WHITEWASHING DUARTE U.S. Reporting on El Salvador

...press in El Salvador during the first year and a half of the Duarte government has left Americans vastly uninformed and unprepared for the events that Central America still has in store...

...In reporting the shipment of several U.S.-made AC47 flying gun platforms to the Salvadorean Air Force (a craft "capable of firing up to 18,000 rounds per minute"), Cody stood logic on its head and argued that by sharply escalating its firepower the Salvadorean Air Force could be saving lives...

...Moreover, the reporter who breaks from the chorus is more likely to be held suspect by superiors than lauded for taking initiative...

...That action, which contradicted the speculation that the FMLN had been immobilized in the countryside, provoked not a single article re-assessing the military balance of power...

...How much simpler it would have been to combine both sentences and report that witnesses, regardless of their political preference, accuse the Air Force of attacking civilian targets...

...The fear of losing one's credibility is what urges reporters to favor official U.S...

...President Duarte is the third force personified...

...lignt weeks later Cody s colleague Robert McCartney virtually reproduced the same story: "Old foes on both right and left have battled President Jos6 Napole6n Duarte with renewed vigor . . . and have taken away some of the momentum [toward reform...

...When guerrillas opened fire on a crowded San Salvador cafe killing four U.S...

...That Duarte had presided over the government junta during the bloodiest period of state terror in Salvadorean history was not seen as a possible impediment to his self-proclaimed role as reconciler and reformer...

...On May 17 Cody at The Post affirmed that a shift in guerrilla tactics "reflects the guerrillas' inability to sustain frequent direct engagements with the Salvadorean military...

...Peace Talks: Who Spoke First...

...reports concentrated on brutal and bloody operations carried out by Salvadorean troops against civilian populations...

...press is derogatory...

...Coverage of the two rounds of peace talks was consistently tilted to re-enforce the frame that Duarte, the peacemaker, was going the extra mile to accommodate intransigent guerrillas...

...In the 1980-1984 period, dozens of U.S...

...Dennis Volman of The Christian Science Monitor at least hinted at that possibility when he wrote that U.S...

...Nor was a single article to be found analyzing the nature of Duarte's alliance with the military establishment...

...and participate peacefully in the already established political order...

...Julio Rey Prendes...

...Ironically, the base is located in the rural province of La Uni6n, about as far from the capital as you can get in El Salvador...

...Even this article adopts an overly cautious approach to the subject of civilian casualties...

...The armed forces, continued McCartney, "gradually have curbed the use of brutal tactics...

...Concurrently, much coverage was given the inability of the inefficient military to gain substantial ground against FMLN forces...

...There is also an undeniable ideological pressure...

...Marines as well as a number of civilians on June 19, 1985, Salvadorean government spokespersons wrote off the attack as a sign of guerrilla weakness, frustration and, ultimately, desperation...

...Duarte was celebrated as a "moderate," a "moderate centrist," as the country's "first democratically elected president," and James LeMoyne of The New York Times called the new president a "liberal...

...Both sides, goes the argument, have guns...

...Duarte's election campaign, his resulting ascendancy to chief of state, two rounds of peace talks and new developments in the war between El Salvador's U.S.-advised Army and insurgents led by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) provided the U.S...

...In the post-mortem coverage of the talks, however, the rebel negotiating position was labelled only as "hard line," "intransigent," "tough" and "uncompromising...

...The fascination with "bang-bang" is perhaps best expressed by this telex from the AP home office sent to its San Salvador bureau: "WILL NEED STEPPED UP VOLUME OF PHOTO COPY FROM SALVADOR, PARTICULARLY VIOLENCE-RELATED...

...Edward Cody of The Washington Post wrote that Duarte was being hamstrung because he had to operate with "one eye on extreme rightists maneuvering to lure the Army back into government and another on leftist rebels fighting to make a revolution...

...In the current political atmosphere, it would also be naive to deny the stigma that any reporter would risk if he or she filed stories that could be construed as in any way sympathetic to a leftist insurgency...

...Contrast these statements with a Los Angeles Times report filed the same week as Christian's...

...Williams went on to describe the levelling effects of the government's campaign in Morazdn province...

...During the 19-month period under study, the five newspapers ran only a dozen articles on the air war...

...merging the guerrilla army with government forces...

...Downplaying the human cost of the government bomb and sweep campaign was perhaps made clearest in a Post article written September 1, 1984 by Edward Cody...

