The Pope, the Press and Political Passions
Butler, Judy
One of the strongest examples of selective vision on the part of the U.S. media was their coverage of the Pope's visit to Nicaragua in March. There were actually two stories in that visit....
...It was the shout of the "voiceless" ones who have now been given a voice in this recently liberated land...
...as the Pope arrived, although that is an equally political statement in today's Nicaragua...
...press corps been open to these images, and been willing to incorporate their lessons into its coverage, a fairer and more understandable accounting of the Pope's visit might have resulted...
...one asked me...
...8. Latin America Weekly Rept, March 18, 1983, p. 11...
...9. NSAM 328, Pentagon Papers, III, p. 349...
...With unsure letters she penciled her own letter to read to you personally...
...Today, the day after your arrival in Nicaragua, Managua seems to have been to another funeral...
...Understanding a country in the process of revolutionary change is not easy...
...Holy Father, they needed you to speak for Nicara gua...
...4. Instituto Historico Centroamericano (Managua), "John Paul II in Nicaragua: Chronicle-Report on the Pope's Trip," Envio, March 1983, No...
...John Paul: Welcome to Free Nicaragua-Thanks to God and the Revolution...
...Full of hopes, they awaited you...
...This Billboard for Pope's visit to Plaza...
...Rather, it suggests that Nicaraguan reality today is complex, and the journalists assigned to this story, many of them in Nicaragua just for the day, could only comprehend what was familiar to them...
...6. ABC World News Tonight, March 9, 1981...
...5. Ibid., pp...
...She now works for El Tayacin, a weekly newspaper in Nicaragua...
...And a group of' moderate priests . .. will be looking for the pope to endorse their desire for a live-and-let-live accommodation with the Sandinistas...
...How many can easily understand a people who have recently experienced a brutal internal war in which 2% of the population died, and who are now facing the possibility of a much more costly war...
...4. Quoted in Av Westin, Newswatch: How TVDecides the News (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 199...
...They cried and made their claim in a reasonable voice...
...The fundamental link between the two stories got lost as reporters scribbled notes about finger-wagging admonitions to unrepentent priests in government, the Pope being flown in a Soviet-made helicopter and angry demands for silence to a pandemonious crowd...
...3. Time, May 9, 1983, p. 21...
...Then they dried their tears and went to meet you, certain that your message would help stop the hands that come from Honduras to shoot at Nicaragua...
...For the first time in many monthsnot without tension, certainly-one event united all of Nicaragua...
...198, 200...
...The central theme was the unity of the Church...
...6. Instituto Historico Centroamericano, "John Paul II," p. 12...
...If the Pope makes such a pronouncement, the U.S...
...The plaza was still covered with papers, with the footprints of a multitude of sheep who had sought their shepherd...
...Reflecting on the day's events and U.S...
...They asked it in the name of Jesus Christ and of the Virgin Mary...
...Why not...
...A group of mothers of "heroes and martyrs" (as they are called here), those mourning women who were at the end of the diplomatic receiving line, were happy with that white rosary that your assistant presented to them after you had already moved toward the helicopter that would take you to Le6n...
...It is worth pointing out that, by Tamayo's description, only one faction-that of the Obando opposition-had expectations incompatible with the others...
...Dina O'Connell, "Three Blind Men and a Naked Emperor" (open letter...
...Holy Father, why did you not do it...
...Is it not likely that anyone coming into Nicaragua today will only be able to describe that portion of the elephant which they immediately recognize...
...2 Journalists reported anti-government assertions by opposition spokespeople, often without qualification and usually without verification of the facts...
...Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1983...
...21, p. 9. 5. The New York Times, March 5, 1983...
...3. Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1983...
...There is neither unity, nor even hope...
...3. Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1983...
...With the Pope's visit to Poland now a matter of record, one can reflect that the Pope does not always disdain extensive chanting...
...4. Instituto Historico Centroamericano (Managua), "John Paul II in Nicaragua: Chronicle-Report on the Pope's Trip," Envio, March 1983, No...
...Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1983...
...The first had hold of the tail and promptly said that it was a snake...
...There is neither peace nor joy...
...A kiss for one of these mothers and an "Our Father" for their fallen-there are so many-would have been enough to end all the "irreverencies...
...It is for you...
...The Miami Herald editorial went so far as to state that "The common people were kept from their spiritual leader because he refused to subjugate his universal message of peace, unity and love to the political needs of the Sandinista directorate...
...And unity around the poorest...
