COLOR IT UNDEMOCRATIC Nicaragua Election Coverage
Spence, Jack
"Election Plan in Nicaragua is Criticized by Opposition" The New York Times January 18, 1984 "Going Through the Motions in Nicaragua" The New York Times November 4, 1984 These Times...
...The press ignored the fascinating policy of studied ambiguity pursued by PLI presidential candidate Virgilio Godoy...
...For El Salvador, three major dailies (The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post) ran 34 front-page stories over seven days, with a total of five front-page stories and two interior stories the day after the election...
...In exchange, the parties reportedly agreed to withhold criticism of forced military recruitment...
...In some 130 articles reviewed from six major dailies (Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Globe, Post and Times, with a complete 11-month sample from the last three) and the three major newsweeklies, one has to search hard for any mention of the other parties until election day...
...its reasons for not participating went unreviewed...
...The Council ruled it was three days too late for an entire party to pull out, but that individual candidates could formally withdraw...
...On election day and the day after, the three networks broadcast segments averaging eight minutes out of the 22-minute proWooden boxes assured secrecy...
...government officials and the reporters themselves characterized the Salvadorean election as the most fair and honest in the country's history, establishing a "fledgling" democracy...
...In the end, the whole affair had little to do with democracy, by U.S...
...Jack Spence, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, has contributed articles on U.S...
...media coverage of Central America to Columbia Journalism Review, Socialist Review and Report on the Americas...
...Arturo Cruz, the boycotting candidate who had travelled to Nicaragua from his home in Washington for election day, received prominent attention...
...For Uruguay's presidential election, the press rediscovered its old pre-Tupamaro label"the Switzerland of Latin America"-despite the fact that one popular, would-be candidate was in jail and another was banned from participating...
...Scattered press accounts estimated various CDN rally crowds ranging from 900 to 50...
...Judging from U.S...
...Yet despite open voting procedures and the lack of campaign violence common in Latin American, the media never portrayed Nicaragua's elections in democratic terms...
...One is a feature on the Nicaraguan Socialist Party leader Domingo Sinchez Salgado by Stephen Kinzer in The Times (October 7...
...observers from the Latin American Studies Association concluded that such accusations were exaggerated...
...The U.S...
...Julia Preston in The Globe found "many" Sandinista supporters in one paragraph, but spent several paragraphs on the opposition...
...The Nicaraguan election was direct, by popular vote...
...But as the media represented it, the PLI stood with the other boycotters...
...Each party could amplify its campaign voice with coffers of 9 million c6rdobas (75 c6rdobas would buy a 30-second radio spot...
...The Reagan Administration was quoted extensively saying the election was a Soviet-style sham...
...Neither got lead headlines...
...CBS devoted two minutes to the election on Sunday...
...press, of CDN-instigated violence at a small pro-Sandinista rally...
...Kinzer likened this to the deals Somoza made to assure a fig-leaf opposition...
...Indeed, facts found within the coverage suggest that it was no stronger or more popular than other opposition parties...
...observers and the "going through the motions" piece in the "Week in Review" section...
...The day after the election, the Times published two page-20 stories...
...The other six opposition parties were apparently deemed too weak and divided to merit much attention...
...The other proves the rule...
...grams...
...High Turnout Not Convincing A survey of post-election round-ups leaves an unclear image of just what the voters' prevailing sentiments really were...
...GodoyMinister of Labor until last Marchnever submitted his formal withdrawal...
...In 1984, the results of the election were not predetermined by fraud, and the entire electoral framework was geared toward including, not excluding, parties...
...Interviews conducted by Robert McCartney in The Post and Juan Tamayo in the Miami Herald roughly corresponded to the vote outcome in their proportion of preferances...
...These accusations were mentioned in virtually every election story from January 1984 to mid-January 1985...
...In Nicaragua, many believe the PLI to be the strongest and largest opposition political party...
...The press quoted several voters saying they felt general pressure to vote, but these charges were not accompanied by direct evidence of voter intimidation or that this was official policy...
...The press found vigorous, though mudslinging, campaigns...
...He was in Nicaragua for 10 days to observe the election...
...The implication was that there was no meaningful democratic exercise...
...Media emphasis on the accusations of the boycotting opposition, the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinator (CDN or Coordinadora), continuously cast doubt on the election's fairness...
...Unwarranted Accusations The CDN also complained that the Sandinistas were pressuring people to vote, and to vote Sandinista, through pro-Sandinista block committees-which allegedly threatened to withhold much valued ration cards...
...To the contrary, a New York Times piece the day after the election found Philip Taubman citing at length administration views that the elections were going to worsen relations with the United States, because they had not been fair or democratic...
...Television coverage on the network evening news shows was even scantier...
...35,000 would suffice for 15 minutes on TV...
...Parties could purchase as much private radio and newspaper space as they wanted...
...Stephen Kinzer reported in The New York Times that the Sandinistas offered to expand each party's initial electoral chest by 5 million c6rdobas in a secret, mid-campaign deal...
...The New York Times editorialized (November 7) that "Only the naive believed that [the] election was democratic or legitimizing proof of the Sandinistas' popularity...
...The imREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10S...
...The focus on the CDN's charges overshadowed the vigorous campaigns being waged by the other parties, and the actual election procedure...
...He delayed ten days before notifying the Election Council of the party's decision to drop out of the race...
