregation, bridges are collecting tolls, apartment towers are filled with tenants, charities are soliciting funds, ports are unloading cargo, government agencies are publishing regulations, armies are in the field--they acquire the momentum of anything alive, a tenacious instinct for survival, and a protective carapace more or less impervious to outside direction...

...course...

...It is also clear that the Republicans enjoyed distinct advantages last time around: Jimmy Carter was considered an affable but ineffective president by millions of voters across the country...

...In Los Angeles, The Tidings has had four editodais on El Salvador this year, questioning President Reagan's view that Duarte heads a"moderate" government, and questioning the wisdom of shipping arms to a government tha t lets its own people be decimated by paramilitary forces...

...Things will be different in 1982, they say...

...shows willingness to support sodal and structural change, all the arms and advisors will not bring peace and justice to a troubled people...

...A great many also found it worrisome that the hurry to get additional arms to the 22 May 1981:295...

...Here the findings of a recent nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll are significant, supplying still more data to support growing Republican optimism...

...Commonweal: 298...

...A natural history of the reformer would probably describe a life cycle something as follows: in adolescence a vague sense of unease, a troubled feeling of difference...

...Followed by an unfolding conviction it is not I but the times and the things of this world which are out of joint...

...growing support for the claim that government had gone too far in interfering with business and the free enterprise system...

...The Catholic Voice of Oakland, California, for example, scooped dailies by obtaining a direct telephone interview with Jos6 Napoleon Duarte in which he labeled elections there as "the light at the end of the tunnel...

...Why do I resist...

...In Newark, New Jersey, The Advocate gave important space to a Setou Hall University "'teach-in...

...Papers that differed in their esteem for the administration's move such as the Des Moines Register (generally critical) and the Chicago Tribune (generally favorable) had in common the view that the Organization of American States should be involved in peace moves...

...Organizational superiority, then, is one big Republican advantage...

...Also very striking in this cross section of press opinion is alarm at the U.S...

...Rights are still denied, people are poor, peace eludes us, the environment is sick and threatened...

...Monitor urged consultation with other Central American nations, especially Mexico...

...In January of 1980, fiftythree percent of those polled said they were Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, while only thirty-three percent said they were Republicans or Republican-leaning independents...

...Also in San Francisco, the local Catholic press amply reported the support two Catholic bishops and an Episcopalian bishop gave a longshoremen's boycott of military cargo bound for El Salvador...

...istration alarms about Communist intrusion...

...These five were: San Diego Union...

...In the latest poll, the Democratic share had fallen to forty-nine percent...

...Since 1977, eleven priests have been killed in El Salvador, in addition to Archbishop Romero, and some sixty priests expelled or forced to flee for their lives...

...When you have an archbishop known for his championship of the poor assassinated in the midst of saying Mass, and four religious women whose lives were dedicated to serving the poor wantonly murdered, a powerfill message gets through to the American Catholic that his church is being persecuted...

...risks alienating American friends in Latin America for no discernible strategic or economic gain...

...policy at this juncture depends on a bi-polar view of world politics in which all countries are either pro-Soviet or proU.S...

...Some practical way must be found to lend weight to the words...

...So it goes, randonlly, every week...

...Carter's handling of the crisis...

...First the GOP disadvantages...

...will require a delicate, difficult political solution involving those allies who best understand the situation: Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica...

...people better informed than the rest of the nation...

...It is the priority given the poor...

...Then I I Where the real "lesson of Vietnam" revealed itself was simply in the fact that the newspaper editorials had a more informed, more independent, and more assertive tone than most editorials on foreign policy before that unhappy Southeast Asian war...

...Union Leader...

...Our own country in fact...

...James Murphy of the Sacramento Catholic Herald, remarked on the consequence of such news...

...lican, although it is becoming more conservative only on The 1980 election seems barely over, but politicos are not resting easy...

...Looking over numerous di~c~san weeklies, one discovers, fL,,st of all, how vigorously many bishops have carried to their home bases the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' forthright condemnation of U.S...

...A number proposed a 9 multi-natiou endeavor along the lines that resolved conflict in Zimbabwe...

...Remember...

...Our problem with the centrist government," he said, "is that it is not centrist enough...

...said the Louisville Courier Journal...

...Why does everyone accept...

...To an overwhelming extent, these newspapers across the country--whether large, medium, .or small in circulation...

...The unhappy reformer is now torn by anger, despair, the heartsinking prospect of the long march...

...some pointed out that West Germany or Sweden or Europe's Socialist leaders might bring the leftist leadership to the bargaining table...

...Although references were J II I I IN THE CATHOLIC PRESS EVEN MORE ON EL SALVADOR E L SALVADOR HGURES more prominently and more consistently in the Catholic press than in the secular dallies...

...The diocesan press has not hesitated to discuss El Salvador in editorials...

...One thing connects to another and three hundred pages later we see where everything went wrong, starting with the arrival of the first African slave on a Virginia tobacco plantation...