First Paper / Panel presentation (see second conference paper / panel below) The PrPropoganda Model: Evaluating a Theory on the Political Economy and Performance of the MMass Media
Andrew Kennis University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PhD Program at the Institute of Communications Research
Paper Prepared for Presentation at the Midwest Political Science Association 64th Annual National Conference April 20-23, 2006 Chicago, IL
Paper will be presented at the Media as Economic Input and Output panel of the Mass Media and Political Communication section on Friday, April 21st, 10:30am (Salon 6 – 3rd Floor).
Abstract: The principal aim of this study is to test and evaluate the efficacy of the propaganda model. The propaganda model was co authored by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky and first put-forth in Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988). The model postulates predictions about how the U.S. mainstream media will generally perform in terms of its coverage of U.S. foreign policy issues of importance. Herman and Chomsky have written little about the model since its publication, save for an expanded introduction that served as the only revision of the second edition of Manufacturing Consent (2002). Despite the lack of additional study on the model, the theory still does attract scholarly debate, such as that seen in the pages of Political Communication (see January-March 2004 issue). For this study, I am selecting the paired examples of the coverage of Racak, a village where a massacre that took place in a state deemed hostile to U.S. interests, along with the coverage of Acteal, also a village where a massacre took place, but in a client state of the U.S. Exactly the same number of people died in both of these massacres – forty-five – and they occurred during time periods that were close to one another: Acteal occurring on December 22, 1997 and Racak just a little bit more than a year later, on January 15, 1999.
Second Paper / Panel presentation Evaluating the Media Performance of the New YYork Times on Vieques
Paper will be presented at the Political Threats, Cycles and Catastrophes panel of the New Political Science Caucus section on Saturday, April 22nd, 8:30am (Parlor B – 6th Floor).
Note: Second Paper begins after First following page 40, where numeration restarts. Endnotes to both papers come at end of the document (following second section / paper); bibliographies follow conclusion of each respective paper.
1 The main aim of this study is to test and evaluate the efficacy of the propaganda model. The propaganda model was first posited in, Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.1 Some prominent scholars in communications have all but completely dismissed the model, arguing either that the political economic approach of communications analysis is of limited value (such as Dan Hallin and Michael Schudson), or that the model is no longer relevant in the current post-cold-war era (such as framing theorist Robert Entman).2 More critical scholars, such as Robert McChesney, argue that the model best explains why, “the weakest feature of U.S. professional journalism has been its coverage of the nation’s role in the world, especially when [U.S.] military action is involved…”3 Eric Herring and
Piers Robinson studied the question of whether or not Herman and Chomsky’s work was marginalized from mainstream academia for being “too polemical” or “too critical” and concluded the latter as opposed to the former. In their argument, Herring and Robinson write that this marginalization is a “product of an institutional tendency to filter out anti- elite perspectives . . . and the function of academia in buttressing elite power.”4
The co-authors themselves, however, in the revised introduction of the most recent printing of Manufacturing Consent,5 strongly assert that the model has continued relevance due to continued corporate media concentration and the growth of more powerful media conglomerates and of the corporate dominated public relations industry, which taken together, make the model even more relevant.6 Within the context of this debate then, which is far from settled, I undertook a thorough evaluation of the model in an attempt to evaluate its continued relevancy (or lack thereof).
The crux of the model is its unworthy / worthy victims thesis, which posits that because of a filtration process which results from the institutional structure of the media,
2 there will be dichotomized news media coverage of important elections, atrocities, massacres and wars along the lines of the interests of the White House.7 “What is on the agenda in treating one case will be off the agenda in discussing the other,” wrote Herman and Chomsky.8
The primary methodological tool that I used to evaluate the propaganda model is a comparative media content analysis of a “paired example.”9 The case study that will be undertaken will be the massacres of Acteal (December 22, 1997), a small village which is located in the rugged and impoverished state of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico, and of
Racak (January 15, 1999), which is also a small village but located in Kosovo, a republic within the Federated Republics of Yugoslavia. Before analyzing the coverage versus the model predictions for this case study, however, I will briefly review the history of the two massacres.
Acteal
Acteal is a small indigenous village populated mostly by Tztozil speaking
Mayans. The village is located in the Chenalhó district, which is the closest municipality to San Cristobal that is within the region known as Los Altos, a reference to the rugged and mountainous terrain that is also described as a cloud forest. San Cristobal, the second largest city in the state, and Acteal, are both located in the southeastern Mexican state of
Chiapas.
Along with Oaxaca, which is the northern neighbor of Chiapas, both states are
Mexico’s poorest and most densely populated indigenous states in the country. The uprising in 1994 by the Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion National (National Zapatista
Liberation Army, or EZLN) was a shock to the Mexican government, then headed by
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The reaction of the Salinas administration was to
3 institute a brutal military occupation (that exists to the present, though since toned down by the Fox administration shortly after it took office in 2000) that was roundly condemned by international and Mexican human rights groups.10
It is not, as one might reasonably expect, the Mexican military who has committed the majority of the human rights violations in southeastern Mexico. Instead, it has been the paramilitaries who most often commit the crimes. The paramilitaries generally consist of impoverished indigenous people who are bought off with food, weapons, and military training. In the case of Mexico11, it was a paramilitary group called
Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice, or P&J) that committed the worst of the atrocities since the EZLN uprising and the subsequent military occupation: that was the massacre in
Acteal on December 22, 1997.12
The community of Acteal consists of two separate and distinct parts. Las Abejas, one half of Acteal, is pacifist and chooses to disagree with the other half of the community – that is, the Zapatista half of Acteal – on their decision to be associated with the armed group, the EZLN. Its deep religious roots explain why nearly all of its residents who were not away working (mostly women) at the time of the massacre were praying in the middle of a weekday afternoon in the community church.
What happened on December 22, 1997 is best recounted by one of Acteal’s most grief stricken residents, 13 year old Guadalupe Vázquez Luna, whose mother, father and
5 sisters were all killed in the massacre:
. . . we were in the chapel praying for peace when about 90 men burst in and started shooting at everybody, even babies. Then they went through the village shooting.
The assassins ran after me and my father. When my father was hit by a bullet, he shouted, “Run, Lupita, run,” but I couldn’t. Again he told me, “Run, run,” and I ran faster than the bullets until I couldn’t run anymore. Forty-five people died that day in our village.13
4 John Ross14, veteran correspondent and author on U.S. – Mexico relations, notes that the massacre was “slow and systematic,”15 lasting from its mid-morning start all the way until sunset, with a total fatality count of 45 (19 women, 19 children and 7 men).
This begs the question on why police were not dispatched, but as it turned out, however, police were already on-the-scene. Ross explains that at 11:30 in the morning, Cornelio
Pérez, a resident of the Zapatista half of Acteal, ran down from the hills to plead to the police detachment that was about 50 meters away from where the killings were taking place to stop the bloodshed, but Comandante Roberto Rivas decided instead to detain
Pérez.16
A large majority of the assailants have not been convicted, as only 20 people were sentenced to 35 years in prison, prompting the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights
Center to term the ruling “partial justice.”17 The Center also noted how “the intellectual authors of the Acteal massacre [still] have not been processed.”18
The bottom line is that a number of officials and authorities had ample time to act and lessen the death count at Acteal, but chose not to do so both before and during the massacre. Although mainstream coverage usually reported that this was a mistake or an accident, the female survivors of the massacre took issue with this stance. In a letter addressed to the United Nations, they argued that the massacre was an extension of a policy carried out from the top to the bottom to occupy the land of indigenous people and terrorize them with the hopes of deterring organized resistance to continued oppression
(in the case of Las Abejas, pacifist resistance).19
Acteal differs from Racak in that there are competing interpretations on what happened during the Racak massacre, while in the case of Acteal, there is no controversy as to what happened. Instead, the only disagreement surrounding the massacre in Acteal
5 was whether responsibility could be placed beyond those who literally undertook the killings.
Racak
Racak is a small village town which had a pre-war population of about 2,000 people and lies within Kosovo, a province in which 40 percent of the territory had been in possession of the rebel group, the KLA. There is little doubt that Racak was home to a number of members of the rebel group, known for their brutal tactics and human rights abuses, not to mention their Stalinist and Nazi competing factions.
What exactly happened on January 15, 1999 in the small village of Racak will never be known with any degree of certainty, for each of the two alleged versions is disputed by advocates of the other. Nevertheless, whatever exactly did happen, the events in Racak that day had an enormous impact not only on Racak, Yugoslavia and Europe, but also on the world and on history itself.
On the Saturday morning that followed the fateful day of January 15, everything changed for Racak. The “picture which has subsequently alarmed the world,” as it was described by one French journalist, was indeed broadcast over TV stations across the globe, with its image of over 20 dead corpses being shown in a gully. Amnesty
International later stated that the dead “included three women, a 12-year-old child and several elderly men.” However, its sources were the members of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Verification Mission, which was led by
Ambassador William Walker. Walker and the OSCE observers are sources normally considered in high regard by the U.S. mainstream media, for they are official U.S. governmental sources, which according to the model will almost always be held in high regard to the point that claims are taken at their word as the truth.
6 According to the version of the observers of the OSCE, the massacre took place early in the afternoon on January 15. Their version of the day’s events became the dominant interpretation that took shape in the elite mainstream media and the major broadcast network reporting, which relied heavily on Walker and the OSCE observers as the primary source. A summary of the version is as follows: Serbian police officers came into the village of Racak on January 15, as armored vehicles of the Yugoslav army patrolled Racak the whole morning. The police broke into houses and ordered that women remain there while the men of the village were rounded up and then quietly shot to death in the afternoon. Before the assassinations, the men were tortured and mutilated.
The characterization that Racak took on in the U.S media was equivalent to what Walker wound up calling a “crime against humanity” (the most serious of human rights violations and considered a precursor to genocide).
While there certainly were good reasons to doubt the credibility of Walker and the
OSCE delegation (a topic we return to at length, below), there were eye-witness accounts from villagers that were harder to doubt. Even more difficult, was not believing an account by the father of a 17-year-old boy who had “sent him back to Racak to check on the family farm, he only planned to be here a couple of days. But the morning of the massacre, Bujhar heard shooting, went to see what was happening, and was never seen again.”20 Sources and accounts like these leave little doubt that to at least some degree,
Racak did indeed have civilian fatalities on January 15.
Nevertheless, there were many reasons to doubt whether or not Racak was completely a massacre of civilians, for there was also evidence that it may have been stage-managed and that the victims may have been combatants of the KLA who died in a gun battle with army troops. Thus, in the independent media and in the foreign press,
7 theories surfaced that the KLA had gathered up their fatalities, removed their uniforms changed their clothes to civilian outfits, left the newly dressed bodies in a gully and then called in the OSCE observers and Walker.
The Serbian police issued its first official statement on Racak on January 10, which stated that it had “encircled the village of Racak with an aim of arresting the members of a terrorist group which killed a police officer.” On the day of the massacre at
3:00pm, the first official Serbian report on the day’s events stated that fifteen Kosovar
Albanians were killed in the clashes. At 3:30pm, the Serbian police reportedly left the scene under the gunfire of a number of KLA combatants. At about 4:30pm, a French journalist arrives on-the-scene and sees international observers, who had been searching for wounded civilians. No bodies had been found by the observers, he reported, and instead the OSCE verifiers were calmly talking with three young Albanians who were dressed in street clothes. The French journalist was quoted as writing that, “the rather indifferent verifiers told me nothing in particular. Just that, ‘they were not able to give a definite statement on today’s battle.’”21
The model would predict that such interpretations will not be reported in the face of a dominant interpretation based on official sources and that the version given by official sources will become an accepted and unquestioned truth.22
Writers for the Washington Post looked back upon the massacre and wrote about it in hindsight as the key catalyst that prompted NATO to invade and bomb Yugoslavia.
They termed Racak as the “Defining Atrocity” that “Set Wheels in Motion,” in having,
“convinced the administration and then its NATO allies’ that they must turn to war, soon initiating ‘a military campaign whose central objective was saving the lives and homes of
8 Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians.’” Even in comparison to other atrocities, “Racak transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular events seldom do.”23
Testing the Model
A number of tests were employed to analyze the paired example to see how many of the predictions of the model were verified in accordance with the coverage of the two massacres. Such tests included analysis of what sources were used and how they were used; the extent of coverage; the tone and style of the coverage; the premises that coverage was based on; the extent that the details of the atrocity was reported on and the extent that independent sources were utilized.
I will review all of the findings of the tests that were used in this study of the media coverage of two comparable massacres, one in a country “friendly” to the United
States and the other “unfriendly” to the United States. The propaganda model makes predictions and has expectations about the kind of results that should be produced from these tests. The different tests that were undertaken in the study include: a database search measuring the extent of coverage for both Racak and Acteal; comparisons of the kinds and standards of sourcing utilized in the coverage for both cases; comparisons of the tone of the coverage and the kinds of characterizations of the regimes involved; the extent of investigative reporting that was undertaken; and lastly, the content and character of the editorials that were written about both cases. The expectation of the model will be stated before each test, followed by the results of the tests and an analysis of the results.
Extent of Coverage
The first and most basic test conducted was to see the differences of the extent of media coverage dedicated to Acteal and Racak. Recall the most important part and essentially the “heart” of the propaganda model: the worthy / unworthy victims thesis.24
9 The model predicts in this thesis that a greater volume of coverage will be given to an atrocity in an “unfriendly” state as opposed to one committed in a client state.
Nevertheless, the thesis puts more emphasis on the difference in the quality of coverage between “worthy” and “unworthy” victims, as opposed to differences in the actual volume of coverage.25 Thus, while the model does predict that coverage should differ in volume, it should be kept in mind that it is not one of the stronger postulates in the model.
Findings
Results differed in terms of what time period was under investigation, but in both cases, general expectations were fulfilled. The exception to this came in the extended time period, but first, we will review the immediate.
In the immediate time period following both of the massacres (3 days), the results conformed to the model’s predictions: the Washington Post and the New York Times both ran more editorials on Racak than Acteal; the Post and the Times both ran more stories and more words on Racak than Acteal; not one of the three major networks ran more stories, or more words on Acteal than Racak and they all ran lead stories on Racak, while running none on Acteal. Indeed, every category conformed to the model’s predictions, if not in a dramatic fashion. This is because the differences between Racak in Acteal in this period, whether in the number of stories or editorials, were only twice as much, whereas past tested paired examples have garnered even larger differences.26 Nevertheless, the model does not say anything specific about the exact differences in extent in coverage, and in regards to other predictions tested, the results sometimes surpassed expectations.
All of the tests passed as expected for the television news coverage that was surveyed. The model – although its authors don’t explicitly note this (instead it is implied
10 via the sources they analyze) – is actually more applicable to print media coverage than to any other medium.27
In terms of the extended period of coverage under analysis (5 weeks after the occurrence of each of the respective massacres), the differences between the two massacres and the amount of media coverage they received were less than the immediate period following the atrocities (3 days after) for the variables of story total and word count, but they were greater in regards to the number of first page stories and editorials run (see tables on following page).