...The Pope will defend us, he will show solidarity, we are sure of it...
...Also those poor whose faith has matured more and who are organized in base communities, catechumenical or charismatic communities, those who have seen dozens of Delegates of the Word-peasant catechists-die at the border, they too awaited you...
...And unity of all to achieve peace...
...Every day young people fall on Nicaragua's border, defending this country from those who want to return to the past...
...The mothers first asked for peace and a prayer for their dead...
...One day before you arrived in Managua and in the same plaza where you celebrated the mass, they held a service for 17 youths assassinated by somocistas on the northern border of the country...
...journalists...
...There were assertions by reporters that the sound system in the plaza had intentionally focused on the chanters in the crowd...
...I don't know if it is because I live in Nicaragua and love these people, but I couldn't continue broadcasting for the lump in my throat...
...It was a cry which the bishops themselves detected years ago as the identity of the poor of Latin America...
...Reporters moved on with the Pope, leaving Nicaragua to grapple alone with the internal consequences of the event itself, and with the international repercussions of U.S...
...Although some alluded to divisions within the Church rather than between Church and state, for example, there was little that would give a U.S...
...It reveals some of the roadsigns which might have been seen by others had they been looking for them...
...7. The New York Times, March 6, 1983...
...Tired and aghast, the people's sorrow is indescribable...
...It is least surprising that this should be true of U.S...
...The somocista guards killed him, but the Pope at least had looked at her...
...She was freed after 48 hours, thanks to pressure from the international, and particularly Spanish, press...
...aggression...
...But the Pope had given her a rosary and this consoled her...
...Sister Marjorie Tuite, a Chicago nun from the Dominican order, witnessed the mood of the crowd-in that country of 90% Catholics-change from "loving obedience to confusion, and then to anger" as they slowly understood the message behind the Pope's sophisticated words and harsh, stentorian tone...
...The divisions have been deepened and an anguished feeling of indignation, of perplexity, of deception-also of shame and guilt-tortures everyone...
...While many of the charges were investigated independently, little more was said in the major media...
...In a language difficult to understand, you spoke of unity around the bishops...
...There were peasants who signed up for the journey to the capital three days in advance...
...Nearly buried by denunciatory reporting of the "impolitic treatment of the Pope" by the Sandinista government was the fact that the Pope's homily was directed only to that faction that wanted unity under the bishops reinforced...
...2. The Miami Herald, March 6, 1983...
...I am hoping for a prayer for our dead...
...Liberal Church members, including five priests who hold top government jobs, will be sifting through the pope's words for confirmation of their concept of a church committed to the poor...
...Can I put it on now...
...The contradictory forces at work, the compressed speed of pivotal events and, particularly, the intensity of passions during such social upheaval, are all alien to those of us who live in a calmer, more stable world...
...7 Numerous independent Church sources as well as some journalists from other Western countries ascertained that the mikes had picked up the chants of 50 mourning mothers seated near the stage as special guests...
...The Miami Herald, March 18, 1983...
...It was one more among the thousands that these people, recently made literate, wrote to their Holy Father...
...I hope that he will pray for peace, so that there will be no more deaths on the border...
...I read this letter on the radio...
...It was the cry "ever more tumultuous and impressive," that "growing, impetuous and occasionally threatening cry," that is the "shout of a people who suffer and demand justice, liberty and respect for the fundamental rights of the individual and of the people...
...A prayer for our dead...
...God cannot want this huge emptiness that you left in the hearts of these people to be filled with blood, with more blood, by those who today clap their hands with glee for what happened in the 19th of July Plaza in Managua...
...THE POPE, THE PRESS AND POLITICAL PASSIONS 1. The Miami Herald, March 4, 1983...
...Dozens of doves were released and 600,000 voices shouted "Long live the Pope...
...Those who are poor and find their religious expression among the rockets and rum that come each year with the festivals for the Virgin Mary and for Santo Domingo awaited you...
...With faith in Christ and in his Church, Maria Lopez Vigil THE POPE, THE PRESS AND POLITICAL PASSIONS 1. The Miami Herald, March 4, 1983...
...Mind Men Describe an Elephant Even more fundamental than disputed details or questionable characterizations of government motivations was the narrow context set by most reporters...
...The mothers in mourning sang and followed the mass attentively, as did all the people...
...The government used up two whole months' worth of gasoline so that all who wanted to hear you in Le6n or Managua could do so...
...9. The Miami Herald (editorial), March 8, 1983...
