MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor Man Bites Dog I was very full of myself in the spring of 1957, when The Washington Post hired me as a reporter on its local news staff. There I was, still in my mid-twenties...
...Even before that issue had gone into the mail to The Progressive's subscribers, we sent out copies of Nairn's article, along with a press release summarizing his findings, to all of the major news media, including, of course, The Washington Post...
...All of the essential facts— and more—appeared in The Progressive's May 1984 cover story, "Behind the Death Squads," by Allan Nairn...
...The ad ran, and brought us a few new subscribers...
...Government in El Salvador set up two official security organizations that killed thousands of peasants and suspected leftists over the next fifteen years...
...The wire services carried brief stories which showed up in a few newspapers...
...It was a thorough piece of reporting on a crucially important subject...
...So if you haven't the time to read everything in this issue of The Progressive, don't give it a thought...
...The story, some three columns long and attributed to information obtained from "more than a dozen knowledgeable officials who were closely involved in setting and carrying out U.S...
...Today, even as the Reagan Administration publicly condemns the death squads, the CIA—in violation of U.S...
...I thought of Izzy Stone's sage observation when I was plowing my way through The Post for Thursday, October 6, 1988, and came across a front-page story on Page A39...
...These organizations, guided by American operatives, developed into the paramilitary apparatus that came to be known as the Salvadoran death squads...
...The major news media—including, of course, The Washington Post—ignored the story...
...and Salvadoran government officials and Congressional documents...
...We thought we had a pretty good story back in 1984...
...Since then, Nairn has provided The Progressive's readers with further details of U.S...
...The story still wasn't news...
...You may catch up with what you missed in your local newspaper four years from now—provided, of course, you make it back to Page A39...
...I was playing in the Big Leagues...
...In frustration, we turned to some of The Progressive's generous friends and raised enough money to pay for a full-page ad in The Washington Post that conveyed the essence of Nairn's story...
...law—continues to provide support, training, and intelligence to security forces directly involved in death-squad activity...
...We called it "an exclusive report on the U.S...
...It was headed Salvadoran Death Squads Called Back-Burner Issue for U.S...
...How do the media decide whether a particular story is worthy of attention...
...Still, some of it gets out after a while...
...Under the byline of Douglas Farah, "Special to The Washington Post," the lead read: "Senior members of the Reagan Administration failed to gauge the threat of right-wing Salvadoran death squads in the early 1980s, did not press for the prosecution of military officers suspected of leading the violence, and in some cases allowed the sharing of military intelligence with them, according to U.S...
...What is "news...
...The response was less than overwhelming...
...An old chestnut has it that when a dog bites a man, that isn't news...
...When I told him what a great newspaper I was working for—it had to be great, after all, since it had given me a job—he said, "Well, it's an interesting paper...
...policy in El Salvador," went on to detail the "close ties" between some American intelligence officers and the Salvadoran death squads that made a specialty of murdering civilians...
...There I was, still in my mid-twenties and with no previous daily newspaper experience, covering news for the paper the President read every morning—or at least the paper somebody read and summarized each day for President Eisenhower...
...began: "Early in the 1960s, during the Kennedy Administration, agents of the U.S...
...role in El Salvador's official terror...
...They, too, didn't make much news...
...My experience suggests that when a man bites a dog but the Government claims that "national security" is at stake, the news will be suppressed, buried, or delayed...
...when a man bites a dog, that is...
...You never know where in it you'll find a frontpage story...
...Perhaps because it wasn't news...
...It took I.F...
...Some nonprofit alternative outlets, such as the Pacifica radio stations, paid attention...
...complicity in the Salvadoran death squads in such articles as "Assault on Sanctuary" (August 1985) and "Confessions of a Death Squad Officer" (March 1986...
...Stone to bring me back down to size...
...Why, then, did it appear on Page A39 (continued on Page A43...
Vol. 52 • December 1988 • No. 12