11 Tables
Table 1 Coverage during the RACAK ACTEAL first three days following both massacres. DAILIES Story Count / Words / Story Count / Words / Editorial(s) / 1st Page? Editorial(s) / 1st Page? The New York Times 6 / 5188 / 2 / 1726 / 1 / 2 1 / 1 The Washington Post 3 / 2505 / 2 / 871 / 2 / 1 0 / 1
Table 2 Coverage during the RACAK ACTEAL first five weeks following both massacres. DAILIES Story Count / Words / Story Count / Words / Editorial(s) / 1st Page? & Date Editorial(s) / 1st Page? & Date The New York Times 18 / 13790 / 11/ 8571 / 2 / 4 1 / 1 (01/19/99, 01/29/99, 01/30/99 (12/26/97) & 02/12/99 linked from photo)) The Washington Post 7 / 6211 / 9 / 4742 / 5 / 4 1 / 2 (01/17/99, 01/28/99, (12/25/97 & 01/02/98) 02/21/99, 01/31/99*)
* This first page story did not have Racak as the main topic; however, it did mention it. Also, the manner in which it was mentioned unquestionably accepted the U.S. government position on Racak, as if it was the undeniable truth. In fact, coverage throughout the period examined characterized Racak in this manner.
12 Table 3 Coverage totals during RACAK ACTEAL the first five weeks following both massacres. DAILIES Story Count / Words / Story Count / Words / Editorial(s) / 1st Page? Editorial(s) / 1st Page?
The New York Times & 25 / 20001 / 20 / 13313 / The Washington Post 7 / 8 2 / 3
Table 4 No limit of search on RACAK ACTEAL date range. NETWORKS Story Count / Words / Lead Story Count / Words / Lead Story? Story? ABC News 3 / 1354 / 2 1 / 477 / No NBC News 2 / 585 / 1 2 / 490 / No CBS News 2 / 595 / 1 0 / 0 / 0
13 Explanations for differences
The results of the survey show that Acteal was a “benign bloodbath,” but in terms of the model, an exceptional one and not a conventional one in that it did attract significant media attention (if not as much as Racak). Coverage was sustained for a significant amount of time after the massacre and in fact lasted longer than that of Racak.
In a strict sense, this result was a failure of the predictions of the model.
There is a reasonable explanation for this failure, however. First and foremost, as has been stated, the model does posit that differences in the volume of coverage should be expected, but Herman and Chomsky put very little emphasis on this point. Conversely, they put a lot more emphasis on the prediction of differences in the quality of the coverage. Indeed, it should be kept in mind that the postulate of the model that the volume of coverage for a paired example of massacres in an “enemy” and client state will be different is in fact a weak one, not even garnering more than a phrase or even a complete sentence within the model’s thesis. In any case, the tests were passed when it came to literal evaluation of the volume of coverage (Herman and Chomsky never specified to what extent the volume should differ) and it was only on the point of Acteal garnering sustained coverage that the model failed in terms of the extent of coverage evaluation. In this category, Acteal surprisingly showed sustained coverage greater than that of Racak, despite model expectations to the contrary due to Acteal having been a massacre that occurred in a “friendly” state of the U.S. and Racak having occurred in a
“unfriendly” state.
However, even this unexpected result can be explained by the differences in the quality of the coverage. The massacre in Racak, according to the coverage by the mainstream media evaluated, was never in doubt. Its main source, William Walker and
14 the OSCE verifiers, certainly didn’t relay any of the doubts of the massacre, and the independent sources that did were completely ignored. As a result, Racak was a done deal early on, and in fact, was referred to many times afterwards in the context of articles about the coming war as unquestionably a massacre of civilians.
Conversely, Acteal was an ongoing story because the media under evaluation relied on the Mexican government as a main source of information. The Mexican government tried hard to promote the idea that it had no responsibility for the massacre and accentuated the uncertainties surrounding it. When it described it in more certain terms, it was always, to borrow Ross’s words, treated as “a local affair, almost a family feud . . .”28 This is despite the fact that there were in reality very few doubts and uncertainties about the massacre, as revealed by a number of independent sources and eyewitnesses. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the mainstream media evaluated in this study,
Acteal was a massacre full of uncertainty and as such, its story was continually unfolding.
It was simply too hard for the media to ignore Acteal, even if the U.S. government did overlook the massacre, as stated in the prior chapter. As such, Acteal was an exceptional case in terms of the propaganda model. While coverage of Acteal did fulfill model predictions in terms of the amount of total coverage dedicated to it differing with that of Racak, it did not fulfill expected differences with Racak in terms of sustained coverage.
Standards of Sourcing
The propaganda model expects differing standards in terms of sourcing used for atrocities in client regimes in comparison to those found in unfriendly states. Herman and
Chomsky make this clear by stating:
. . . we would expect official sources of the United States and its client regimes to be used heavily – and uncritically – in connection with one’s own abuses and
15 those of friendly governments, while refugees and other dissident sources will be used in dealing with enemies. (34)
This is arguably the most important prediction of the model, as indeed, differing standards of sourcing produces a large difference in the quality of reporting and coverage.
It is important to recall that the strongest postulate that Herman and Chomsky offer in the model is that the quality of coverage between atrocities in client regimes and unfriendly states will differ. The model stood up very strongly in terms of the results of this test.
Sourcing for Racak coverage
In terms of Racak, a U.S. official with a past that was questionable by any fair standard (i.e. as Ambassador in El Salvador, where he covered up atrocities that
Washington sought to ignore) was trusted without question and firmly established Racak as a massacre of civilians. Independent sources pointing to conclusions contrary to those reached by the U.S. official, whose credibility was dubious, were ignored, even though they had been prominently published in Europe and even once in the U.S. independent media.29 Investigations into the actual U.S. involvement with Yugoslavia were rarely undertaken, and when they were, they never noted the worst failures of U.S. diplomacy
(including the alienation of Kosovo’s parallel civil society, which in turn increased the appeal of the KLA).
An interesting controlled experiment was available as a result of the way that the events unfolded in Racak. Walker and the OSCE observers (later revealed to be partially staffed by the CIA) did not arrive on the scene until 12 hours after the massacre, a full news day afterwards for the international media. Instead, the only sources that were available were the Yugoslavian government and the Serb Media Center. These sources were indeed used in the first reports that were run out of Racak, but the Serb Media
Center, an independent source, was never used again in the context of the Racak
16 massacre. The Yugoslavian government source was referred to again, but only sparingly and always with derision.
Thus, the experiment revealed what the model implicitly predicts: U.S. official sources, whenever available, will certainly win out over independent sources with competing interpretations over a massacre on the soil of an “enemy” state.
When a different source was used to counterbalance the large dependence on U.S. sources (i.e. Walker), it was inevitably the Yugoslavian government, hardly a very credible source. This is despite the fact that many other sources were available, including several reports prominently published in Europe.
When those reports did actually come out, their evidence, their findings and indeed the articles themselves were never referred to within the sources under investigation. Instead, intelligence findings from Western sources that implicated the
Serbian government in an alleged cover-up attempt in Racak were used. By any fair reporting standards, both interpretations should have been reported, but only one was.
This is expected by the model.
Sourcing for Acteal coverage
Because Acteal was an atrocity that was committed within the territory of a client state, the model predicts that official sources of the regime will be used heavily over other, independent sources. The results of this test bear out this prediction.
Human rights sources that could have identified the relationship – one that was highly relevant and noteworthy by any fair standard of journalism – between the U.S., the
Mexican military and the paramilitaries in Chiapas, were never cited. This was despite the fact that there were a plethora of online sources readily available and accessible both before and shortly after the massacre. Furthermore, groups that work full time on the
17 issue of tracking these connections were never consulted (i.e. School of the Americas
Watch, amongst others).
There was a very large dependence on the Mexican government as a leading source for articles covering Acteal, and as a result, its position on the massacre was mostly reported on as unquestioned fact. In the Mexican government’s eyes, Acteal had to be seen as just one example of a long time running family feud between indigenous people. Connections to the government via investigation of the paramilitary involved (the
Mexican army trained and armed them, and the U.S. army trained the Mexican army) were to be avoided and in coverage were in fact avoided, until local and Chiapas state officials began to be arrested and/or resigned.
That the press would report on what was already admitted by the government does not prove any kind of independence, nor does it disprove a prediction by the model.30
Even though the media under evaluation finally began to report some of the connections between the paramilitary and the Mexican army, it never explored the relationship between the Mexican army and the U.S. training schools it attended. This was a total evasion then, of identifying the indirect responsibility that the U.S. government had in the Acteal massacre – the main prediction, in fact, of the model for the kind of exceptional “benign bloodbath” that Acteal is correctly characterized as being.
Recall Chomsky’s words: “the U.S. role in implementing these atrocities [will and must be] suppressed,” therefore, “exposure of the lack of attention to benign bloodbaths [will] not [be] too damaging,” protecting U.S. interests from serious investigation and inquiry.31
This is exactly what happened in the case of Acteal and the fulfillment of this prediction,
18 along with the failure to report on the doubts in Racak, were the strongest successes amongst all of the test results of the model.
Tone of Coverage
In terms of the tone of coverage seen for Acteal and Racak, by and large, most predictions of the model were completely met. However, in some important aspects, they were not. This section will begin by addressing what the most significant failure of the expectations of the model was for Acteal.
Most Significant Failure of the Model – Personalization of Atrocity
While the failure to report on the indirect responsibility of the U.S. government in
Acteal and the complete lack of reporting on the doubts in Racak were the model’s strongest successes amongst its tested predictions, its greatest failure was undoubtedly in its expectation that eye-witnesses and the graphic details of the atrocity in Acteal would go unreported. They didn’t. Eye-witnesses, as well as graphic details of the atrocity in
Acteal were indeed cited and reported. Further, the reporting on the details of the atrocity was not substantially less graphic (if even less so at all) than that of Racak.
It is important to recall, however, that Acteal was an exceptional “benign bloodbath” in that it managed to attract sustained coverage. The most critical factor to be tested for such a special case, as noted by Chomsky,32 is the extent of reporting on U.S. responsibility in connection to the atrocity. In this factor, as has been noted, the model’s expectations have been met. However, the question remains in terms of the model’s expectations in regards to the details of the atrocity being reported for an exceptional
“benign bloodbath.” Would we expect such details to be reported because the case is exceptional and attracted more coverage? Clearly Herman and Chomsky wouldn’t spell out such an expectation for the model, but at the same time, due to the exceptional nature
19 of the case, such expectations would not be cast as strong as they would be in cases where the “benign bloodbath” was all but completely overlooked (i.e. East Timor in
1976). The sustained coverage that Acteal received and its related status as an exceptional
“benign bloodbath” is the best explanation for the failure of the model’s expectations in this aspect.
Indeed, the coverage that Acteal garnered was certainly not a result of the U.S. government being interested in the massacre. 33 The extreme nature of the atrocity (i.e. majority of those killed were women and children), the attention received in the foreign press, the attention given to it by the human rights community (which was substantial, to be sure) and the fact that correspondents could arrive at the scene a bit more easily than say, to East Timor, all contributed to Acteal’s ability to have attracted more attention than most other “benign bloodbaths” would have been able to garner. This increased attention and sustained coverage resulted in the failure of the model’s prediction for Acteal to lack reporting that contains personalization and details of the atrocity. Coverage did include personalization, however, as well as even graphic details and accounts of the atrocity, something virtually never seen in the coverage of more typical “benign bloodbaths,” such as East Timor.
Jacobson’s Suggested Revision
Acteal is located in Mexico, which can be generally thought of as a “high-priority client state,” to borrow Thomas Jacobson’s term. 34 U.S. ties to the Mexican military had substantially strengthened during the period of evaluation for the coverage surveyed and with its location as a southern neighbor, growing rates of immigration, Mexico’s status as a major U.S. trading partner and many other issues of significance between the two countries, it is hard to deny the importance that Mexico holds for U.S. foreign relations.
20 Nevertheless, the massacre itself was not a high priority for the U.S. government, as evidenced by the nature of the press conferences held on the matter,35 and its implications were noticeable for media performance.
The fact that tests of the model’s predictions for Acteal’s coverage had mixed results (i.e. failing on meeting predictions for sustained coverage / personalization of the atrocity) had to do with its mixed characterization as being within a high-priority client state and also being an atrocity that the U.S. government took little notice and interest in.
Indeed, while Mexico was of paramount importance to the U.S. at the time of the massacre, the U.S. government still made little attempt to “spin” and propagandize even the Mexican governmental version of the massacre (though to the extent it addressed the issue, it unsurprisingly did support and propagate the Mexican government position).
Thus, the findings of this study suggest that additional mitigating factors affecting actual coverage are present, besides even the “priority” level of the state that the massacre occurred in for the U.S. government or even the priority of the massacre itself. Such mitigating factors include when sustained coverage is a consequence of efforts by the client state itself to continue to “spin” the atrocity. In the case of Acteal, again, we saw how Mexican governmental efforts portrayed the massacre as a “family feud,” as opposed to a massacre that was facilitated by changing U.S. military relations with
Mexico. Instead, the drama of a “family feud” captured the attention of important U.S. outlets over a sustained period and even resulted in a personalization of a massacre that normally would not appeared in coverage (and in fact, didn’t draw much attention in its immediate aftermath), especially with the lack of U.S. governmental interest. Acteal, to be certain, was an exceptional case in this regard and serves as an example of some of the limitations of the predictive power of the propaganda model.
21 In sum, for atrocities that do not garner much attention from the U.S. government and can be characterized as “benign bloodbaths” in important client states, the data from this study’s survey suggest that we cannot expect model predictions to be very reliable for the extent of sustained coverage and the personalization of the atrocity. At the same time though, this study shows that even for such exceptional cases we can still expect the bulk of the model’s predictions to be met and fulfilled, such as differences in important categories of coverage that include: the quality of the coverage and the sources used; the extent of coverage in the immediate time period following the massacres; bias in the characterizations of the regimes involved; the extent of investigative reporting and the placing of responsibility in the hands of high officials (or lack thereof), as reflected by editorials.
Characterizations of the Regimes Involved
The model is very clear in what it expects in terms of the tone of coverage in relation to characterizations of the regimes involved in massacres occurring in client regime and “enemy” state territory. Herman and Chomsky write that:
We would anticipate the uncritical acceptance of certain premises in dealing with self and friends – such as that one’s own state and leaders seek peace and democracy, oppose terrorism, and tell the truth – premises which will not be applied in treating enemy states. We would expect different criteria of evaluation to be employed, so that what is villainy in enemy states will be presented as an incidental background fact in the case of oneself and friends. What is on the agenda in treating one case will be off the agenda in discussing the other. (34-35)
This expectation was completely met in light of the results of the coverage for Acteal and
Racak.
Tone of coverage in Racak reports
The amount of hostility displayed towards President Milosevic and distrust towards his regime within the coverage under evaluation in this study is hard to
22 overestimate. A number of quotes found within Jane Perlez’s reports in the New York
Times reveal this tone, which was a stance that was fully supported and often exhibited by the U.S. government.
Perlez reported that, “The massacre of 45 ethnic Albanian civilians by Serbian forces [was] under the control of Mr. Milosevic.” (1/18/99) She went on to quote an administration official (without questioning him) who said that Milosevic was “‘at the root cause of this,’ the [Administration] official said, referring to Mr. Milosevic and his slash-and-burn offensive last summer and fall that created 250,000 Albanian refugees.”