...By contrast, the Sandinistas' closing campaign rally in Managua drew, by conservative estimate, 150,000 to 200,000...
...There were 250 officially reported rallies...
...The press did not allow abstention to mar the democratic lustre of the electoral process...
...Ironically, the Democratic Conservative Party charged the anti-Sandinista daily, La Prensa, with censorship...
...A few press accounts mentioned, but minimized, the equal guarantees of two 15-minute TV slots and 45 minutes on state radio per week...
...despite the military's earlier refusal to permit a direct election in favor of the electoral college...
...press accounts...
...In fact, an electoral process unique among ruling revolutionary regimes was treated as an international provocation...
...observers, Salvadorean politicians, U.S...
...All agreed the elections were a resounding defeat for the boycotting Left...
...Almost all complaints of irregularities came to the Council in the opening weeks of the campaign...
...The themes of this coverage stand in sharp contrast to news frames of the 1982 Salvadorean election...
...All parties took the opportunity to blame the incumbant Sandinistas for all that was wrong...
...The Times' pre-election piece (January 14) on Brazil led with "Brazil will take an important step toward the return to full democracy Tuesday...
...ABC broadcast a 2:20-minute story on Monday...
...La Prensa Refuses Ads Seen differently, the campaign was not just a chance for the Sandinistas to improve their international image...
...coverage, these figures were not legitimizing...
...There are two exceptions to this rule of non-coverage...
...When it did finally boycott, the election became for the media a ho-hum affair with the Sandinistas dominating "smaller" parties and voters "going through the motions" of showing up to vote...
...The Sandinistas received support from some 44% of the voting-age population compared to 31% for Reagan...
...This amounted to 70% of the voting-age population, as compared to 52% in the United States and 60-80% (depending on how refugees are counted) in El Salvador in 1982...
...I plicit justification for this focus on the CDN was that it was, in the press' characterization, the only significant opposition...
...media reiterated CDN charges that Sandinista "mobs" had broken up their rallies...
...Yet the parties were heard to criticize the draft again before the end of the campaign...
...When the Independent Liberal Party (PLI) or one wing of it, decided two weeks before the election to boycott, it at last became a respectable party headed by a veteran leader-and good copy...
...By contrast, on Nicaragua's election day the Sunday Times ran a page20 story on U.S...
...In media eyes, "many" voted under pressure or, unable to vote for favored abstaining candidates, unethusiastically made another choice...
...The only serious injury cited was a Sandinista who had been stabbed at a rally...
...They concluded there were threats of violence and harassment at four pre-campaign CDN rallies, but also heard testimony that the police had acted to maintain order...
...In keeping with its hardhitting support of the CDN, the paper refused to take campaign ads from participating parties...
...Football eliminated NBC's Sunday evening broadcast...
...Kinzer's Times report had a large number of interviews with electors either not interested in voting, preferring Cruz, or voting to keep in favor with the government, thereby assuring necessary supplies...
...The press focus on the CDN charges continued well into the threemonth campaign, despite a Washington Post story (July 30) quoting CDN leaders who said they had never seriously considered participating, but only wanted to embarrass the Sandinistas...
...Final returns put the turnout at 75% of registered voters...
...It provided increased political space and resources to the opposition parties...
...The Electoral Council sustained charges of group violence, or threatened violence, in five of the eight cases brought to it by opposition parties...
...In addition, they found evidence, unreported in the U.S...
...He did find four enthusiastic Sandinistas in the Army...
...Comments from U.S...
...If one makes the generous assumption that half of those who did not vote stayed home because 11 ICDN candidate Arturo Cruz was not running (leaving only 12% of the electorate too tired, apathetic, cynical or busy to vote), an election with Cruz would have garnered the CDN just slightly more votes than the third place finisher, or about 12% of the vote...
...Would the "key" opposition group regard the elections as sufficiently fair, or call a boycott...
...NBC limited its coverage to a Saturday evening pre-election piece...
...The Post ran a page-one story, and The Globe's page-one article was below the fold...
...The Salvadorean civilian opposition boycotting the election-the FDR-was barely mentioned...
...The most telling difference between the two elections' treatment is the number of articles and television segments...
...witness who said that the disturbance was spontaneous...
...Painted in Democratic Colors Other recent elections in Latin America have not received as much coverage as El Salvador's in 1982, but, unlike Nicaragua's, were painted in democratic colors...
...La Prensa had long complained of being censored by the government...
...In these take-it-orleave-it pre-election "offers," the Somoza Liberals always came out ahead, and other opposition parties were squeezed out...
...Then, lead headlines trumpeted large turnouts of animated voters braving dangers to excercise their newly found democratic rights...
...A politically diverse group of U.S...
...In one case they quoted a U.S...
...Election Plan in Nicaragua is Criticized by Opposition" The New York Times January 18, 1984 "Going Through the Motions in Nicaragua" The New York Times November 4, 1984 These Times headlines, opening and closing the pre-election period, capture the essence of the news frames for the November 4 Nicaraguan elections...
...The press provided no evidence to support its characterization of the CDN as the only significant opposition...
...The system of proportional representation virtually guaranteed that even the smallest parties would get one or two seats in the 96member Constituent Assembly...
...The former dictator would divide up the legislature, lower courts and other offices with the opoposition Conservatives...
Vol. 19 • January 1985 • No. 1