...You insisted...
...2 Seeing Another Part of the Elephant The following is a letter to the Pope, written by a Spanish journalist who was with the press entourage which covered the visit...
...The chief message was that of a politically manipulated event orchestrated at the highest levels of the Sandinista government...
...With the rush that characterizes these necessarily pressured trips you moved on to the next point of the pre-established agenda...
...At 4:30, under a relentless sun-in which one person fainted per minute, as we could see from the press gallery-600,000 Nicaraguans waited for you in the July 19th Plaza...
...With microphone in hand I had the opportunity to follow you closely through your stay in this country, I saw you arrive at the airport, a little tired and even cold, despite the heat of this land and the protective warmth of its people...
...The third, not to be outdone, had a hold on the elephant's trunk and promptly proclaimed that it was a fire hose...
...Respectfully and with growing expectation as the homily approached...
...but were oblivious to those on the rooftop of the airport who shouted "Viva Obando...
...These women wanted prayers for their children, who had been killed by the contras, and were distressed as they realized that was not the Pope's message.' The charges went on and on, becoming particularly vituperative in the editorials that followed...
...That multitude made up the half of this country that was able enough to get to Managua, from little children to pot-bellied women to the old people...
...media coverage, a Maryknoll lay missioner working in Nicaragua used the childhood story of three blind men trying to describe an elephant...
...8. NBC Nightly News, June 5, 1983...
...Speak for Nicaragua," resonated silently the eager voices of the peasants on the border...
...When we arrived at the Cosar Augusto Silva Center to broadcast for all Nicaragua the event that was going to happen there-the meeting with the Government Junta and the leadership of the Sandinista Front-we saw again in the entrance a group of mourning women who were anxiously awaiting you...
...The second story came the day of the visit, centering on the reception the Pope received and how he related to revolutionary Nicaragua...
...We want peace...
...It was at the end of the homily, when, after having heard the word "bishops" fifteen times and never once the word "dead" or "peace," that the outcry began to escape from the hearts of those women...
...The peasants of Jalapathe war zone on the border-sang on television: "Here all of us love you...
...Many underscored the introductory speech by Comandante Daniel Ortega at the airport (the Los Angeles Times reporter called it a "23-minute diatribe against the U.S...
...6. Instituto Historico Centroamericano, "John Paul II," p. 12...
...When you got to the plaza, with the staff of the shepherd and the miter of your authority, 600,000 flags waved in the air...
...Among the mothers, doria Mercedes was the most forward...
...WHEN WORLD-VIEWS VIEW THE WORLD 1. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1955), p. 309...
...More mothers of more dead...
...The Miami Herald, March 18, 1983...
...The moral of this story is not that all journalists are blind...
...We want peace!," then "Popular Power...
...And unity of all around Jesus, who was assassinated by the Roman empire...
...Juan Tamayo, of The Miami Herald, for example, identified four groupings...
...Finally, the mothers at my side decided to go in front of the rostrum itself, facing the altar, so that you could see them...
...2. The Miami Herald, March 6, 1983...
...The basis for the first was laid by some reporters the day before the Pope's arrival, when they schematically listed the political divisions among the faithful, and the expectations each had from the Pope...
...role in Central America").' Virtually none mentioned that the strongest anti-U.S...
...The people" barely played in this profound drama, other than as "pro-govemment groups" or "opposition...
...They were dressed in mourning, and with the photo of their dead children in their hands they were saying the rosary as you arrived at the plaza...
...For a month they studied your orations in other countries and wrote letters to you expressing their problems...
...The second had the leg and just as promptly said that it was a tree trunk...
...In a tone more understandable than your words, you affirmed your authority with disquieting emphasis...
...After lifetimes of enforced quiescence, Nicaraguans since the triumph have found their voice, and use it easily in the multitude of public events-religious and secular--which now occur...
...7. The New York Times, March 6, 1983...
...There were the blue and white of the Republic, the white and yellow of the Vatican, the red and black of the Sandinistas...
...led by Managua's Archbishop Obando y Bravo will be looking to the Polish-born pope to endorse their active if subtle opposition to the Sandinistas...
...The media saw only a service "repeatedly brought to a halt-in what was apparently a planned disruption...
...I saw how they handed you a letter, in which they asked from you a word for peace and a condemnation of U.S...
...And the Church itself, polarized along the same lines, has become a prime political actor in this drama...
