Witness to Distant Suffering, Human Rights and Unworthy Victims in The

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Journalism and Mass Communications, College of Communications Summer 8-1-2010 An Ardent Flame: Witness to Distant Suffering, Human Rights and Unworthy Victims in the Coverage by The New York Times and Two Journals of the Religious Left of the 1980s iC vil Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua Charles A. Flowerday University of Nebraska at Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Flowerday, Charles A., "An Ardent Flame: Witness to Distant Suffering, Human Rights and Unworthy Victims in the Coverage by The New York Times and Two Journals of the Religious Left of the 1980s ivC il Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua" (2010). Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. 8. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/journalismdiss/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journalism and Mass Communications, College of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. AN ARDENT FLAME: WITNESS TO DISTANT SUFFERING, HUMAN RIGHTS AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS IN THE COVERAGE BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND TWO JOURNALS OF THE RELIGIOUS LEFT OF THE 1980’S CIVIL WARS IN EL SALVADOR AND NICARAGUA by Charles A. Flowerday A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Major: Journalism and Mass Communications Under the Supervision of Professor John Bender Lincoln, Nebraska August, 2010 An Ardent Flame: Witness to Distant Suffering, Human Rights and Unworthy Victims in the Coverage by the New York Times and Two Journals of the Religious Left of the 1980’s Civil Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua Charles A. Flowerday, M.A. University of Nebraska, 2010 Adviser: John Bender Scholars have investigated witness to distant suffering (WTDS) almost entirely in visual media. This study examines it in print. This form of reporting will be examined in two publications of the religious left as contrasted with the New York Times. The thesis is that, more than a given technology, WTDS consists of the journalist’s moral commitment and narrative skills and the audience’s analytical resources and trust. In the religious journals, liberation theology provides the moral commitment, the writers and editors the narrative skills and trust and the special vision of the newly empowered poor the analytical foundation. In bearing witness to those who have suffered state or guerrilla terrorism in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980s, we will investigate a distinction between “worthy” and “unworthy victims,” as articulated by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988) in Manufacturing Consent. This last issue has a special ethical and political significance. Media witnessing to the suffering of strangers can help them become known, and so “worthy.” It can help them, and their plight and cause, become better recognized. This is the power of the media. i This thesis is dedicated to my son, Sean Herrin Flowerday, and to those who gave their lives in the struggle for social justice in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the civil wars of the 1980s. Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge John Bender, whose support and contributions significantly improved the final product, as well as Charlyne Berens and Joe Starita, also members of my committee. Brothers and sisters, let us raise the lit torch that is the living symbol of our Christianity, an ardent flame that cleans, purifies and transforms, illuminating the future for humanity. —from Via Crucis, “The Way of the Cross,” a Nicaraguan peasant song that celebrates a 320-kilometer walk from the war zone near Honduras to the capital of Managua, a pilgrimage re-enacting the stations of the cross to protest the contra war, Sojourners, June 1986 As long as I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked, “Why are there so many poor?” they called me a communist. —Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, liberation theologian and a contributor to Sojourners, a journal explored herein Central America is Fantasy Isthmus, a region of the American mind, peopled by our own political demons, where too often expediency rules, and rhetoric substitutes for reality. —Fred McNeil, retired Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence, Washington Post, March 1, 1987 “We have been kinder to President Reagan than any president I can remember since I’ve been at the Post.” —Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post, quoted in the first sentence of Mark Hertsgaard’s On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency (1988) ii Contents Chapter 1. The Issues and Their Consequence: Thinking Critically About Christianity, Human Rights