Presswatch: Memento Eujimori
Corry, John
PR ESSWATCH by John Corry Memento Fujimori T he storming of the Japanese Embassy in Lima and the freeing of hostages was a big old-fashioned breaking news story. CNN had it first, at 4:27 P.M.,...
...Inflation declined...
...How Matthews knew this himself was unclear—he had been in Cuba only a few days, and Castro had only eighteen men with him at the time—and no one thought to ask...
...The formula here is simple: Revolutionaries are good, generals are bad, and what is actually happening in a country is irrelevant...
...A few hours later, of course, they had to reverse themselves...
...When a jubilant Alberto Fujimori, the Peruvian president, turned up at the embassy in a flak jacket, the cameras got that, too...
...A hugely successful battle had been fought against terrorists, but the Times was not pleased...
...The Times, however, would never buy that...
...He used his new power to wipe out the Shining Path, and in 1995 he was re-elected president...
...Apparently none•4 Revolutionaries are good, generals are bad, and what is actually happening in a country is irrelevant...
...The late Herbert Matthews discovered him by a campfire in 1957, and immediately got carried away...
...Fujimori, however, kept his own counsel...
...The economy failed, and Shining Path terrorists carried out bestial acts...
...for anything bad that happened...
...A few years later a cartoon in National Review showed Castro sitting atop a map of Cuba...
...Two days after the assault, it criticized Fujimori in a stern editorial...
...OiFi The American Spectator • June 1997 51...
...The Washington Post editorial at the end of that week did not mention the Times, either, when it said it found the criticism of Fujimori "more than a little offensive...
...A Wall Street Journal editorial concluded by saying, "The world, it appears, is grateful to President Fujimori...
...Times coverage of Nicaragua's Sandinistas also left something to be desired...
...Inflation then was running about 7,000 percent a year, but Fujimori ended price controls, privatized much of the economy, and lowered import tariffs...
...It is a newspaper that never learns...
...Nonetheless the formula has led to some spectacular miscalculations—Fidel Castro, for one...
...Fujimori, it said, "is now further indebted to Peru's generals...
...As a young man in Paris, he had dressed all in black, and he had played the guitar and sung folk songs in night clubs...
...I n 1990, Fujimori defeated novelist Mario Varga Llosa for the presidency...
...But the Times was going too far...
...Several stories mentioned the kidnapper, who, when the assault began, lowered his weapon, and declined to shoot a hostage...
...The caption said: "I got my job through the New York Times...
...After the successful storming of the embassy-71 of Peru's hero becomes New York Times bum of the week...
...Fujimori also waged war against the murderous Shining Path...
...But outwardly he showed little emotion...
...The charge that he was "impulse-driven" when he finally ordered the assault simply did not fit...
...There is a feeling of recrimination out there against President Fujimori," William Buckley wrote in a column, and then went on to praise him...
...The television coverage of this was revealing...
...of smoke, commandos—had been shown over and over...
...Moreover, the attack on the embassy reflected his "autocratic, impulse-driven style of governance, which many of his critics had charged was largely responsible for the long stalemate and would lead to a violent resolution of the crisis...
...First the slanted coverage, and then the grudging editorial—a journalistic counter-reaction set in...
...The Times led the way on that, too...
...The Ortegas were good, and the Somozas were bad, and there seldom was any nuance...
...Perhaps there is something in the air in Latin America: the left, even the make-believe left, always looks good...
...The press called that one wrong, too...
...In a similar situation, Bill Clinton would have shared his pain...
...He had no talent for government, however, and his presidential administration was a disaster...
...Neither Buckley nor the Journal mentioned the Times, of course...
...50 June 1997 • The American Spectator 72 hostages were freed, with one having died of a heart attack—the polls showed that his popularity rating had soared...
...It still yearns for the days when Fidel and Che were holed up in the Sierra Maestra...
...In fact, it probably was just the opposite...
...his own brother was one of the hostages...
...When Fujimori showed up at the embassy, he had come in "strutting...
...Unlike the Times, the Post had learned something...
...His great challenge now, the Times insisted, was to rein in the military, and also improve conditions in Peru's prisons...
...Many of the correspondents have been the best in the business, well deserving of their Pulitzer Prizes...
...Or so it had seemed, at least, when the story was breaking...
...Alan Garcia Perez captured press imagination when he ran for the presidency of Peru in the 1980's...
...Political logic indicates that a popular president would be less indebted to his generals, not more, and that this would be a good thing for a fragile democracy...
...In proper media circles, things are not done that way...
...Garcia had cachet, as well as a habit of blaming the U.S...
...Indeed most of the press coverage left something to be desired...
...It said he was a "stubborn authoritarian who has repeatedly used force as an instrument of grievance...
...Fujimori had refused, and opinion polls showed that the public supported him...
...Castro, he wrote, was "the rebel leader of Cuba's youth" and "a flaming symbol...
...The old distrust of Fujimori was evident in the coverage of the hostage crisis at the embassy...
...Most of them seemed to support Fujimori...
...The Tupac Amaru guerrillas who seized the hostages last December had demanded that Fujimori set free 400 of their imprisoned comrades...
...Something about him did not feel right to reporters...
...Many stories—the coverage was fulsome—suggested sympathy for the Tupac Amaru...
...On page one the next day the New York Times offered a different perspective...
...Bombings and assassinations made Lima the most dangerous capital in the Americas...
...Fujimori, the Times predicted, would now pay a price, and so would Peruvian democracy...
...But the Post, of course, was alluding to the Times...
...The hostages were released, and the good guys had won...
...Daniel Ortega may have believed his own press notices...
...By the time the evening news programs came along, the video—explosions, puffs JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...Confident of victory, he called an election...
...CNN had it first, at 4:27 P.M., and CBS and ABC were on it ten minutes later...
...17 of them had asked the Nicaraguans what they thought...
...He negotiated with the Tupac Amaru for four months, and even traveled to Cuba to request asylum for them if they released the hostages...
...Times foreign correspondents come and go, but the formula remains, and the Times applies it all over the world...
...The Cuban government did not and could not know that "thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro...
...His wife publicly denounced him...
...Perhaps he was too cold-blooded...
...The charge that the Peruvian commandos used excessive force did not fit, either...
...On election day, the correspondents on the evening news broadcasts all predicted a big Ortega victory...
...It was the perfect television story: hard news that required no interpretation...
...In 1992, he suspended the Peruvian congress, and ruled for a while by decree...
...NBC, as usual, lagged, although MSNBC, its cable operation, started coverage around 4:30, and stayed with it for an hour...
...Editorial writers insisted he was installing a dictatorship, of course, although few asked the Peruvians what they thought...
...and many revolutionaries really have been good, and many generals really have been bad...
Vol. 30 • June 1997 • No. 6