Perlez also went so far as to describe Milosevic in exactly the same light as the U.S. government would have done, all the while characterizing NATO in a very positive manner: “[Milosevic] consistently broke promises and cease-fires, mounted assaults and then backed off at the last moment under threat from the NATO allies.”
Other sources piped in with similar a distrust of Milosevic:
“"But it may become necessary at some point, because our credibility is on the line and the military option is the only thing that works with Milosevic," [said a senior NATO diplomat.]” (Drozdiak, WP, 1/18/99)
“President Milosevic gave no ground. No surprise.” (Lee, ABC News, 1/19/99)
The model does not criticize the tough treatment of unfriendly governments, but instead predicts that the same treatment will not be used in regards to client regimes.
Furthermore, it predicts that the same standards will not be applied towards the U.S. government. That the latter was the case was scarcely in doubt in light of the results of this test.
Ambassador Walker was not only largely relied upon as a leading source in reporting on Racak, he was also not questioned at all and completely trusted, despite having a dubious history. In fact, some characterizations went so far as to praise Walker,
23 describing him as “a seasoned American diplomat who heads the monitoring mission there” and also as being “shaken” (twice, NYT 01/17 & 18/99) at the “deliberate carnage.” (NYT, 01/17/99)
While the model’s expectations were met in terms of Racak, they of course also need to be true in the case of Acteal. Again, the model expects that the Mexican government will be trusted, even praised, as a legitimate source.
Tone of coverage in Acteal reports
Votes of confidence were often given to the trustworthiness and credibility of the
Mexican government and its ability to take on an investigation of the massacre in Acteal, despite the fact that many independent critics (never cited by the mainstream media under investigation) argued that the Mexican government had at least an indirect, if not a direct, hand in the massacre itself, in light of its policy of military occupation in Chiapas.
One example was of a New York Times report that read, “The Government of
President Ernesto Zedillo has been working to assure the nation that the investigation is an aggressive one . . .” (NYT, 12/26/97) In the Washington Post the government was described in the following terms: “The new killings dramatized the regional conflict and rural violence that continue to plague Mexico even as its national government proceeds with democratic reforms and economic liberalization programs that it hopes will modernize the country.” (12/24/97).
As it turned out, the Mexican government’s performance in bringing those guilty to justice was partial, at best, according to several local groups working on the issue and a long-time correspondent / author.
Extent of Investigative Reporting
24 In terms of investigative reporting, the propaganda model expects “great investigatory zeal . . . for abuses in enemy states” and conversely predicts a “diminished enterprise in examining such matters in connection with one’s own and friendly states.”
(35)
Investigative reporting in Racak coverage
Findings in regards to the depth of investigative reporting were startling, as they confirmed, and even surpassed model expectations as a result of the failure to report on the doubts about the massacre in Racak. The doubts were very significant, the independent sources easy to locate and/or at least cite, and the consequences of not doing so were large.36 The model does not necessarily predict that the doubts of stage-managed massacres will be completely blacked out and censored. It certainly would be well within the model’s confines if the doubts and their related independent sources were at least reported on and subsequently dismissed. But beside merely repeating Serbian rhetoric and then either deriding or ignoring it, the doubts from the independent sources were not reported on at all. This was a major achievement of propaganda and was surely a result that surpasses the predictions of the model.
Investigative reporting in Acteal coverage
The opportunity for investigative reporting in Acteal existed primarily in measuring and documenting the responsibility of the Mexican military for the incident and by extension, connections to U.S. military assistance. There was an ample amount of online sources revealing these connections and many groups and authors who could have been relied upon as sources for such an investigation.37
If such an investigation had been launched, the media could have found out that the U.S. had an indirect hand in the massacre, because of the fact that they trained a
25 number of generals and commanders stationed in Chiapas who in turn trained and armed
(in the case of the Acteal, with the municipal Mayor acting as the direct conduit) paramilitaries of indigenous people. The intensity of the relationship between the
Mexican military and the U.S. training centers (principally Fort Bragg in North Carolina and the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia) greatly increased after the
Zapatista rebellion and was in fact reaching its height shortly before, during and shortly after the time that the massacre occurred in Acteal. The relevance of the facts surrounding this new development in the military relationship between the U.S. and
Mexico was very substantial and the model does indeed predict that it would not be in the coverage of Acteal.38
Nevertheless, the media under investigation for this study did not undertake investigative reporting that went beyond what the Mexican government had already admitted to during various points after the massacre. In fact, the only time the mainstream media reported on anything having to do with official culpability for the massacre was when the government itself acted against officials (i.e. arrest of Mayor and the District
Attorney’s report). This is to be expected, as again, the model predicts that official sources will reign superior in terms of reporting on client regime atrocities.
Editorials / Op-Eds
Similar to the model’s prediction for the difference of the volume of coverage expected, its expectations in terms of editorials is also one of its weaker postulates.
Herman and Chomsky only say that, “In the opinion columns, we would anticipate sharp restraints on the range of opinion allowed expression.”39
Nevertheless, the opinion columns are a good place to identify where the press places blame, and in this regard, the model has the very strong expectation that the U.S.
26 government, nor its client regimes, will be implicated while “enemy” states will be found guilty with or without evidence. This expectation was clearly met.
The Mexican government’s reaction to Acteal was described as one that was a swift response (NYT, 12/25/97), despite its attempts to evade having any responsibility pinned beyond local authorities. When the government was doubted, it was only doubted to the extent that it exhibited a “tolerance of violence” as opposed to correctly describing the deliberate funding, arming and training of the very killers by the Mexican Army.
(WP, 12/30/97)
In terms of Yugoslavia, the first leading editorial ran by the Post could not have fulfilled the model’s prediction to a greater extent. The lead sentence reads as follows:
FOR NEARLY A year Slobodan Milosevic has been waging war against the people of Kosovo. Throughout that time the Clinton administration has been insisting that it would not stand for the sort of atrocities for which Mr. Milosevic ultimately was responsible in Bosnia earlier in this decade. (1/18/99)
Indeed, the model predicts that, “We would anticipate the uncritical acceptance of certain premises in dealing with self and friends – such as that one’s own state and leaders seek peace and democracy, oppose terrorism, and tell the truth – premises which will not be applied in treating enemy states.”40
The sheer volume of attention attracted for the two massacres in the columns fit expectations as well. Acteal, in being a “benign bloodbath” and a massacre of “unworthy victims,” would be expected to garner far fewer editorials than Racak, a “nefarious bloodbath” and a massacre of “worthy victims.” The results were that Racak garnered 5 editorials (all expressed the U.S. government position) and Acteal received only 2 editorials (one of the two did doubt the Mexican government position, but nonetheless failed to identify the indirect responsibility of the U.S. government).
27 Thus, the opinion columns conformed to the predictions of the model, with its sharp criticism of the “enemy” state and its employment of the exact opposite standards for a client state. Further, there was significantly less editorials run on the atrocity in the client state.
Summary of Results
The model predicted that the volume of coverage for Racak and Acteal would differ with Racak receiving more attention. The results of this study show that amongst
U.S. elite mainstream print sources (the Washington Post and the New York Times) and broadcast television news shows (ABC, NBC & CBS) that Racak did receive more attention in every single category, except for the story total in the extended period of coverage under evaluation (and in that case, Acteal received a lower word count despite being in more articles).
The model did not expect that Acteal would garner sustained coverage and detailed descriptions of the atrocity from eye-witnesses, but the survey of the coverage under evaluation shows that it did. The explanation for this is a result of a number of factors, including how Acteal was not an important concern to the U.S. government at the time despite Mexico’s high-priority client status; the extreme nature of the atrocity itself
(i.e. majority of those killed were women and children); the proximity of the atrocity to facilitate easier reporting; the successful spin of the story as a “family feud” which eased more personalized coverage and reporting of details; and the lack of connections drawn to U.S. responsibility for the massacre.41 In terms of how sustained coverage occurred, the same explanations apply, in addition to the important fact that the Mexican government had an ongoing investigation that lasted for a significant amount of time after the
28 massacre and produced a high-profile arrest and an important report by its own human rights commission. The model does in fact expect dependence on and high confidence in official sources from client state regimes and this was duly reflected in the survey’s results, even for the sustained coverage on Acteal.
The model’s predictions for sourcing were almost completely met in the evaluation of this paired example. The exception was found in the case of Acteal, as eye- witnesses were relied upon to a large extent and resulted in the reporting of the details of the atrocity (again, factors explaining this were the same as those for sustained coverage).
However, coverage of Acteal also showed dependence on and a high level of confidence in the Mexican government as a principal source. Similarly, coverage of Racak saw a significant dependence on U.S. official sources for verification of the massacre and went beyond model expectations in its blackout of the reporting of the doubts that were reported on in Europe and by the independent media of the U.S.
Because Acteal is considered to be an exceptional “benign bloodbath,” in that it attracted more attention and coverage than other “benign bloodbaths,” the most important test for model predictions for a case of this nature is whether U.S. responsibility (if existent, as it was for Acteal) was reported. The model expects that it won’t be reported on, and it wasn’t in this survey, despite the availability of a plethora of online sources and non-governmental organizations located close to where correspondence reports were sent.
The failure to report on the doubts present in Racak represented a lost opportunity to deliver investigative reports on the subject, as expected by the model, considering that the conclusions of such reports contradicted the U.S. position on the issue. The same goes for the coverage of Acteal, which did not have any investigations of U.S. responsibility on the matter – expected and predicted by the model.
29 Editorial coverage also fulfilled model predictions. The range of opinion found in the columns was very narrow, with only one editorial being found that contradicted the
U.S. government position on Acteal or Racak. It is also expected that editorials on
“nefarious bloodbaths” will garner more attention than “benign” ones, and that also was the case for this study.
Thus, the fact that every single test of the model’s predictions was met with positive results, save for only two explainable exceptions, coupled with the fact that some of its predictions were even exceeded, says a lot as far as the model’s ability to have accurately predicted the type of coverage and the differences between the cases of this paired example. When consideration is paid to the exceptional nature of the case, as
Acteal proved to be, such results show the model to be impressively robust in its predictive power.
30 Bibliography
I. Books, Articles in Books and Theses
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34 II. Articles from Periodicals
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Elizalde, Triunfo. “México es ya el país que más efectivos envía a escuelas militares estadounidenses, afirma,” La Jornada, 16 August 1998.
Farah, Douglas and Dana Priest. “Mexican Drug Force Is U.S.-Bred; Training Program Illustrates Changing Mission for Armed Forces.” Washington Post, 26 February 1998.
Gellman, Barton. “The Path to Crisis: How the United States and Its Allies Went to War; The Battle for Kosovo, A Defining Atrocity Set Wheels in Motion.” International Herald Tribune, 23 April 1999.
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35 McChesney, Robert. “Off Limits: An Inquiry into the Lack of Debate Over the Ownership, Structure and Control of the Mass media in U.S. Political Life,” Communication 13 (1992): 1-19.
Millbank, Dana and Claudia Deane. “Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds.” Washington Post (6 September 2003).
Montes, Julio. “Special Operations: Kaibiles battle on.” Jane’s Intelligence Review 5, no. 12 (1 December 1998).
Rielly, John E. “American Opinion: Continuity, Not Reaganism.” Foreign Policy 50 (Spring 1983).
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III. Online Sources
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Ames, Mark and Matt Taibbi. “Death squads' flack in El Salvador, Clinton's man in Kosovo.” Counterpunch, 16-30 May 1999. Article available from http://www.afn.org/ ~iguana/archives/1999_07/19990704.html.
Beltran del Rio, Pascal. “U.S. Trains Thousands of Mexican Soldiers: In Just Two Years, Some 3000 Mexican Soldiers Will Have Been Trained at 17 U.S. Military Bases.” Proceso, no. 1122 (3 May 1998). Article available from http://www.globalexchange.org/ countries/mexico/mil/TrainingInUS.html.
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36 Racak/Articles/LeMonde990121-Eng.html.
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Coen, Rachel. “For Press, Magenta Hair and Nose Rings Defined Protests.” Extra!, July - August 2000. Article online. Available from http://www.fair.org/extra/0007/imf- magenta.html.
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Elizalde, Triunfo.“Mexico is Now the Country Which Sends the Greatest Number of Forces to United States Military Schools.” La Jornada, 16 August 1998. Article online. Available from http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/usa/greatest_num_aug98.html or in original language from http://www.jornada.unam.mx/1998/ago98/980816/mexico.html.
Gellman, Barton. “Slaughter in Racak Changed Kosovo Policy.” Washington Post, 18 April 1999. Article online. Available from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/longterm/policy041899.htm.
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Hart, Peter. “Colombia's Cocaine Shell Game.” Extra!, May - June 2000. Article available from http://www.fair.org/extra/0005/colombia.html.
Johnstone, Diana.“The Racak Hoax.” Emperor’s Clothes, 20 January 1999. Article available from http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/racakhoax.htm.
Just the Facts. “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (Former School of the Americas) Fort Benning, Georgia.” Data available from http://www.ciponline.org/ facts/soa.htm.
Redling, Andrew. “Guatemala: Kaibiles and the massacre at Las Dos Erres.” 2 February 2000. Resource Information Center Query Series available from http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/guatemala/kaibiles.html.
37 Luhnow, David. “Chiapas officials abetted Mexico massacre – report.” Reuters, 17 January 2001. Article available from http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/chiapas-l/ 1998.01/msg00442.html.
Luna, Guadalupe Vázquez. “Terror in Chiapas.” Maryknoll Magazine (April 2000). Article available from http://www.maryknoll.org/MEDIA/xMAGAZINE/xmag2000/ xmag04/m4s5.htm.
Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center. “Acteal: Partial Justice.” (20 July 1999). Article available from http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/mexico/mil/ ActealSentences.html.
Moran, Michael. “Saddam and 9/11: On the Record.” MSNBC, 18 September 2003. Article available from http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/968569.asp?0bl=-0.
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Scahill, Jeremy. “The Saddam in Rumsfeld’s Closet.” CommonDreams.org, 2 August 2002. Article available from http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm.
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Wood, Darrin. “Clinton's "Interference" in Mexico: From Wounded Knee to Chiapas,” Nuevo Amanecer Press – Europa, 28 December 1997. Article available from http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/comment/wounded_knee_dec.html.
IV. Government Sources
United States Department of Defense. Department of State. “Foreign Military Training and DoD Engagement Activities of Interest in Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999: A Report to Congress.” Washington, D.C.: GPO, March 1999.
Commission for Historical Clarification. Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio 1, anexo 1. Guatemala: CEH, February 1999. Available online in Spanish at http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/mds/spanish/.
U.N. Truth Commission. United Nations. Report on El Mozote. 1997. Available online from http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/el_moz05.htm; general information and sources on the massacre available from http://www.parascope.com/articles/ 0197/el_moz04.htm.
V. Interviews
38 Chomsky, Noam. “Talking with Noam.” Interview by Andrew Kennis (16 November 2000). Advocate (February 2001): 1, 11-12. Interview available online from http://bari.iww.org/~iww-nyc/CUNY/chomsky-interview.html; audio of interview available from http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/nyc/CHOMSKY2.MP3 (replace 2 with 1, 3, 4 & 5 for other interview mp3 files and full interview).