...Both in tone and in selection of material, the majority of reports conveyed an attitude toward the Nicaraguan government ranging from subtle disrespect to open contempt...
...9. The Miami Herald (editorial), March 8, 1983...
...You had smiled at her...
...I found myself, broadcasting on radio, just behind a group of mothers of heroes and martyrs at the left side of the gallery...
...6 (Only.Guatemala had a larger crowd, and it has three times the population of Nicaragua...
...All who wanted to could come to the plaza...
...She had lost her son...
...Perhaps you came from very far and thus were not moved...
...Nowhere else has the world's most visible spiritual leader been treated with such disrespect," said a Miami Herald editorial, "that the faith of hundreds of millions was insulted in the name of the mean little deity called Marxism...
...Perhaps the stones of that old Church you live in have become too hard with age...
...7. Peter Dahlgren with Sumitra Chakrapani, "The Third World on TV News: Western Ways of Seeing the 'Other,'' in William C. Adams, ed., Television Coverage of International Affairs (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982...
...By then the plaza was already in chaos...
...For example, they seem to have been deeply offended by those who shouted "We want peace...
...The somocista guards killed him...
...Author Maria L6pez Vigil worked for Proceso, a weekly publication of the Central American University in El Salvador until she was captured by the Salvadorean National Police in August 1981...
...The woman's eyes were full of tears as she put it around her neck, over her black dress...
...Holy Father, For many months the people of Nicaragua awaited you...
...audience any understanding of the depth and breadth of public sentiment in Nicaragua...
...was done with pleasure, in the belief that a pilgrim of peace with your social influence would show your solidarity, as so many others have done, with the just cause of a people who have suffered so much...
...speak for Nicaragua...
...All the impoverished and weak infrastructure of this "small and martyred" country (as Comandante Daniel Ortega called it on greeting you) was put at your service...
...She had lost her son...
...The Pope said nothing to us, he left us with an emptiness," a peanut vender near the plaza told me...
...And she began to do so...
...media coverage...
...Conservatives within the Church...
...Then they began to do it with shouts, with lamentations...
...You began your homily...
...21, p. 9. 5. The New York Times, March 5, 1983...
...What do you expect of the Pope...
...phrases were those of a Nicaraguan bishop in a letter to U S. Cardinal James Carl Simpson following the 1912 U S. occupation of Nicaragua, which Ortega quoted extensively 4 * Generally reported without challenge were charges by Archbishop Obando y Bravo that the Sandinistas had tried to limit attendance at the plaza.' It went unnoted that bus routes and pick-up times had been broadcast over radio for a week, and few recorded that the government had spent two months' gasoline allotment to bring an estimated 700,000 people to hear the Pope...
...government will not continue carrying on such outrages against us...
...Soon thousands and thousands and thousands of voices supported them...
...But dora Mercedes was happy...
...Dina O'Connell, "Three Blind Men and a Naked Emperor" (open letter...
...There, while the mass went on, they raised toward you the photos of their children...
...They prepared songs, painted signs, organized vigils...
...You could scarcely listen to her...
...2. Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1931), p. 238...
...government...
...The spark caught fire and the heat spread...
...Why did you open this wound in a people already so full of pain...
...In some cases, accusations were made by the reporters themselves...
...Government officials would like to portray the pontiff's visit as a blessing of sorts for the Sandinista revolution...
...Prepared only for the acceptable proprieties of the Pope's visit, and primed to see the government as the crass instigator of anything that fell outside of such proprieties, journalists could not understand the political passions of the people for what they were...
...we asked them...
...The Los Angeles Times re ported that "hecklers harassed, interrupted and hurled insults" at the Pope, while The New York Times focused more on volume and less on epithets: "Halfway through the Pope's homily, Sandinist technicians apparently connected microphones among pro-government groups to the main loudspeaker system, amplifying the cry of 'Popular Power!' so much that the Pope's words were drowned out...
...all those that you had been told couldn't come...
...Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1983...
...Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1983...
...This is the sequence of events as I witnessed them...
...Nicaraguan society has become increasingly polarized along class lines, no small thanks to the U.S...
...Not only the "Sandinistas," Holy Father...
...Virtually forgotten were the expectations reported the previous day...
...Now the Pope is going to speak, now he is going to speak...
...Had the U.S...
...Why did you do it, Holy Father...
...On the eve of your visit they prayed that God would enlighten you...
...8. Latin America Weekly Rept, March 18, 1983, p. 11...
Vol. 17 • July 1983 • No. 4