...Duarte, nonetheless, has been absolved by the U.S...

...During one of my recent reporting trips to San Salvador, one correspondent for a major daily scoffed at covering the regular vigil of the Committee of Mothers of the Disappeared...

...After years of Army sweeps and frequent aerial bombing and artillery attacks, it is a wonder that anyone besides the guerrillas still lives in the battle zones...

...But when several times that number of civilians were killed by government warplanes, reporting was scarce...

...But during 1985 an altered news frame developed...

...Little on-site reporting was done to evaluate the real effects of the bombing campaigns, even though much of the Air Force activity was centered in the Guazapa area, only 25 miles by air from the capital...

...he is sincerely interested in bringing the war to a halt...

...At the November 30 meeting, the FMLN presented a 3-point proposal calling for a broad-based transitional government...

...With only one exception, the five newspapers characterized Duarte's response as a "peace plan...

...But in the case of Duarte his "left of center" credentials and his alleged "conciliatory rhetoric" toward guerrillas were highlighted by The Washington Post as positive signs of Duarte's differences with the country's traditional civilian and military right wing...

...Williams of the Los Angeles Times ventured into Cabafias province in August 1984 to follow up on rebel charges "that government planes routinely bomb civilian concentrations and that government troops slaughter civilians at random...

...officials complained of his critical reports...

...Americas Watch claimed that indiscriminate Air Force attacks were "causing many civilian deaths" during 1984...

...An analysis of more than 800 articles taken from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Timnes, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and The Miami Herald stretching from March 1984 through October 1985, reveals that the Salvador story was no longer being reported as one of repression, escalating war and massive human rights violations, but rather as one of hope for peace and democratic renaissance...

...reporting on that country underwent a notable shift...

...Yet no one raised the possibility that this political alliance might have been a prerequisite for Duarte's presidency...

...Commonly held viewpoints among reporters can easily be confused for universal truths...

...government abuses that had marred the past were coming to an end...

...congressional liberals were discomforted that Duarte re-appointed Defense Minister General Carlos Vides Casanova...

...His promises to curb human rights abuses were taken at face value, rarely challenged, followed up or researched...

...spondents and reporters based in San Salvador became a chorus singing the praise of Administration policy, policy that had been shrewd enough to back El Salvador's new redeemer...

...Reynaldo L6pez Nuila, had just finished serving as head of the National Police, an agency responsible for countless cases of political murder and disappearances...

...When correspondent Williams arrives in the village he is investigating he finds "Half a dozen skeletons" as well as "Fourteen spent cartridges . . . some distance away, but none near the bodies...

...For one, reporters are under a myriad of pressures...

...Perceptions are confirmed and re-confirmed with every conversation they have with colleagues...

...The Washington Post did note the attack was a "sharp departure" from what had become a trend in guerrilla activity...

...And once the guerrillas had failed to live up to the impossible standards set for them by some U.S...

...Both understand only violence...

...But the evidence that troops have massacred the villagers is juxtaposed with Williams' statement : "It is difficult to know exactly what happened...

...Policy in Place Duarte's inauguration in June 1984 and his Christian Democratic Party's victory in the congressional elections the following March brought to a crescendo the volume of news reports characterizing El Salvador as a budding democracy...

...The case in point is the well-known saga of former New York Times reporter Ray Bonner who was virtually forced from his job after U.S...

...Reporters run in packs and have much more in common with each other than with the people they cover...

...Not explained by these reports was the daring July 13 raid by guerrillas that freed some 150 political prisoners from Mariona prison located on the outskirts of the capital...

...The man appointed to head the Treasury Police, Lt...

...Vides Casanova had long been associated with the most conservative elements in the military establishment and had served as director of the National Guard when it was engaged in a series of bloody attacks against the rural population...

...There has also been a variation of what can be called "The God That Failed Syndrome" affecting many of the veteran Salvador correspondents...

...The performance of the U.S...

...officials here say that the people sometimes place themselves in harm's way...

...the comer had finally been turned in the war against the insurgents...

...The "guerrillas seem to have stumbled," LeMoyne of The New York Times wrote on May 19...

...New York Times reporter Shirley Christian filed a story-one highly representative of 8.- r" a . The Duarte presidency: A media event the bulk of U.S...

...LeMoyne relates the testimony of bombing victims from the Guazapa volcano-' 'all of whom described themselves as rebel supporters...