Freeman, Laurie (Associate for Mexico and Drug Policy with the Washington Office on Latin America). Phone interview by Andrew Kennis, 30 November 2003.
Residents of Acteal, Chenalho, Chiapas, Mexico. Interviews by Andrew Kennis, January 2001.
Ross, Henrick (School of the Americas Watch researcher). Interview by Andrew Kennis, 1 December 2003.
Wilson, S. Brian (author of The Slippery Slope). Interview by Andrew Kennis, 28 November 2003.
VI. Radio Sources
Goodman, Amy. “Top-secret Iraq Report Reveals U.S. Corporations, Gov't Agencies and Nuclear Labs Helped Illegally Arm Iraq.” Democracy Now. Broadcasted 18 December 2002. Available online from http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/ demnow/dn20021218.ra&start=9:21.8.
VII. Documentaries
Achbar, Mark and Peter Wintonick, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. New York: Zeitgeist Films, 1993.
39
Second Paper / Panel presentation Evaluating the MMedia Performance of the New YYork Times onon VVieques
Andrew Kennis University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Phd Program at the Institute of Communications Research
Paper Prepared for Presentation at the Midwest Political Science Association 64th Annual National Conference April 20-23, 2006 Chicago, IL
Paper will be presented at the Political Threats, Cycles and Catastrophes panel of the New Political Science Caucus section on Saturday, April 22nd, 8:30am (Parlor B – 6th Floor).
1 Previous scholarship on media performance has proven in a variety of cases to serve as a useful predictive device and analytical tool for resulting news coverage
(Althaus, 2003; Boyd-Barrett, 2004; D. Chomsky, 2004; Domhoff, 2002; Friel and Falk,
2004; Hallin, 1984; Hutcheson et al., 2004; Solomon, 2005; McChesney, 2004). Notably, the propaganda model by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, as well as the indexing hypothesis by W. Lance Bennett (Herman and Chomsky, 2002; Bennett, 1990), has proven to be particularly instructive in relation to U.S. news media coverage of important U.S. foreign policy issues and events (Jacobson et al., 2002; Kennis, 2004).
Continuing a previous study done in relation to the propaganda model’s effectiveness in predicting elite print coverage of social movements (Kennis, 2002), this study will attempt to do the same with news coverage of the movement to evict the over half- century long U.S. Naval presence on the island of Vieques (part of Puerto Rico).42
Additionally, the other central aim of this study will be to explore the effectiveness of combining the indexing hypothesis with the propaganda model as theoretical explanations for news coverage.
The propaganda model’s main postulate is that the political economy of the mass media results in five filters that limit the ability of the elite print media to be independent from the state-corporate interests that they are beholden to and very much a part of.
Herman and Chomsky summarized these filters in the following passage:
The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news “filters,” fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as a primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media [via corporate funded think tanks and at times, from direct pressure by government officials, i.e. phone calls, letters, etc.]; and (5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass
2 through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns (2002:2).
The five filters result in a situation where there are “worthy” and “unworthy” victims that are treated in a dichotomized manner by elite print media. This is the
“unworthy / worthy victims” thesis, which is the crux of the propaganda model and the consequential expression of the five filters, which Herman and Chomsky argue are a result of institutional pressures exerted on elite print media firms. In the case of Vieques, we are dealing with “unworthy victims,” as these are victims who suffer the consequences of a policy by the United States or one of its allies. In other words,
“unworthy” is referring to the lack of sympathy, attention and seriousness granted to the plight of the victim by the news media. As such, Herman and Chomsky write that,
“unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.” In terms of sourcing tendencies for cases involving unworthy victims, Herman and Chomsky explain that “we would expect official sources of the
United States and its client regimes to be used heavily – and uncritically – in connection with one’s own abuses and those of friendly governments.” The tone of coverage will be affected as well, as there will be an “uncritical acceptance of certain premises in dealing with self and friends – such as that one’s own state and leaders seek peace and democracy, oppose terrorism, and tell the truth . . . (34-35).” The volume of coverage and the quality thereof are factors that characterize unworthy victims, as “evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation (37).”
The model has a proven track record with the New York Times, the source under evaluation in this study, and thus serves as a useful guide of what we can expect in terms of sourcing tendencies, the tone of the coverage and the characterizations of the victims
3 involved, as well as the unquestioned premises of the Washington foreign policy establishment.
The indexing hypothesis postulates that the mainstream media “‘index’ the range of voices and viewpoints in both news and editorials according to the range of views expressed in mainstream government debate about a given topic (Bennett, 1990:106).”
Jonathan Mermin has done some of the most recent and comprehensive work in terms of evaluating the indexing hypothesis and summarizes with this elucidation, “the spectrum of debate in the news, the indexing hypothesis asserts, is a function of the spectrum of debate in official Washington (Mermin, 1999:5).”43 Thus, the indexing hypothesis seeks to measure the extent that critical viewpoints are shut out of coverage of a certain foreign policy in relation to the positioning by Washington on that particular policy. Mermin wrote that the importance of the indexing thesis is at its highest when there is “evidence showing that critical perspectives do not just increase from a reasonable baseline in the news when there is debate in Washington, but instead are ignored or marginalized in the news if not first expressed in Washington (5).”44 The implications of the indexing hypothesis are important, as Bennett wrote, “Evidence supporting the indexing hypothesis would suggest that the news industry has ceded to government the tasks of policing itself and striking a democratic balance (1990:106).” The question the indexing hypothesis seeks to further answer is whether or not critical perspectives are “outweighed or overshadowed,” or are “ignored or relegated to the margins of the news.” Mermin offers this additional dimension to the indexing hypothesis, terming the later the
“marginalization version” and the former, the “correlation version” (1999:5-6). This study will also seek to measure to what extent critical perspectives were outweighed or overlooked in the coverage under evaluation in the Times.
4 The indexing hypothesis should be useful – thanks to the differing time periods when there was both elite consensus and later on conflict in Washington over Vieques – in explaining coverage results and possible discrepancies in the amount of coverage attained at differing times, as well as possible differences in the amount of critical viewpoints referenced.45
Unlike the indexing thesis, however, the propaganda model effectively utilizes structural factors to explain media performance as well.46 It is important to not lose sight of the fact that the media are comprised by huge corporate conglomerates who are in turn funded by other trans-national corporations as well (i.e. their advertisers). In the case of
Vieques, corporate interests were definitely at stake and affected by the issues at hand.
The U.S. Navy has a long history and close relationship with the powerful corporate military manufacturer Boeing. The New York Times has long accepted advertisements from Boeing that are often placed on the same pages as its editorials. Further, Exxon is a major advertiser with the New York Times as well, whose interests would not be favored when there is exposure of topics that only serve to bring light to how Washington’s foreign policies often deviate from that of the public interest.
It is important to remember that the effect that such shared corporate interests have on coverage is not carried out from direct orders or formalized rules. As Herman and Chomsky make sure to note in the revised edition of Manufacturing Consent, while the media may “serve, and propagandize on behalf of the powerful societal interests that control and finance them,” (i.e. Boeing and Exxon) they do not do so by “crude intervention, but by the selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors’ and working journalists’ internalization of priorities and definitions of news-worthiness that conform to the institution’s policy” interests and needs (2002:xi). Elucidating further,
5 Herman and Chomsky add that, “what most journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently explained by the incentives, pressures and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis
(2002:xii).” Therefore, it is specific expectations of media performance where the model’s postulates are most evidenced (as opposed to some set of orders, rules or commands from above); hence, the unworthy victims thesis is advanced as the basis to check and evaluate the expectations of the model for those negatively affected by a U.S. foreign policy, like that of Vieques.
In light of the scholarship just noted on the tendencies of elite print sources in terms of coverage of U.S. foreign policy, expectations for coverage of Vieques are the following: coverage will not be historically contextualized; references to the colonial relationship between the U.S. and P.R. will be absent; detailed and humanizing coverage of Sanes will not be humanized and/or not highlighted; the rejuvenated social movement against the presence of the military will be overlooked or not highlighted and to the extent it receives coverage, it will not highlight the movement’s issues in the foreground; the death of five-year-old Milivy Adams Calderon will not be accorded much attention or completely overlooked; lastly, the Rendon group’s contract will not be covered or relegated to a superficial mentioning. Instead, official sources will be prominently and consistently consulted; such claims will be highlighted over that of the movement; and the amount of coverage Vieques is granted will depend largely upon the kind of attention it attracts from public officials. Splits in elite opinion over Vieques should result in increased coverage and a broader range of permissible opinion, but not without limits that are still quite narrow and confined.
6 There is another consequence in terms of our expectations for coverage that results from the presence of elite disagreement over Vieques. Since the indexing hypothesis predicts increased coverage of critical viewpoints, we can also expect that elements of the social movement in Vieques will be covered and finally addressed
(though, not to a higher degree than that of official sources). To the extent that the latter actually does happen, it is expected that coverage will focus on divisions in the movement, rather than its unity. Further, coverage will tend to undermine the message and substance that the movement is trying to get across. As Todd Gitlin has duly shown in a classic work of media analysis and criticism, when covering anti-war movements, the mainstream media tend to focus on any mere hint of fissures and divisions between the movement and the people at-large, all at the expense of greater attention to the more substantive matters that the movement is actually struggling against (Gitlin, 1980). This tendency has been well documented (Gitlin; Mermin, 1999; Kennis, 2002; Bennett,
Pickard, et. al., 2004) and is very much in accordance with the postulates of the propaganda model.
Content Analysis
Content analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, is the main methodological tool that will be used in this study to evaluate media coverage on Vieques. Quantitative evaluations will be conducted by key word searches, comparing the extent that official versus unofficial sourcing was utilized in coverage and by noting how many times correspondents were sent as opposed to stateside based “desk” reporting. Qualitative inquiry will be utilized by answering key questions of the coverage under evaluation.
Was Vieques stripped of any meaningful historical, political and economic context? We will find this out by undertaking a number of tests, including searches to see
7 if coverage noted the precedent of a prior movement against the Navy (and if so, how often and when) and if it included historical references to the colonial relationship the
U.S. has long maintained over Puerto Rico. Further, how did reporting explain the reasons behind the needs of the U.S. Navy, that is, did it accept administration propagated themes of U.S. forces needing to be militarily “ready”? Or, instead, did it cite the growing chorus of critics (Johnson, 2004; Blum, 2003; Chomsky, 2005, 2006) who have criticized the growing US military presence around the world? Did coverage buy into false claims by the U.S. Navy that it has contributed to the economic development of
Vieques? In light of these questions, word searches will be conducted for the following key concepts: colony, colonialism, economic development, imperialism, anti- imperialism, militarism, social movement, anti-democratic, democratic, self- determination and readiness.
Sourcing will be a key factor evaluated in the analysis, as I will look at how often the principal groups of the movement to get the Navy out of Vieques were used as the main sources of articles as opposed to official sources. The existence of official sources against the presence of the Navy makes a distinction between official sources necessary.
Independent sources will be looked for and coded as well, and a word search for key groups and activists will be conducted. Lastly, a comparison will be undertaken of the amount of coverage before Vieques received substantial attention from public officials with the amount of coverage it received after such attention was garnered, so as to further evaluate sourcing tendencies and story selection.
Source Under Evaluation
The source that was selected for evaluation in this study was the daily newspaper, the New York Times. This was done for many reasons. First off, the Times has a
8 considerable influence, not only because of its elite readership, but also because many other newspapers look to the Times for story and theme selection of their news. As
Mermin puts it, “the impact of the New York Times on what other papers report is at its height in the area of foreign policy (Mermin, 1999:13).” Furthermore, the Times is considered a “liberal” paper and therefore, if it fails in its independence from the government and in properly highlighting critical perspectives, one can be reasonably assured that nearly all other U.S. print media sources failed in similar regards as well. For this reason, many other media analyses have focused their energies on analyzing the performance of this elite print medium.47
Time Periods
The time periods of the coverage that were selected for this analysis were purposefully based on the movement’s most dramatic and important moments. As such, there were four time periods selected: 1) from April 1999 to September 1999, which included both the death of David Sanes Rodriguez and the revived social movement and encampments that followed it; 2) February 2000, which included a mass demonstration against the Naval presence in Vieques, that also happened to be the largest protest in
Puerto Rican history; 3) from April 2001 until August 2001, which included the involvement of high-profile public officials and celebrities that rallied around the cause of Vieques, a much publicized trip by Governor George Pataki (R-NY), a key policy change announced by President Bush, and a non-binding referendum; 4) from November
17 until November 24, 2002, which was the week following the death of Milivy Adams
Calderon, a five-year old girl who died from cancer; and lastly, 5) from June 2005 until the present, thus falling in the aftermath of revelations through a Freedom of Information
Act request by Judicial Watch (originally contested by the government, but successfully
9 won by the watchdog group) of the Navy’s illegal contracting of the Rendon Group and their involvement in the non-binding referendum of 2001.
New York Times coverage from April 1999 to September 1999
The period following the death of David Sanes Rodriguez served to rejuvenate the movement to force the Navy out of Vieques. It also marked the first time in Vieques that a civilian had been killed as a result of Naval bombing practices in almost a half-a- century. Finally, it served to catalyze a campaign of civil disobedience and activism on a scale that Vieques had not seen since the 1970’s (McCaffrey, 2002). Nonetheless, none of these facts were apparently sufficient to warrant significant coverage from the Times.
For a full five months, the Times published a total of five articles mentioning
Vieques. Only one of the four was even by a correspondent sent to the scene, while the others were merely briefs picked off the wires. Even a mere announcement of the death did not appear in the Times until May 10, 1999, almost a month after the killing. This happened because the first mention of the incident in the Times (04/20/99) did not even note that a fatality had occurred and no follow-up to the matter was undertaken. It wasn’t until July 10, three months after Sanes had been killed, when the Times finally sent one of its correspondents to Vieques to write a piece on the topic.
The reason why the Times finally decided to start covering Vieques becomes clear in one of the lead paragraphs from Mireya Navarro’s article:
For the first time since its acquisition by the United States after the Spanish- American War, Puerto Rico, a self-governing commonwealth and an American military outpost in the Caribbean, is demanding that the Navy end all military activities in Vieques and return the land it acquired in the 1940's. Last week a special commission appointed by Gov. Pedro J. Rossello concluded that the military training had caused disastrous economic and environmental damage and that it violated the human and constitutional rights of the 9,300 residents of Vieques. The panel recommended that the Navy clean up and leave. (07/10/99)
10 The timing of the release of this article, and its emphasis on a change of policy by
Governor Rosselló (as opposed to the social movement itself), strongly suggests that
Navarro was sent out to Vieques because of the policy change and not because of the protestors. That is, the fact that the article was published only a week after this policy change, but also after a two month absence of coverage of the kind of civil disobedience that had been undertaken in opposition to the Navy, is a good example of the kind of sources that consistently generated coverage and stories from the Times (public officials, as opposed to citizens who are part of a movement) in all time periods analyzed in this study.