and the Suffering of Strangers—with Notes on Methods and Models / 1 Chapter 2. Media, Movements, Morality and How We See Them: Framing and Witness to Distant Suffering / 26 Chapter 3. Past Is Prologue: Political Economy and Human Rights in El Salvador and Nicaragua—With Notes on Political Terminology / 60 Chapter 4. Papering over Dirty War at the Nation’s Newspaper: Two Progressive Scholars on the Marginalization of Victims of State Terror and Distortion of Elections at the New York Times / 78 Chapter 5. Adding It Up and Breaking It Down (I): Incidence of Distant Suffering in and a Textual Analysis of the New York Times Coverage of El Salvador / 92 Chapter 6. Adding It Up and Breaking It Down (II): Incidence of Distant Suffering in and a Textual Analysis of the New York Times Coverage of Nicaragua / 140 Chapter 7. Sacramental Narrative as Prophetic Witness: Incidence of Distant Suffering in and a Textual Analysis of Sojourners—With Notes on Theological Terminology / 161 Chapter 8. Cultural Criticism as Prophetic Witness: Incidence of Distant Suffering in and a Textual Analysis of Christianity and Crisis / 215 Chapter 9. The Nature of Witness, its Ethical Dilemmas and the Impact of the Third Side: Summary and Conclusions—with Notes on Theoretical Issues / 267 iii Chapter 10. Time and Again: Epilogue: An Update—With Notes on Personal Perspectives on Interpretation / 297 Bibliography / 307 Tables Table 4-1. New York Times’ Coverage of Worthy and Unworthy Victims: A Murdered Polish Priest Versus One Hundred Murdered Religious in Latin America / 82 Table. 4-2. The Savageries Inflicted on Worthy and Unworthy Victims, as Depicted in the New York Times / 83 Table 4-3. Averages of New York Times Stories “Compatible” or “Incompatible” With the U.S. Agenda for February 1 to March 30, Before the Salvadoran Elections, and September 5 to November 6, Before the Nicaraguan Elections, 1984 / 89 Appendixes Appendix A—The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights / 315 Appendix B— Iran-contra: Official Secrecy, Rogue Governments and the Media / 318 Appendix C—Excerpts from Christianity and Crisis Not Included in the Text / 330 Appendix D—Excerpts from Sojourners Not Included in the Text / 345 Chapter 1 The Issues and Their Consequence: Thinking Critically about Christianity, Human Rights and the Suffering of Strangers— with Notes on Methods and Models 2 What Is at Stake and Why It Matters The Privilege of the Poor and the Power of Witness In the post-World War II era, two religious publications in the United States have shared a strong commitment to championing the rights of the disadvantaged and disinherited as a biblical mandate about social witness. These are Christianity and Crisis and Sojourners. In this ethic, a traditional, if minority, expression of the social side of Christianity has been revitalized by an application of critical theory to religion in liberation theology. This theological awakening in Latin America and other parts of the developing world has become a source of advocacy for social justice and the full gamut of human rights for disadvantaged populations, not just the civil-political rights we honor in this country but the agreements on social, economic and cultural rights that the United States has not signed (United Nations, 2009; Appendix A). As a way to translate theory into practice, we want to apply this perspective on social ethics to an emerging area of media studies concerned with those who suffer the most: ―witness to distant suffering‖ (WTDS), sometimes known as the suffering of strangers. Being a witness encompasses a rich tradition in media, law and theology and contains much moral, media and discursive complexity. As a form of witness, WTDS looks at social and media issues from the point of view of the most vulnerable or abused, often those who have suffered catastrophic losses due to natural or human- rights disasters. In this thesis, it will provide a discursive window on the journalistic application of a theology that advocates for the downtrodden. In a key article, communications scholar John Peters (2001) notes, ―As a noun, witness is intricate. The term involves all three points of a basic communication 3 triangle: (1) the agent who bears witness, (2) the utterance or text itself, [and] (3) the audience who witnesses‖ (p. 709). Media theorists Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski (2009a), say, as a gerund, witnessing ―refers...to the appearance of witnesses in media reports...media themselves bearing witness, and the positioning of media audiences as witnesses to depicted events‖ (p. 295). So far, it is the topic of a small but increasing amount of scholarship (Ashuri & Pinchevski, 2008). It has been examined almost entirely in visual media, but we will be looking intently at how it works in print.

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