...He has suffered at the hands of the right but he despises communism...

...reporters, the insurgents found themselves villainized in a flow of articles over the last year from reporters ending their tour of Salvador duty...

...The reporting on Duarte's first months in office spent hundreds of column inches on his promises to end political killings and investigate death squads, virtually ignoring Duarte's political record...

...Why U.S...

...Both kill each other...

...transplanting civilians who support guerrillas from combat zones to government-controlled areas...

...In general, being labelled anything left of center in the U.S...

...It's the same old tired show they put on every other Friday...

...President Duarte was uncritically accepted as a centrist, a democrat, a last grasp for peace...

...Yet three years lateron October 8, 1984-when President Duarte announced he would meet with insurgent leaders the following week in La Palma, he was credited with launching a "bold peace initiative...

...Of more than 30 articles on el dialogo that appeared in the five papers in this study, only one report mentioned, in passing, that the initiative was not Duarte's but the FMLN's...

...Chavez gushed: " . . . the government appointed political moderates to command the National Police and the Treasury Police and created the post of a second Deputy Minister of Defense in charge of the security forces...

...To substantiate her claim of reform, Chavez, however, quoted only the director of the Treasury Police, "Salvadorean officials," a "high ranking military officer" and Duarte's closest adviser...

...The bulk of U.S...

...In a close parallel with the official State Department view, press coverage tended to ignore the fact that Duarte was nominally head of the military-civilian junta from December 1980 to May 1982, a time when as many as 1,000 civilians a month were being killed by government and para-governmental forces...

...CorreMarc Cooper, afree-lance journalist, has w'on seven awards for his reporting on El Salvador...

...The War: Light in the Tunnel No aspect of reporting on El Salvador since Duarte's ascendancy has shifted more radically than coverage of the war itself...

...Months after his inauguration-with the near totality of his promised reforms a dead letter-Duarte was still not charged with complicity in retrograde policy, but portrayed only as a victim of it...

...He was careful, however, to "balance" that charge with: "U.S...

...Media headquarters: San Salvador's Camino Real Hotel Rinaldo Golcher, had previously headed up the U.S.-planned counterinsurgency program in San Vicente province...

...Embassy, faithfully sitting in on the hand-out "briefing" by the head of the U.S...

...In private conversations, some of these reporters would reveal a Manichaean vision that tended to romanticize the guerrillas as possessing all those human qualities-mercy, compassion, reason and sensitivitythat apparently were lacking among the government forces...

...This partnership began in 1980 when liberals within Duarte's party broke with the governing junta and eventually joined the armed opposition...

...The exception was Chris Norton, who in The Monitor referred to Duarte's "hard line" which had "somewhat reassured" and "relieved" the Salvadorean Right...

...I did their story a long time ago," he complained to me...

...The decades-long history of insurgency and counterinsurgency has been neatly collapsed into the facile and supremely cynical conclusion that both sides-Army and guerrillas-are basically the same...

...press was swept off its feet by the San Salvador-Washington bubble machine...

...employing the "classic counterinsurgency tactic...

...In The New York Times, correspondent Christian concurred: " . .. El Salvador's armed forces have moved away from methods that gave them a reputation as a corrupt and repressive institution...

...But the "political moderates" she was referring to were, in reality, two figures tied intimately to well-publicized military abuses in the preDuarte period...

...Duarte: A Force for Reason U.S...

...They are reporters who, three and four years ago, cut their teeth in El Salvador filing reports when the press was at its most critical juncture...

...reporting in the wake of the cafe killings-in which she supported the government's claim: "the attack was proof that leftist guerrillas were turning to violence in the cities because of their inability to defeat the Salvadorean Army on rural battlefields...

...Most of these articles routinely announced increased shipments of U.S.-made gunships to the Salvadorean Air Force...

...The FMLN-FDR rebel coalition had first proposed an unconditional dialogue with the Salvadorean government in October 1981 when Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega made the announcement on their behalf in front of the UN General Assembly...

...Aerial bombardments were largely ignored by U.S...

...press reporting on El Salvador in the 19-month period beginning with Jos6 Napole6n Duarte's campaigning for the presidency, has veered closer to the Reagan Administration's position than ever before...

...Editors back home know little of the complexities of Central America and are prone to grasp at readily digestible formulas: East versus West, democracy versus communism, moderation versus extremism...

...In the countryside, reported Dan Williams, the Salvadorean Army had created "free-fire zones...