The long history of struggle against the presence of the Navy in Vieques nearly went unmentioned, and instead, Navarro only wrote of “opponents” in the beginning of the article and flippantly mentions “protests, blockades by fishing boats, brawls between off-duty sailors and local residents,” towards the end. The word ‘movement’ did not appear in the article, but claims by Navy officials comprised a full half of the article’s sources, with Puerto Rican government officials comprising most of the other half.48 At one point, Navarro went so far as to essentially erase previous civilian deaths in Vieques, when she wrote, “The security guard killed in the April accident, 35-year-old David
Sanes, was the first civilian casualty since the training exercises began.” In fact, however,
Sanes was not the first casualty and was one of many others, as Katherine McCaffrey informs us with her highly informative ethnographic-based study on Vieques, where she wrote the following:
The forties, fifties, and sixties saw a string of civilian casualties in Vieques. In 1940, a man and his son were killed when they walked down a path and their horse stepped on a grenade. In the mid-sixties, the navy lost a “test bomb with nuclear characteristics” off the coast of Vieques. In the nineties there were a series of incidents. In 1993, the navy dropped five bombs on the border of the civilian
11 sector. In 1996, bombs exploded in the coastal waters by a group of fishermen, seriously injuring one. In 1997, the National Guard riddled a parked police car and a town school bus with bullets (McCaffrey, 2002:149).
The Times essentially “parroted” what the government said without further questioning.
This happened throughout all coverage periods analyzed.
Sourcing Results
While we already have seen that media coverage of the most dramatic moment of the movement to stop Navy bombing exercises in Vieques was at a bare minimum, what were the sourcing tendencies of the article and the few briefs that were published? The results show that expectations by the propaganda model and the indexing hypothesis were clearly met. The lone substantive article in the 1999 period that was evaluated (i.e. the
Navarro piece (04/20/99)) did not use the movement as a prominent source. With the exception of only one brief, not one piece run in the Times during this period referred to the movement in Vieques in any significant manner.
Upon further examination, it becomes clear that the lack of debate in Washington, and by extension the lack of responsiveness by public officials to demands struggled for by the people, was partially responsible for the lack of coverage and the subsequent
“unworthy victims” status accorded to the people of Vieques. Indeed, it did in fact take a switch in the Puerto Rican government’s position on this matter to generate even a substantive on-the-scene article about Vieques. This occurrence validates expectations of the indexing hypothesis.
Table 1.1
New York Times coverage from April 19 – September 1 (1999)
12 Type of Coding # of Articles Official sources – stories with sources mostly critical of Navy’s 0.5 presence Official sources – total 3.5 Unofficial sources – stories relying on ordinary people, “off-the- 0.5 street” quotes Unofficial sources – stories that cite social movements in at least 2 1 paragraphs Unofficial sources – total 1.5 Stateside Reports / On-the-scene reports / From the main island 0 / 1 / 4 (P.R.) reports Cover Page (A1) stories / Metro cover page 0 / 0
The lack of coverage shown in the table above fulfilled the predictions of the propaganda model in that coverage only contained, “slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage (Herman and Chomsky, 2002:37).” The death of David Sanes Rodriguez was dramatic and served as a catalyst to the movement and could have easily served as a plausible news hook. However, Sanes was killed by the
U.S. military and as the model would expect, there were no in-depth portrayals of Sanes, no portraits of his life and family, no interviews with his relatives, and no A1 cover page stories generating sympathy and outrage. Even Sanes’s name was only mentioned a total of three times during the coverage period (an average then of less than one mention per story).
Word Search Results
Unsurprisingly, the word searches produced no hits for any of the briefs amongst the coverage. There was, however, one hit a piece for the words colonialism and the concept of economic development. The only time the word colonialism was ever mentioned was in a derisive fashion.49
The disastrous “economic and environmental damage” could have been humanized in very dramatic ways, as any consultation of the main groups involved in the
13 effort to evict the Navy from the island or even interviews with any number of the many native Viequenses afflicted would have clearly revealed. However, no such consultations or interviews were present in Navarro’s article, despite the fact that economic development was referenced once in the article (though only via an official source).50
All other words (colony, anti-imperialism, militarism, social movement, anti- democratic, democratic and self-determination) searched for were absent. A greater presence (or even a presence at all) of the concepts associated with these words would have provided a context and a greater understanding to the readers of the Times of the appropriate background for Vieques. As predicted, however, significant context and background that would serve to excite and enrage are not afforded to victims and issues related to U.S. military actions.
The kind of concepts and context that was provided in the coverage, however, illustrates an expected dichotomy. An additional word search was also conducted with far different expectations. While none of the major groups that were most active in the subsequent campaign of civil disobedience were ever mentioned in the 1999 coverage period, Navy officials and representatives were cited 10 times, often times with unquestioned justifications for their presence. A common refrain was the following quote in the Navarro article, “‘If the Navy lost Vieques, carrier battle groups would deploy with substandard training,’ said Capt. James K. Stark Jr., commanding officer at the Roosevelt
Roads Naval Station in Ceiba, P.R., to which the Navy range here belongs.”
While Navy and military officials were quoted without additional questioning, the premises to their rationale for the continued Naval presence in Vieques were left unexamined. Why does the Navy “need” such extensive and expansive training? Is it really for purposes of “national defense,” or does it have to do with the ever-increasing
14 U.S. military presence around the world and a related increase in the aggressiveness of
U.S. foreign policy?51 Indeed, scholars such as Chalmers Johnson have documented such increases and research institutes such as the National Security Archive have also exhaustively documented the increasingly aggressive nature of U.S. foreign policy abroad
(Johnson, 2004, 2000). These voices, however backed up by evidence and documentation they may be, are not considered the “proper” experts to be cited and utilized by the New
York Times.
Summary of Results for Time Period Evaluated (1999)
The indexing hypothesis and the unworthy victims thesis, taken together, have specific expectations about the kind of coverage expected for Vieques following the death of David Sanes Rodriguez. Without a conflict in Washington or dissenting views from the Puerto Rican government, the indexing hypothesis would not expect significant coverage of dissidence to official U.S. foreign policy. Coverage results reflected this, as no articles were published until the Puerto Rican government switched their position and adopted a more aggressive stance against the continued presence of the Navy in Vieques.
The fact that the lone substantive article run by the Times makes little mention of the viewpoints emanating from the movement, much less the groups in the movement itself, shows that the marginalization version of the indexing hypothesis was applicable.
Similarly, the fact that there was not any humanizing coverage of David Sanes, and his death and life were not highlighted in the Times, was also in accordance with the expectations of the model. A highly colorful and dedicated campaign of civil disobedience that reflected the rejuvenated social movement against the Navy in Vieques by its own residents was not referenced in any significant manner, much less the issues it was trying to raise. Official sources were prominently and consistently consulted, and the
15 premises they based their arguments on were left unquestioned. Even when splits in elite opinion on Vieques occurred within Puerto Rico, there was still a rather strict limit on the range of permissible opinion and an even stricter hold on the ability of the movement to attract coverage from the Times.
The lone substantive article run by the Times was instructive in that it foreshadowed the type of coverage the Times would finally grant to Vieques two years later; that is, only after New York Governor George Pataki took a stand on the issue and visited the island. This type of coverage overlooks the main groups and actors involved with the movement to discontinue the Naval presence in Vieques and the issues they are trying to raise, it quotes official sources and does not question their statements much less the premises that they are based on and it only gives attention to the issue after disagreement in Washington (and even then, still overlooking movement issues and initiatives). As a result, it lacks the kind of independence from government policy that any democracy needs from its most influential and ostensibly “liberal” print media source.
New York Times coverage from February 2000
In February 2000, the largest demonstration in Puerto Rican history occurred. The demonstration was largely organized by religious forces in an effort to stop the continued presence of the Navy in Vieques. The mass protest was a culmination of a long and dedicated campaign of civil disobedience and direct action which had resulted in hundreds of arrests.
What would the expectations of the propaganda model and the indexing hypothesis be in terms of the amount of coverage that such a demonstration should generate? Clearly, the demonstration opposed U.S. foreign and military policy in a
16 manner that would accord it an “unworthy victims” status. While the propaganda model predicts that coverage volume will be low for cases involving “unworthy victims,” it is not one of its stronger postulates. Further, in at least one case in which the model was evaluated, when the volume of coverage did not fit model expectations, other aspects of coverage still fulfilled the model’s predictions.52 The indexing hypothesis, in contrast to the model, is more concerned with volume of coverage as a significant variable for its thesis. In his comprehensive evaluative study on the indexing hypothesis, Mermin found exceptions to the rule that critical coverage will increase when there is disagreement in
Washington. One such exception was during the Gulf War when major demonstrations were being organized in January 1991 during a time of bi-partisan consensus on the policy of war in Washington. Upon further examination of the coverage, however,
Mermin found that the unexpected “critical coverage” was in actuality not very critical and framed in an unfavorable manner for the demonstrators and their aims (Mermin,
1999:107-108).
Thus, neither the indexing hypothesis nor the propaganda model strictly stipulates that no coverage would be expected for a demonstration with the tenor that the protest in
Puerto Rico had in February 2000. General expectations are that coverage would be low
(barring elite disagreement, which it did not have at this point) and framed in a manner that was not favorable to the cause of the demonstrators.
17 The results of the search conducted on Lexus-Nexus showed that the Times did not cover the demonstration. It did not send a correspondent to it and did not even run a wire piece. In fact, the demonstration barely warranted a mention in the paper, as it only had a photograph of the protest run with a caption (New York Times, 2000:A14).53
Throughout the month of February, no brief or article mentioning Vieques was run. As a result, coverage expectations were surpassed for this period, as the demonstration, for all intents and purposes, was effectively blacked out of coverage in the Times.
New York Times coverage from April 2001 to August 2001
The beginning of the spring in 2001 marked a very important time for Vieques, in that the movement managed to attract elite support from high-ranking public officials and celebrities alike. President Bush even went so far as to announce an end to the bombing exercises and a removal of the Navy base from Vieques by 2003. Before the death of
David Sanes Rodriguez, not even Governor Pedro Rosselló was firmly supportive the movement in Vieques. The election of a new governor in Puerto Rico (Governor Sila
Calderón) who ran a campaign that promised to be supportive of evicting the Navy from
Vieques coupled with the adoption of Vieques as campaign issue by Republican
Governor George Pataki, changed matters greatly. After Pataki met with President Bush, bombing was suspended within a matter of days. Celebrities took out a full page ad in the
New York Times and some even began undertaking civil disobedience themselves
(Edward James Olmos, was one of many others).
The amount of coverage in the Times reflected these high-profile changes, in that media attention, story totals and publicity about Vieques reached its zenith during this period. Although other media sources in this study were not evaluated, at least one scholar who undertook a media analysis of international sources during this same period
18 noted that this was the “blitzkrieg” period of media coverage for Vieques (Jimenez,
2001:209). Clearly then, this time period presented the most rife amount of material for analysis.
Sourcing and On-the-Scene Reporting Results
With the kind of division of elite opinion and big name attention that was at play in regards to Vieques in 2001, the indexing hypothesis would fully expect coverage totals to increase for this period. The extent that critical viewpoints not originating first in
Washington are still shut out of the media will tell us whether the marginalization version of the indexing hypothesis was at play or not.
While the indexing hypothesis allows and even predicts flows of coverage depending upon the extent of disagreement in Washington, the propaganda model does not allow for any change of status for “unworthy victims.” Even with conflict in
Washington, in other words, unworthy victims are still unworthy (the classic case tested by the propaganda model in this regard was the Vietnam War (Herman and Chomsky,
2002:169-296). In the case of Vieques then, simply because a few politicians and celebrities take up a cause that had been previously neglected and overlooked – and in some cases, even “sold out,” as was the perception by many Puerto Ricans of the brokered deal between President Clinton and Governor Pedro Rosselló (McCaffrey,
2002:169-172) – the status afforded by the media to the victims involved will not change.
The reasons for this have to do with the fact that the model has nothing to say about exactly how much coverage one should expect. Sourcing tendencies should not differ significantly and official sources, as well as their version of the matter at hand, will continue to trump that of unofficial sources. Recall that the movement should still be
19 covered by the media with “little context that will excite and enrage,” and with only
“minimal humanization” for the victims of Vieques.
A number of sourcing tests were conducted for the 2001 coverage period, measuring the same variables that were also done for the 1999 period. The results of the sourcing test done for the coverage period were as follows:
Table 1.2
New York Times coverage from April 2 – August 5 (2001) Type of Coding # of Articles Official sources – articles with sources generally supportive of Navy 5.5 Official sources – articles with sources mostly critical of Navy’s presence 7.5 Official sources – articles about jailed political celebrities (Al Sharpton) 14 (7) Official sources – total 27 Unofficial sources – articles that rely on ordinary people, “off-the-street” 4.5 quotes Unofficial sources – articles that cite social movements in at least 2 4.5 paragraphs Unofficial sources – total 9 Stateside Reports / On-the-scene reports / From main island (P.R.) reports 27 / 8 / 1 Cover Page (A1) stories / Metro cover page 4 / 6
When compared to the results for the 1999 period, the sheer number of articles is striking.
There were 36 pieces run on Vieques, the majority of which were full fledged articles.
This was considerably more than the 4 briefs and 1 article run during 1999 coverage period (which was the same length of time as the 2001 period). The 2001 period also saw articles that highlighted the movement in ways that hadn’t been done before. For the first time ever, Vieques was making the cover as it had four A1 stories and six articles that were on the front page of the Metro section of the Times. Such results confirm the expectations of the indexing hypothesis, which would predict increased coverage following elite disagreement between prominent public officials and a subsequent opening for more critical coverage as well.
20 The results of the sourcing tests in terms of the amount of articles that made the cover of the Times front page or Metro section give the impression that the movement was able to finally attract the attention it deserved. However, upon closer examination, this was simply not the case in terms of the actual content of these cover stories. First off, only four of ten cover stories made the prestigious “A1” placement. Of these four pieces, two featured President Bush. For the other two cover stories, one was about the results of the non-binding referendum (July 30) and the other was about the protesters (April 28).
The other six articles only made the Metro section’s cover page. Half of those articles were on jailed political celebrities. The other two were featuring Governor Pataki and the Navy. None featured the movement itself. Thus, only one of the thirty-five articles that appeared in the Times was a cover story that featured the protesters. I will analyze this article further, which was an on-the-scene report by Andrew Jacbos, but first
I will continue with our look at the sourcing tendencies found in this coverage period.
Official sources outnumbered unofficial sources by 3 to 1 in the 2001 coverage period. Only a smattering of articles even mentioned the movement at all, and never specifically referred to any of the major group’s actors (see word search results below).
As many articles depending on “off-the-street” sources were present as there were articles that even mentioned the movement at all,54 mimicking similar results found in other media analyses of social movements, where substantive issues that movements were fighting for were also virtually absent in news coverage (Gitlin, 1980; Mermin 1999;
Bennett, Pickard, et. al., 2004).
In terms of the comparison between official sources that were critical of the
Navy’s presence versus those who were supportive, the former did indeed outnumber the latter. However, this can be explained by the fact that the governor of New York, the
21 same state that the Times is based in, undertook a policy change and even reportedly convinced President Bush to temporarily stop the bombing exercises in Vieques.
Furthermore, the presence of Hollywood and political celebrities alike in terms of the activism against the Navy also increased coverage, especially when some prominent figures were jailed after they undertook civil disobedience. Do such results disprove the expectations of the indexing hypothesis? Recall that the indexing hypothesis actually predicts that official sources that hold a strategically critical viewpoint will be covered. In
Mermin’s comprehensive study, official sources espousing critical views were in fact regularly covered at a similar clip as they were covered in the 2001 period that was evaluated in this study, as cases with conflict in Washington generally resulted in 3 times as much critical coverage as cases without such conflict (Mermin, 1999: 101).
Conversely, even with increased coverage and attention, the propaganda model does not predict any changes to the status of “unworthy victims” or in sourcing tendencies, as long as the policies are still in place. That is, mere citations of public officials who are critical of such policies will not result in more humanizing pieces of the victims. Nor will it change the expectation of a lack of context that will excite and enrage, or at least, so the model predicts.
Clearly, the results of the sourcing test fulfilled expectations of both the model and the indexing hypothesis; that is, while coverage increased, sourcing tendencies still reflected the expectations of the model. What about the other predictions of the indexing hypothesis and the model? Was the marginalization version of the indexing hypothesis present, that is, were critical viewpoints not first expressed in Washington nonetheless overlooked and virtually ignored? Was there little context and minimal humanization of the victims involved as the propaganda model predicts? Were the main issues that were
22 driving the movement sufficiently addressed? These questions are better answered with an in-depth survey of the coverage via the results of the word search.
Word Search Results
Two separate word searches were conducted. One was done with the intent to measure the extent of historical and political context found in the articles, as well as the extent to which the issues that most drove the movement were covered. Another was done to measure the extent that the official version of Vieques was reported on. Finally, word searches measuring to what extent sources were depended on were also conducted.
The first word search that was done was for the following terms and concepts: 1) colony; 2) colonialism; 3) economic development; 4) imperialism; 5) anti-imperialism; 6) militarism; 7) social movement; 8) anti-democratic; 9) democratic; and 10) self- determination. The results of the searches were revealing, as there were only six total hits of these key terms and concepts. A review of all of the instances in which the words appeared is even more revealing.
The first time that the word “colonialism” appeared in any of the coverage analyzed from the Times in 2001 was incredibly not until July 15, months after Pataki’s visit to the island and days after Bush’s announcement. Even at that point, however, it only appeared in the following paragraph:
Vieques, simply, is an activist's dream, offering something for everyone. It has the destruction of an ecological system, along with claims that the people are being exposed to toxic chemicals, which environmentalists are seizing upon. It has the specter of American colonialism that human rights advocates and Puerto Rican nationalists are pointing to. It has the suggestion of racism that civil rights activists and Hispanic leaders are up in arms over.
Much of the article, headlined appropriately “A Tiny Island, but a Cause So
Celebre; From New York to Hollywood, Vieques Has Issues for Everyone,” carried the
23 same tone throughout, in which Vieques was defined as a “dream,” instead of a nightmare. It was not the first time that the Times had cheapened the substance of the movement as it tried to define the driving force behind it as a mere opportunity for outside activists to rebel, as opposed to a legitimate effort by local residents to stop the
Navy from pummeling them further with resulting health crises, environmental decay and destruction, and economic misery. Other examples included that of articles by Andrew
Jacobs, who wrote the first few pieces that finally featured unofficial sources in the
Times.55
In a “Tiny Island Turns Into a Symbol of Discontent,” an A1 cover story, Jacobs wrote the following two paragraphs on April 27, which echoed some of the sentiments of the article just noted above:
But the campaign to turn Vieques into a cause celebre is not universally admired among the 9,400 residents of this 33,000-acre island off the eastern tip of Puerto Rico. While many residents have painted "No Mas Bombas" -- no more bombs -- on their car windows, there is a quiet contingent that resents the protesters, the politicians and the reporters.
The most persistent protesters, the locals point out, are from the Big Island -- as Puerto Rico is called by Vieques residents -- intellectuals and ideologues who did not care a wisp about Vieques until recently. "These big city guys are just playing with us, using Vieques for their own political end," said Juan Morales, a 56-year- old handyman, as he sipped a beer at a roadside bodega (Jacobs, 2001:A1).
Indeed, not only is Vieques once again defined as nothing more than a “cause celebre,”
Jacobs paints an exaggerated division on the island that simply did not exist. Had Jacobs consulted movement sources (naming them in his articles would have been a start), he may have realized that the island was not as divided as he thought. Subsequent results in a number of referendums confirmed that Jacobs was quite mistaken in thinking that it was only “Big Island” activists who were against the continued presence of the Navy in
Vieques.56 Beyond the referendum results, McCaffrey’s first-hand research into Vieques
24 casts away all doubts on the issue, as she clearly notes how, “The Navy has consistently portrayed the struggle in Vieques as an anti-American agitation, led by outside extremists.” The reality of the matter, McCaffrey countered, is that “Despite highly confrontational tactics and dramatic imagery, the Vieques struggle is one that has been characterized by political moderation (McCaffrey, 2002:10).”
The concept of economic development only garnered two hits, neither of which having occurred before President Bush’s reversal. Indeed, it wasn’t until June 15, two days after President Bush’s announcement that the concept was even referred to and only in the context of a development aid agreement brokered between former Governor
Rosselló and President Clinton, an agreement referred to again on July 29. No details of the kind of economic suffering and hardship the island has suffered as a result of the presence of the Navy were expounded upon, much less even touched on (McCaffrey,
2002:11, 99-100, 116).
Militarism and colonialism were both referred to a couple of times, but in articles that came after President Bush’s announcement (Hernandez, 2001:A25; Gonzalez,
2001:A12; Gonzalez, 2001:A12b). In fact, self-determination was ironically only used when Viequenses were about to go to the polls on a non-binding referendum. The article failed to question why Viequenses did not have a right to a binding referendum that would bring about real self-determination, something that the movement had demanded all along.
The second word search that was conducted was for the most prominent groups and individuals involved with the local movement from Vieques, including: Viequenses
United, Fishermen’s Co-op (Fisherman’s War), Committee to Rescue and Develop
Vieques, the Vieques Women’s Alliance, the Vieques Fishermen’s Rights Group, Dr.
25 Rafeal Rivera Castaño, Mario Martínez, Dora Vargas and Amelia Mulero. There was not one hit of any of these important local groups and activists in any of the coverage in 2001
(or in 1999, 2000 and 2005 for that matter).* Nor were there any hits for searches conducted that revealed any mentions made of the long history in Vieques against the
Navy, such as the movement in the 70’s by the fishermen. These were incredible omissions that strongly point to the marginalization version of the indexing hypothesis and validate expectations of the propaganda model in terms of sourcing and context.
There were not many justifications offered by officials for the continued Naval presence at Vieques beyond that of military “readiness.” Thus, only one word was searched for in this regard. Certainly in terms of any concept of a fair balance in coverage, one justification given by military officials should not outweigh seven arguments against it. Nevertheless, the term “readiness” appeared in the articles four to eight times as much as any of the other terms and concepts just cited above and still outnumbered total hits of all the other terms as well, thereby showing an extreme preference for the military’s perspective on Vieques.
The results of the final word search clearly show how Governor Pataki, Al
Sharpton and President Bush dominated the coverage in terms of sourcing and citations.
Each of them were mentioned or cited well over 100 times, while Governor Calderón was mentioned 57 times. Such results reflect how more stories were written about political celebrities being jailed, than about the issues that the movement in Vieques was actually fighting for. In fact, not one article in the period surveyed or even featured any of the major issues that spurred the movement on; that is, there were no features on cancer, on the lack of economic development in Vieques that has resulted from the Naval presence,
* In a search for the Committee to Rescue and Develop Vieques, it was accidentally found that the Senate’s and House’s Armed Services Committees were cited a total of at least a half a dozen times in the coverage.
26 or on the death of David Sanes. While a lot of the Times coverage went into great detail about the internal political intrigues of the various public officials and political celebrities that involved themselves with Vieques (either by changing positions on the issue or by ostensibly supporting the removal of the Navy), no coverage went into any depth about the movement itself. Quite ominous, for example, was the omission of any mention made of the new and leading role that women played in bringing about the rejuvenation of the movement and its success in forcing public officials to take a stand against the presence of the Navy (McCaffrey, 2002:162-16657).
New York Times coverage for November 2002
On November 17, 2002, a young cancer patient from Vieques died. Milivy Adams
Calderon was only five years old when she died, but not before she became a symbol of the movement to stop Navy bombing exercises in Vieques. Milivy was diagnosed with cancer at the tender age of 2 years old, a rarity for a child with that young of an age. A high level of foreign chemicals was found in her blood and many people blamed the military’s contamination of Vieques as the principal cause. She quickly became a national symbol of the struggle against the Navy and its stubborn refusal to honor the desires of the inhabitants of the island it had exploited for decades. Her picture would often be seen on the placards and posters of activists during the many demonstrations and direct action against the continued Naval presence. However, because she was a symbol of a movement that was against U.S. military policy, the propaganda model would not expect even as compelling of a story as this one to be covered in any significant or emotional manner.
Once again the model’s predictions were surpassed. Not only was Milivy’s death not humanized, it was completely uncovered by the Times. Not one article or brief
27 mentioned Milivy’s plight, or even her death. The exclusion of a story of this tenor was perhaps one of the Times’s largest failures in its coverage.
New York Times coverage for July 2005 to the present
On July 25, 2005, a startling revelation was released by Judicial Watch, a non- profit organization that specializes in uncovering and prosecuting governmental corruption. Upwards of $1.7 million dollars was illegally paid to the Rendon Group by the U.S. Navy so as to influence the outcome of the non-binding referendum of 2001.
This was a scandal of significant proportion and gave the media a chance to highlight corruption that involved high ranking officials illegally using taxpayer funds.
The press release distributed by Judicial Watch presented scathing evidence against clearly illegal activities by the Navy. One paragraph in the release read as follows:
The Navy contract tasks for The Rendon Group included: “. . . organize local leaders to build grassroots communications support . . . ensure the integrity of the voting process . . . develop methods and tracking procedures to increase support among citizens.” Federal law restricts the political activities of government agencies and employees. Also, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. ' 1461), forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. government authored or developed propaganda or “official news” deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy (U.S. Navy Paid $1.69 Million to The Rendon Group).
28 The history of the Rendon Group is such that breaking the Judicial Watch story could have lent well to a deeper investigative piece of the Group’s shady history from its past public relations work. PR Watch has the following description of the multi-million dollar PR firm:
The Rendon Group is a secretive public relations firm that has assisted a number of U.S. military interventions in nations including Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Panama and Zimbabwe. Rendon’s activities include organizing the Iraqi National Congress, a PR front group designed to foment the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (Rendon Group).
Judicial Watch not only revealed a scandal of significant proportions, it had to invest significant resources, time and money into a legal battle with the government to be able to do so. After over 11 months of evasion by the government over a lawful open records request, Judicial Watch was finally able to obtain the documentation it needed.
The Navy apparently did not need to worry, however, as what would have been quite a damaging and scandalous revelation was completely uncovered by the Times, just as the propaganda model would expect. Between the complete lack of coverage of the Milivy
Calderon death and the failure to run a piece on the Rendon Group, the marginalization version of the indexing hypothesis was also proven by a media performance that effectively shut out even the mere mentioning of important events that may lend to critical viewpoints.58
Comparative Analysis of Findings
The indexing hypothesis predicted that coverage in the Times would largely mirror the extent of conflict between influential public officials. Did this happen in the case of Vieques? A closer look is worth taking, as the “correlation” version of the indexing hypothesis is important and also relates significantly to the sourcing filter of the propaganda model. If the correlation version is true, so is the third filter of the model
29 which predicts that official sources will be prominently cited and depended upon in terms of story selection and the framing of coverage. If there are contested versions, as there certainly was when public officials were not in any way behind the movement in
Vieques, the official version will win out or quite simply, the unofficial version and related sources will sometimes even be completely ignored. Indeed, the correlation version of the indexing hypothesis predicts precisely this latter outcome.
There were important markers in the history of the Vieques movement that are worth recalling and noting. Before the summer of 1999, Puerto Rican officials had taken little interest in the plight of Vieques and did not show clear signs of support towards the removal of the Navy. In fact, even deals were brokered, such as the one that was made between President Clinton and Governor Rosselló. A perfect moment to test the indexing hypothesis was when a dramatic event happened, that is, the death of David Sanes in
April 1999. If there ever was a time when the indexing hypothesis would be put to the test, it was this one, as there definitely was a “news hook” in terms of the dramatic nature of Sanes’s death, which was one of the first casualties resulting from Naval bombing activities in Vieques after many decades of no fatal accidents.
The results of the survey of the 1999 coverage period revealed the correlation version of the indexing hypothesis to be true, and by extension, the third filter of the propaganda model as well. Since no official sources had much to say about the death and were just as well with it being ignored, it essentially was. It was not until the Puerto
Rican governor adopted a significant policy change that even a substantive article by the
Times was published. Even then, critical viewpoints were largely ignored, as was shown in the survey above.
30 By February 2001, however, conflict started emerging between important public officials. Governor George Pataki took a position in favor of the stoppage of the Navy’s bombing exercises and possibly in their continued presence there. In April 2001, the governor even took a much publicized trip to Vieques. The results of the amount of coverage during this time period are a stark contrast to that of 1999 (even when the period after Governor Rosselló’s policy change took effect is included). Further, the results of a comparison between the time period after President Bush’s announcement of the ending of the bombing exercises with both 1999 and the other period analyzed in
2001 are also revealing. A comparison on the following page of all three tables clearly illustrates the differences between these three time periods:
31 Table 1.3
New York Times coverage from April 19 – September 1 (1999) Type of Coding # of Articles Official sources – stories with sources mostly critical of Navy’s presence 0.5 Official sources – total 3.5 Unofficial sources – stories relying on ordinary people, “off-the-street” quotes 0.5 Unofficial sources – stories that cite social movements in at least 2 paragraphs 1 Unofficial sources – total 1.5 Stateside Reports / On-the-scene reports / From the main island (P.R.) reports 0 / 1 / 4 Cover Page (A1) stories / Metro cover page 0 / 0
Table 1.4
New York Times coverage from April 2 – June 13 (2001) Period following change of policy by Governor George Pataki (R-NY) to supporting the removal of the Naval base in Vieques. Type of Coding # of Articles Official sources – articles with sources generally supportive of Navy 2 Official sources – articles with sources mostly critical of Navy’s presence 4 Official sources – articles about jailed political celebrities (Al Sharpton) 10 / 6 Official sources – total 16 Unofficial sources – articles that rely on ordinary people, “off-the-street” quotes 2 Unofficial sources – articles that cite social movements in at least 2 paragraphs 0 Unofficial stories – total 2 Stateside Reports / On-the-scene reports / From the main island (P.R.) reports 15 / 2 / 1 Cover Page (A1) stories / Metro cover page 1 / 4
Table 1.5
New York Times coverage from June 14 – August 5 (2001) Period following change of policy by President George W. Bush to supporting the removal of the Naval base in Vieques. Type of Coding # of Articles Official sources – articles with sources mostly critical of Navy’s presence 3.5 Official sources – articles about jailed political celebrities (Al Sharpton) 4 / 1 Official sources – total 11 Unofficial sources – articles that rely on ordinary people, “off-the-street” quotes 2.5 Unofficial sources – articles that cite social movements in at least 2 paragraphs 4.5 Unofficial sources – total 7 Stateside Reports / On-the-scene reports / From the main island (P.R.) reports 12 / 6 / 0 Cover Page (A1) stories / Metro cover page 3 / 2
There are a couple of points of interest between these three findings. First of all, even half of the coverage evaluated in 2001, in either time period, dwarves the total amount of
32 coverage of 1999. Second, the more conflict occurred between high-ranking public officials, the more opening there was for unofficial sources, as is evidenced by the gradual growth of articles that featured these sources (though, as was noted above, an analysis of the content of the coverage still revealed a rather stringent limiting that never swayed far from Washington and marginalized outside viewpoints, namely that of the movement in Vieques). Thirdly, the period following President Bush’s announcement saw the most “open” period, in that more unofficial sources were used and more coverage was granted to Vieques (including more front page stories). Again though, additional coverage and attention does not prove much beyond that of the correlation version of the indexing hypothesis, which states that coverage patterns will more or less reflect the interest and the amount of conflict a topic obtains in Washington. The additional question is whether or not critical viewpoints are still ignored and marginalized and indeed, analysis of this coverage period revealed that they were.