...The AC47's were "highly accurate," more so than the jets that had been used by the Air Force, Cody wrote, and therefore, legitimate targets could be better distinguished...

...LeMoyne wrote in The New York Times that the Salvadorean Air Force had assumed "an essential role" in the war and had "almost doubled in size" since the election of Duarte...

...And the new deputy defense minister, Col...

...His comprehensive interview with President Duarte appeared in the November 1984 issue of Playboy...

...recognize the legitimacy of his government...

...There is also the pressure on reporters to cover the day's dramatic event at the expense of historical analysis...

...In what can only be described as tortured language, LeMoyne does add that "Witnesses who are not rebel supporters have also recounted incidents in which the Air Force appears to have violated its rules of engagement prohibiting attacks on civilians...

...On June 2, 1985, McCartney wrote in The Post that a number of government political and military moves "had combined to calm the turmoil" in El Salvador...

...The "desperate guerrillas" theme became dominant in reporting on the war during the summer and fall of 1985...

...JANUARYIMARCH t986 9 I JANUARYMARCH 1986 9It was not until July 18, 1985, more than three years after the government turned to frequent and escalating aerial bombardments, that a major article appeared attempting to sum up the effects of the air war...

...press with an opportunity to issue a cascade of unusually cheery reports...

...At a time when the Salvadoran military was cranking into high gear-mostly in the air-and civilian casualties were once again starting to mount, a number of journalists were reporting the opposite...

...coverage of a place like El Salvador tends to be so supportive of official positions is not easily explained...

...As Duarte solidified an obvious political pact with the military Right, by whose good graces he is allowed to govern, the press still saw him as a fiercely independent "third force...

...correspondents, as was the government's campaign to create free-fire zones...

...Duarte countered by demanding that the rebels disarm...

...Often the reports included a reference to criticism of the aerial bombardments by San Salvador's archbishop, Arturo Rivera y Damas...

...The Washington Post's dialogue "situationer" contrasted Duarte's "good intentions" with the assertion that "guerrilla leaders appear to be firmly committed to revolutionary Marxism" and that it is doubtful "that Duarte would be able to persuade the Left to give up its battle in order to participate in the elections...

...Military Group...

...press of any responsibility in the death of the peace talks...

...Michael Berlin, UN reporter for The Washington Post wrote in the twenty-first of twenty-two paragraphs in his story filed the day of Duarte's announcement: "the Left . . . repeatedly has proposed a dialogue, and has criticized Duarte for reneging on his earlier promise of one...

...They skillfully balanced some of their natural sympathy for the underdogs-the insurgents-with the considerably more conservative exigencies of their editors...

...As proof that the United States had finally found its long-sought-after democratic center, Lydia Chavez of The New York Times applauded how Duarte "streamlined and restructured" the armed forces...

...The glaring deficiencies of his regime were shrugged off as matters beyond his control...

...And not one article speculated that the government might be trying to win a war in the air that it could not win on the ground...

...Eighteen months earlier, long before the talks were catapulted into the spotlight, The Miami Herald had reported that rebel leaders were "complaining that their calls for negotiations . . . were falling on deaf ears...

...But the realities of warfare permit no such flights of fancy...

...Coverage that over the previous years had been critical of-at times pessimistic about-Reagan Administration policy in the area, began to read more like State Department PR...

...reporting during the 19-month period under study shares some basic news frames: Duarte is a genuine democrat and reformer...

...No article pointed out that Duarte had in effect called for a rebel surrender...

...Both are led by imperfect men...

...And on October 10, 1985, an estimated 300 guerrillas staged what was already considered to be an impossible feat and attacked the Salvadorean Army's main military base, killing and wounding more than 100 government soldiers...

...The major U.S...

...In whatever context Duarte was viewed, the focus was always on him as the force for reason, moderation and progress...

...When the guerrillas killed 13 people at a cafe it was interpreted as a sign of government military superiority...

...and fresh elections...

...At the second round of talks-held November 30, 1984-an impasse was reached that to date has not been overI REPORT ON THE AMERICAS come...

...But that same reporter was to be found every Thursday at the U.S...

...FOR MORE PIX...

...VIEW INCREASING NUMBER OF THOSE KILLED, GETTING PRESSURE FROM MAJOR COUNTRIES...

...is how the Los Angeles Times profiled Duarte...

...and Salvadorean government sources over those of the insurgency...