Conclusion: Results of the Predictions of the Propaganda Model and the Indexing Hypothesis
A brief review of the expectations and predictions that the propaganda model and indexing hypothesis had in store for the coverage on Vieques is worth undertaking so as to facilitate an evaluation of the predictive power of these models in this case study. The following bullet points represent a summary of the predictions for the coverage evaluated in the Times:
• coverage will not be historically contextualized; references to the colonial relationship between the U.S. and P.R. will be absent (propaganda model);
• detailed and humanizing coverage of the death of David Sanes Rodriguez will not be humanized and/or not highlighted, reflecting his status as an “unworthy victim” (propaganda model);
• the rejuvenated social movement against the presence of the military will be overlooked or not highlighted and to the extent it receives coverage, it will not
33 highlight the movement’s issues in the foreground (propaganda model and marginalization version of the indexing hypothesis);
• official sources will be prominently and consistently consulted over those of unofficial sources and their premises won’t be questioned (propaganda model and indexing hypothesis);
• the amount of coverage Vieques is granted will depend largely upon the kind of attention it attracts from public officials (indexing hypothesis);
• splits in elite opinion over Vieques should result in increased coverage and a broader range of permissible opinion, but not without limits that are still quite narrow and confined (indexing hypothesis);
• as an “unworthy victim,” the death of five-year-old Milivy Adams Calderon will not be accorded much attention or completely overlooked, reflecting her status as an “unworthy victim”;
• lastly, the Rendon Group’s contract will not be covered or relegated to a superficial mentioning, due to it being a case of governmental corruption implicating high ranking officials, as opposed to ordinary people (i.e. welfare “abuse” versus high-level corruption)
Did the results of the analysis and survey of the coverage periods in the Times confirm the predictions and expectations listed above? Was coverage historically contextualized in a manner that would excite and enrage? Were references to the colonial relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico absent? The results of the various word searches and content analysis showed that in all periods analyzed, there was not a proper historical and political context given for the events covered, much less citation of some of the more problematic issues involved with Vieques. The movement of the 70’s was left uncovered. The Times even went so far as to essentially erase past casualties that civilians had suffered in Vieques by accepting the Navy’s statement on this issue without any further questioning. The Times clearly failed in this regard and at the same time, fulfilled the expectations of the model and the indexing hypothesis.
34 Was there detailed and humanizing coverage of the death of David Sanes
Rodriguez? Indeed, there was not any such coverage in the Times, not even in its back pages. None of his grieving family members were quoted, his life was not profiled and the details of his death were never expounded on. Instead, the Times merely quoted the
Navy’s official reaction to the death months after it had occurred. Such a result is what the model would expect and predict for a case where “unworthy victims” are present.
Following the death of David Sanes Rodriguez, a long-standing social movement was rejuvenated and transformed. New tactics were undertaken (i.e. civil disobedience and peaceful direct action), as well as new leadership (namely, that of women and ordinary Viequenses who were not necessarily fishermen). This in and of itself was certainly newsworthy and a campaign that resulted in hundreds of arrests and courageous activism from locals as well as outside supporters had an even greater news hook.
However, the Times only referred to the campaign in passing (noting the high arrest totals, but never referencing the groups involved, much less even detailing why such activism was undertaken) and had an extreme shortage of coverage during 1999. It took policy position changes and the involvement and support of Hollywood and political celebrities alike for the Times to even cover Vieques in a significant manner (and even then, with great flaws). Word searches and content analysis reveal, however, that the movement’s main groups and actors were never referred to by name or cited. In the rare instances that the Times ran articles that mainly consulted unofficial sources, “off-the- street” quotations of ordinary people (as opposed to activists and organizers) dominated the pieces. Such results more than qualify the predictions of the propaganda model in this regard.
35 Were official sources prominently and consistently consulted? Also, were official sources highlighted over that of the movement with their premises going unquestioned?
Indeed they were. Articles that depended on official sources always far outnumbered those that consulted unofficial sources and consultation of tables 1.1 through 1.4 clearly reveal as much, as do the results of the word searches for sourcing. Further, conceptual word searches also confirmed that the justification given by Navy and military officials were far more often cited than the criticisms of the movement. This was predicted by the third filter of the propaganda model and is characteristic of an “unworthy victims” case like that of Vieques.
Did the conflicting viewpoints that wound up occurring between Governor Pataki and the Navy result in increased coverage and a broader range of permissible opinion, as the indexing hypothesis would expect? Did the broader range still sideline critical perspectives that did not first originate in Washington, thereby validating the marginalization version of the hypothesis? Coverage results and analysis of the Times reveal that it did. While the amount of articles that depended on unofficial sources increased, this reflected a change by the Governor of New York and not a change in the tone or character of coverage. Official sources still significantly outweighed unofficial sources and articles of the later type often framed the movement in negative terms, overlooking the main issues it was trying to raise.
In cases involving “unworthy victims,” such as that of Vieques, the model does not expect significant coverage and attention to people like that of five-year old Milivy
Adams Calderon. Results confirmed this, as was the case with the scandal that was revealed by Judicial Watch. The Rendon Group’s illegal contract and the death of a child who was a strong symbol for the movement of Vieques were not “worthy” of any
36 coverage by the Times. A blackout of these issues surpassed model expectations, in fact, as marginalized coverage would not have fallen out of the boundaries of the model’s predictions.
Coverage Results Reflect Previous Research Findings
While all predictions and expectations by the propaganda model and indexing hypothesis were met, as coverage reflected an unwavering status of “unworthy victims” for the people of Vieques and the marginalization version of the indexing hypothesis was strongly evidenced, the results of this study and analysis also reflect a number of other research findings conducted in the discipline of media studies. Robert W. McChesney has authored a plethora of books detailing the significant effects that important changes in the political economy of the mass media have had on media performance. In his work,
McChesney has posited since the early 1990’s the media has tended to decontextualize the news it reports on. Most recently in The Problem of the Media, McChesney shows how an increased concentration of media conglomerates has resulted in news reporting having even less context than the previously inadequate levels of the past, while also noting the “marginalization of critical sources” in news reporting (McChesney, 2004:89).
In one particularly relevant passage, McChesney expounds on media performance in terms of U.S. foreign policy:
Arguably the weakest feature of U.S. professional journalism has been its coverage of the nation’s role in the world, especially when military action is involved. Again, relying on official sources is the main culprit. Journalists who question agreed-upon assumptions by the political elite stigmatize themselves as unprofessional and political . . . When criticism gains prominence in the news media regarding a U.S. war, the change in coverage almost always reflects a split among the elite, as was the case with Vietnam and, more recently, Iraq during the occupation. Moreover, journalists have internalized the elite assumption that the United States is invariably a force for good in the world, determined to bring freedom and democracy to the planet. Even dissenting coverage in mainstream journalism tends to accept this assumption . . . Woeful press coverage of the U.S. role in the world has grave consequences for everyone (McChesney, 2004:74-75).
37 McChesney also focused his research on the commercial effects on media performance, writing about how, “corporate and commercial pressures exerted indirectly are less likely to be recognized as such by journalists or the public,” and of the
“reluctance to spend money on investigative or international coverage.” Indeed, this echoed similar sentiments expressed by the propaganda model’s principal author, Edward
Herman, who explained that it is not by crude intervention that the commercial effects of the media’s corporate character are felt on coverage. Addressing similar concerns about the negative influence that the corporate owners of the media have on its performance,
Tom Fenton, former long-time journalist at CBS and author of Bad News: The Decline of
Reporting, the Business of the New, and the Danger to Us All, documented and criticized the cutbacks that corporations have waged on the amount of foreign news bureaus media firms maintain abroad (Fenton, 2005). Puerto Rican academic Felix Jimenez, who analyzed international sources and their coverage on Vieques, was also very critical of the lack of foreign news bureaus in Puerto Rico and the rest of the Caribbean (Jimenez,
2001:19). In the coverage from the New York Times, only eight articles amongst all coverage periods analyzed were reported from on-the-scene.
Carolyn Byerly is a feminist political economist who has analyzed media performance in relation to gender and has revealed disturbing findings in terms of the lack of coverage invoking gender in human rights reporting (Meehan, Riordan, et. al.,
2001). Similarly, female activist leaders and organizers were overlooked completely in
Times coverage on Vieques, despite the fact that they played a leading role in rejuvenating and transforming the movement to rid Vieques of the Navy from its very different shape and form of the 1970’s, as duly shown by the ethnographic based work by
Kathleen McCaffrey (2002). McChesney has also noted how “African-Americans and
38 Latinos are invisible or misrepresented in the news partly because they are not considered economically attractive to advertisers (2004:87).”
The findings of this study, when taken together with the other recent findings of the works just cited above, comprise yet another piece of the growing body of evidence that the institutional constraints of the commercial media in the U.S. prevent it from carrying out one of the most essential elements of democracy: supporting a vibrant and critical press that brings light to the ills wrought on society by its most powerful and unaccountable institutions.
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45 Endnotes: Media Analysis, Acteal and Racak
46 1 Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988). The five filters of the propaganda model explain dichotomized patterns of news coverage: The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news “filters,” fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as a primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media [via corporate funded right-wing think tanks and at times, from direct pressure by government officials, i.e. phone calls, letters, etc.]; and (5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns. (p. 1-2) 2 See Hallin, We Keep America on Top of the World (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 11; Michael Schudson, The Power of News (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 4; and Robert Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and US Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 3. 3 Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2004), p. 74. 4 Eric Herring and Piers Robinson, “Too Polemical or Too Critical for the Mainstream: Chomsky on Media-Elite Relations,” Journal of International Studies (2003). 5 Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 2002). 6 The following table illustrates the updated research by Herman and Chomsky for the model in 2002:
7 The “worthy” and “unworthy” victims thesis is summarized Herman and Chomsky in the following manner (p. 34-35): Using a propaganda model, we would not only anticipate definitions of worth based on utility, and dichotomous attention based on the same criterion, we would also expect the news stories about worthy and unworthy victims (or enemy and friendly states) to differ in quality. That is, we would expect official sources of the United States and its client regimes to be used heavily – and uncritically – in connection with one’s own abuses and those of friendly governments, while refugees and other dissident sources will be used in dealing with enemies. We would anticipate the uncritical acceptance of certain premises in dealing with self and friends – such as that one’s own state and leaders seek peace and democracy, oppose terrorism, and tell the truth – premises which will not be applied in treating enemy states. We would expect different criteria of evaluation to be employed, so that what is villainy in enemy states will be presented as an incidental background fact in the case of oneself and friends. What is on the agenda in treating one case will be off the agenda in discussing the other. We would also expect great investigatory zeal in the search of high officials for abuses in enemy states, but diminished enterprise in examining such matters in connection with one’s own and friendly states. The quality of coverage should also be displayed more directly and crudely in placement, headlining, word usage, and other modes of mobilizing interest and outrage. In the opinion columns, we would anticipate sharp restraints on the range of opinion allowed expression. Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotion. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.
Another summary, briefer in length, is included in the introduction to the second chapter of the book (p. 37): A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy. The evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation. We will show in this chapter that the U.S. mass media’s practical definitions of worth are political in the extreme and fit well the expectations of a propaganda model. While this differential treatment occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and public are able to remain unconscious of the fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone. This is evidence of an extremely effective propaganda system. See next footnote for a description by Chomsky of expectations for paired examples.
8 Ibid., p. 34. 9 Chomsky wrote on the kind of qualitative differences expected in paired examples in Necessary Illusions, stating that : The study of paired examples reveals a consistent pattern of radically dichotomous treatment, in the predicted direction. In the case of enemy crimes, we find outrage; allegations based on the flimsiest evidence, often simply invented, and uncorrectable, even when conceded to be fabrication; careful filtering of testimony to exclude contrary evidence while allowing what may be useful; reliance on official U.S. sources, unless they provide the wrong picture, in which case they are avoided (Cambodia under Pol Pot is a case in point); vivid detail; insistence that the crimes originate at the highest level of planning, even in the absence of evidence or credible argument; and so on. Where the locus of responsibility is at home, we find precisely the opposite: silence or apologetics; avoidance of personal testimony and specific detail; world-weary wisdom about the complexities of history and foreign cultures that we do not understand; narrowing of focus to the lowest level of planning or understandable error in confusing circumstances; and other forms of evasion. See Necessary Illusions, Appendix I, Section I (Boston: South End Press, 1989);
11 Mexico has consistently been the 2nd highest recipient of U.S. military aid, while also was ranked at the time of the massacre as the 2nd highest violator of human rights in the hemisphere by a number of respected human rights organizations (only Colombia ranks higher, which is accordingly the top recipient of U.S. military aid and support). See Darrin Wood, “Clinton's "Interference" in Mexico: From Wounded Knee to Chiapas,” Nuevo Amanecer Press – Europa (Dec. 28, 1997). An excerpt from the article reads, “the two biggest recipients of US military aid in Latin America, Colombia and Mexico, are also the two Latin American countries with the greatest number of massacres carried out by paramilitary organizations connected to their respective armed forces.” The article is available online at:
12 Some basic facts about Acteal itself: it is a rural community originally founded by Zapatistas (members and/or indigenous civilian supporters of the EZLN) that later on took on refugees in the early 1990’s. The refugees were distinct to the Zapatistas, however, in that they were devout Catholics and also pacifist. While they lived close to the Zapatista, their residences were in a distinct location. The refugees and residents of this part of Acteal were a part of a civil society organization called Las Abejas, an alliance between communities in the municipality of Chenalhó that was first founded in December 1992. Las Abejas gives shelter to indigenous refugees who have been terrorized and driven off their land by paramilitaries supported and armed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), like P&J. The home base of Las Abejas was in Acteal. Other nearby Abeja communities include X’oyep and Yibeljoj, which are even more impoverished than Acteal. After the massacre, a flood of aid given to Acteal resulted in electricity and minimal plumbing, communities like X’oyep and Yibeljoj, however, continued to lack these basic necessities and live in conditions well before the poverty line. For more details, see my article, “Living After the Terror: In the grief stricken indigenous communities of Acteal and Yibeljoj, poverty and despair linger on in rural southeastern Mexico,” The Advocate (December 2001). 13 Guadalupe Vázquez Luna, “Terror in Chiapas,” Maryknoll Magazine, April 2000. To see complete article:
14 The course of the day’s events is described in detail in John Ross, The War Against Oblivion: The Zapatista Chronicles (Maine: Common Courage Press, 2000). I lived in Acteal during January 2001 while doing volunteer work as a human rights observer for the Fray Bartolome Human Rights Center based in San Cristóbal. Thus, accounts relayed by Ross were also verified (and thus included here with confidence) from interviews I conducted myself while having lived in the village. See my article cited above (in footnote #3) for additional references. 15 Harrowing first-hand accounts, mostly from children, describe the gruesome details of the massacre that harkens memories back to similar horror stories in Guatemala and El Salvador. Manuel, the 10 year old son of the catechist, offers his testimony: The killers stood there laughing at my mother and then they killed her again and took out a knife and cut open her stomach and took out the baby that was in there and threw it away . . . Manuel’s mother was one of four pregnant women killed in the massacre. The Mexican government denies this account, however, Ross points out that the autopsy report notes that, “Corpse #16 was a ‘female cadaver, approximately 32 years old, who died of perforation to her abdominal viscera by a cutting instrument – the abdominal cavity was opened up and the product of approximately 28 weeks extracted.” 11 year old Micaela survived the massacre only because she found herself under her fallen dead mother and played dead. She had to do so while the assassins also killed her baby sister who was crying and strapped to the back of her mother. She said she heard them explain that, “We have to crush out the seed.” Ross notes that the massacre “invokes [memories of] the genocidal campaigns of Guatemala’s Kaibiles . . .”; see Ibid., pg. 240. Also see, Commission for Historical Clarification, Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio (Guatemala: CEH, February 1999), Anexo 1, Volumen 1; online at:
The federal government headed by Ernesto Zedillo, the ex state governor of Chiapas, Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro, the new governor, Roberto Albores Guillen, and the ex president of Chenalho, Jacinto Arias Cruz, have all been incapable of meeting our basic demands.
Although Las Abejas (the bees) is a pacifist organisation, they have sought to repress and to kill us by arming paramilitary groups made up of indigenous members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Backed by the Federal Army and the Public Security Police, some of them are the material and intellectual authors of a low intensity war that is trying to exterminate organized indigenous people because they do not belong to the PRI.
[…]
The massacre at Acteal was carried out by a paramilitary group that had the support of the authorities in the municipal presidency of Chenalho for the transportation of arms, the state government for their purchase, the Federal Army for training in their use, and the Public Security Police for the protection and movement of paramilitaries.
See Chenalhó Civil Society, the “Bees,” Letter sent to the United Nations, “The Massacre that Could Have Been Avoided,” (March 1998). Full letter available online:
Another summary, briefer in length, is included in the introduction to the second chapter of the book (p. 37): A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy. The evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation. We will show in this chapter that the U.S. mass media’s practical definitions of worth are political in the extreme and fit well the expectations of a propaganda model. While this differential treatment occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and public are able to remain unconscious of the fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone. This is evidence of an extremely effective propaganda system. See next footnote for a description by Chomsky of expectations for paired examples.
25 In his book Necessary Illusions, Chomsky did not even mention differences in the volume of coverage as being a factor in paired examples. While it was mentioned in Manufacturing Consent, when Herman and Chomsky write that paired examples should differ via, “dichotomized choices of story and in the volume and quality of coverage,” (pg. 35, emphasis mine), the point remains that volume of coverage is not as strong of a postulate in the model as differences of paired examples in terms of the quality of coverage. 26 There is no more dramatic of an example to illustrate the efficacy of the propaganda model than the tragic cases of the invasion and subsequent occupation of East Timor and the civil war in Cambodia. In particular, this paired example is quite well suited to be a “controlled experiment,” as Chomsky has pointed out: History doesn't offer true controlled experiments but it often comes pretty close. So one can find atrocities or abuses of one sort that on the one hand are committed by official enemies and on the other hand are committed by friends and allies or by the favored state itself-by the United States in the U.S. case. And the question is whether the media accept the government framework or whether they use the same agenda, the same set of questions, the same criteria for dealing with the two cases as any honest outside observer would do. I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978-that atrocity-I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury and so on and so forth. So that's one atrocity. Well, it just happens that in that case history did set up a controlled experiment. Quote taken from documentary made by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (New York: Zeitgeist Films, 1993). Transcript of this quote is available at:
The New York Times index: 1975-1979: "Timor" 70 column inches "Cambodia" 1,175 column inches There are several important and noteworthy similarities between the Cambodia genocide and the East Timor one. Both occurrences were genocidal in their magnitude, both were in Asia, both cases involved mainly the casualties of peaceful indigenous peasant populations, and finally both occurred at about the same time (1975). That said there were also striking differences. First of all, East Timor, relative to population, had a greater portion of its population killed than that of the Holocaust (and also greater than Cambodia). Secondly, Cambodia was not an ally of ours, nor was any state involved with it an ally (and also, the Khmer Rouge regime was a self described “communist” regime). Lastly, East Timor was invaded by a client-state of ours whom we did exert substantial influence over (i.e. Indonesia). Unsurprisingly, coverage of Cambodia when we were involved in the affairs of that country, was very limited and practically non-existent. Just years before the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, President Nixon sponsored his secret bombings of inner Cambodia (resulting in an impeachment bill by a local NYC politician, the late and fiery House Rep. Bella Abzug) that killed over 600,000 people, according to CIA estimates (which is, for obvious reasons, probably a conservative estimate). Also uncovered, was how the carnage and aftermath of the traumatic bombings helped, in large part, the rise of the dictatorial and genocidal regime of Cambodia. Finally, coverage of Cambodia significantly dropped yet again, when we resumed friendly relations with the regime. East Timor, conversely, found very different results. It was never covered substantially, and when it was noted (usually in the back pages), the Indonesian version was always picked up. When Jimmy Carter signed over more military aid, after the Indonesians found themselves without ammunition, the genocide was at its height and coverage was as follows, according to Chomsky, “As the atrocities reached their maximum peak in 1978 when it really was becoming genocidal, coverage dropped to zero in the United States and Canada, the two countries I've looked at closely. Literally dropped to zero.” (again, see documentary for quote, or
30 In an exchange of letters with Edward Herman (NYT, December 11th, 1988), LaFeber noted that a later Newsweek article (November 26, 1988) “did question the MIG mirage.” What LaFeber failed to note, however, was that such questioning occurred well after it was agreed, from top government on down, that there were no MiGs. That the media questioned what was openly conceded by the government to be false is not a very persuasive demonstration of their independence from the State Department. Nor when the U.S. elite and broadcast media parrot what client regimes have already admitted to – as was the case in regards to Mexico on coverage of Acteal - are we seeing an example of journalistic independence. 31 The difference between a “nefarious bloodbath” and a “benign bloodbath” is that the latter is an “unworthy victim” of a U.S. client state or of the U.S. itself. Therefore, it is a victim the U.S. does not care about and the atrocities are benign. In the former case, however, the victim is “worthy” and it suffers at the heels of a U.S. enemy state. Acteal is clearly a case of an “unworthy victim” who suffers because of an abusive military occupation of Chiapas by Mexico, a U.S. client state, and more specifically by the fact that the Mexican military (trained and armed by the U.S. itself) trained and armed the paramilitary that committed the massacre in Acteal. 32 “Benign massacres” are not always ignored in the mainstream media, as Chomsky notes in Necessary Illusions. One key condition, however, is attached to the exceptional cases where “benign bloodbaths” are in fact covered: “the U.S. role in implementing these atrocities [will and must be] suppressed,” therefore, “exposure of the lack of attention to benign bloodbaths [will] not [be] too damaging,” protecting U.S. interests from serious investigation and inquiry. See Chomsky, Necessary Illusions; also viewable at: 42Endnotes: Media Analysis, Vieques Useful historical summaries of the movement can be found at the following sites [: Extensive web site: “Vieques, Puerto Rico: Documents Dealing with the Isla de Vieques Bombing Range” There is also the concern that corporate owners shade news stories to serve their economic and ideological interests. Corporate interests in U.S. foreign policy are substantial. But while there is a solid foundation to these concerns, American journalists do have some real editorial freedom within the corporation. One reason for this is the self-interest of the corporate owner: if a news organization turned into a genuine propaganda organ for the parent corporation, it would lose its credibility, and the impact of the corporate message would be negated. The rational corporate owner therefore strikes a balance between the temptation to dictate the content of the news and the need to preserve its credibility with journalists and the public. If journalists decided to step outside of the indexing rule in the name of the First Amendment ideal, the corporation would be hard pressed to demand that it be reimposed without threatening this delicate balance. Or perhaps such a demand would be made. If journalists endeavored to put into practice the changes suggested here, and corporate ownership vetoed the changes, we would have evidence that structural reform of the American media system is required before the problem of indexing can be addressed. But until there is evidence that journalists have in fact tried to get beyond the indexing rule in their foreign-policy reporting, the concern that change might not be possible within the existing media system remains a theoretical one (Mermin, 1999:149-150). There are a number of problems with this analysis. First, it assumes that journalists have not “tried to get beyond the indexing rule.” However, there is a lot of evidence pointing to a myriad of instances in which journalist have tried and succeeded in getting beyond the indexing rule, only to see their articles buried in the back pages or their careers ended. Many examples have been documented in previous works (notably, that of McChesney, 2004) and undoubtedly many more examples exist but are go undocumented as every news day, there are stories that are spiked and/or discouraged when they threaten the interests of the institutions that fund the media and the conglomerates that comprise it. I have personally experienced this phenomenon when I was an investigative, freelance journalist. The second problem with Mermin’s prescription is that it overlooks the fact that while there are certainly institutional incentives to have exceptions to the indexing rule, there are none present for such exceptions to stop being exceptions altogether and become the kind of journalistic norm that Mermin desires. For any independent reporting to have the kind of impact Mermin is desiring of, it would certainly have to go beyond that of being buried in the back pages and the indexing rule would have to be overcome in some very real and meaningful ways that would seriously undermine the interests of corporate media. How this is possible, is not elaborated on by Mermin and on face value, is a long shot at best, at least if the historical record, that Mermin himself has thoroughly documented, is of any indication. Last, but far from least, Mermin’s prescription that intellectuals wait until journalists push the envelope as far as possible before advocating fundamental institutional change to the media puts the very livelihoods of already exploited workers and individuals on the line for the mere sake of giving the benefit of the doubt to some of the most powerful and wealthy institutions in the world. 47 See Bennett (1990); Mermin (1999); Herman and Chomsky (2002); Bennett and Pickard (2004); Jacboson, et. al. (2002); Entman (2004). These studies produced similar results to this one (with the exception of Entman), in terms of the weaknesses and the failings of the media performance of the Times. 48 Also see, Kennis (2001). The remaining coverage in this time period was completely comprised by briefs. The first brief (04/20/99) that the Times picked up was from Reuters and it quoted a Navy official. In the second brief (05/09/99), this one coming from the Associated Press (AP), referred to only the Puerto Rican Independence party and “protesters”; that is, not to any movement, much less any of the major local groups that had been struggling against the Navy for many years. In the third brief (07/18/99), “protesters” were written about without any reference to any connected movement or local group in struggle against the Navy. The AP wire report did not cover protester demands even superficially, and instead, “graffiti” and whether or not the protests could be characterized as “violent” was focused on. The last brief of the coverage period, also by AP, completely sourced Navy officials and spokespersons, and even referred to the reaction by the people to Sanes’s death as “resentment,” as opposed to the more accurate description (quite absent in nearly all coverage analyzed in this study) of it being an organized response by local public interest groups trying to force the removal of the Navy. 49 In the quote below, Navarro seemingly implies that the “small segment” of Puerto Rico (the people of Vieques are apparently not more relevant here) who does want independence and see the U.S. military as colonial (a view held widely throughout the world) is responsible for the uniqueness of Vieques. But Navarro is wrong on both counts. First off, Vieques is not as unique as she implies. In fact, there are many other struggles to evict U.S. military bases across the globe (Okinawa being the most obvious example). Secondly, Navarro misleads the reader with the reference of colonialism in this context, as it does not accurately reflect the change in tactics and rhetoric the movement was now engaging in. As McCaffrey’s research (2002) amply reveals, the movement was now undertaking more moderate and pacifist tactics, as opposed to the more militant resistance seen in the 70’s by the fishermen. Officials say there are a dozen other Navy live-fire ranges -- two in Florida serve the Atlantic fleet, 10 in Nevada, Washington, Alaska, California, Arizona and Hawaii serve the Pacific fleet -- and that some were as close to population centers as the Vieques range. But only here does the Navy conduct large-scale exercises involving all Navy war resources, and only here has the Navy's presence been entangled with the politics of an American commonwealth where a small segment of its 3.8 million residents want independence and consider the military a symbol of colonialism.” (Navarro, 2001) [CITE] 50 Navarro article: “Last week a special commission appointed by Gov. Pedro J. Rossello concluded that the military training had caused disastrous economic and environmental damage and that it violated the human and constitutional rights of the 9,300 residents of Vieques.” [CITE] 51 The increase in the militaristic nature of U.S. foreign policy can be traced to a time that came before the September 11th attacks and not just during the Bush administration. Many commentators and observers on the left, for all of their justifiable criticism of the Bush administration’s disastrous policies abroad, were quite silent about the fact that President Clinton also undertook such policies including the bombing of five countries within the time span of just one year (1998 to 1999 saw the bombing of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan and Yugoslavia, a feat never accomplished before in the history of human kind). 52 For more on “mixed cases,” see Kennis (2004). [THESIS]. 53 [February 22, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition – Final; SECTION: Section A; Page 14; Column 3; National Desk; HEADLINE: Navy Protest in Puerto Rico; GRAPHIC: Photo: Thousands clogged the main highway in San Juan, P.R., yesterday to protest an agreement that allows the United States Navy to continue bombing exercises on the island of Vieques until a referendum next year. (Associated Press)] 54 An appearance of the phrase “social movements” carried a two-paragraph minimum to detect significant mentions made of social movements. 55 The author of this study was “profiled” in the New York Times by none other than Andrew Jacobs during the protests in New York City against the World Economic Forum in 2002 (Jacobs, 2002:A10). The resulting article (“Simple, if Radical Agendas Lead Thousands to Protest”) was overly personalized and touched on none of the issues that we talked about and tried to stress to Jacobs. 56 On July 29, 2001, over 68% of Viequenses voted in favor of the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. Navy with over an 80% turnout rate. Only 2% favored the Bush plan to have the Navy withdraw in 2003 and 30% opted for an indefinite continuance of U.S. Naval presence. 57 This isn’t the only instance where gender is left out of human rights issues in news coverage. See Carolyn Byerly (in Meehan an Riordan, 2001), on how gender is actually systematically erased in human rights reporting. 58 The lone exception to this came in a search conducted of all major dailies in the U.S., came from the Chicago Tribune, which did indeed pick up the story (see Hedges, 2005).