# Posted 2:11 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE GOLDEN AGE OF MEDIA BIAS: Our neverending debates about the competence and fair-mindedness of the media focus incessantly on the present. But what might happen if someone (an OxBlogger perhaps) systematically examined how the media presented a given issue over an extended period time?

As it turns out, one purpose of my doctoral dissertation is to do exactly that. In the 1980s, few issues were more controversial than US-Central American relations. At different times, the media was partial to either the Reagan administration or its opponents. A serious effort to explain the media's strengths and weaknesses must go far beyond a simple identification of it as either liberal or conservative.

With regard to democracy promotion and Iraq, I have argued periodically that the American media derive their interpretations from an unspoken narrative about the nature and consequences of the war in Vietnam. Twenty years ago, that narrative had far greater influence than it does today. In order to make that point in a more concrete manner, I'd like to post a short excerpt from dissertation, which in fact was written today:

In the early morning of February 28th [1983], the President spoke in private to twenty influential congressmen and asked them to provide $60 million in supplemental military aid for El Salvador. For the next two months, El Salvador made the headlines almost every day. On March 8th, Reagan asked for an additional $50 million for FY 1983, bringing his total request for supplemental aid to $110 million. Both contemporary journalists and later scholars have portrayed anti-Communism as the exclusive motive for the President’s interest in El Salvador. On March 4th, after Reagan delivered an address on foreign policy in San Francisco, a member of the audience responded that “The recent request for escalation of military aid to El Salvador appears to be the beginning of a replay of the early days of Vietnam. What assurances can you offer that this is not the case?” Reagan answered the question as follows:

I can give you assurances. And there is no parallel whatsoever with Vietnam. We have the instance here of a government, duly elected. And just a short time ago – an election – the people of El Salvador proved their desire for order in their country, and democracy, and that they had no sympathy whatsoever for the rebels who are armed, who are trained by countries such as Cuba and others of the Iron Curtain countries…

The threat is more to the entire Western Hemisphere and toward the area than it is to one country. If they get a foothold, and with Nicaragua already there, and El Salvador should fall as a result of this armed violence on the part of the guerrillas, I think Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, all of these would follow.

Reagan then recounted his favorite anecdote about the Salvadoran women on election day – one who defied death threats in order to vote and another who was shot in the leg by guerrillas but refused to go the hospital before casting her ballot. The President closed by mentioning that he might want to increase above fifty-five the number of American soldiers assigned to train the Salvadoran armed forces. The next morning, a front-page headline in the New York Times read “U.S. May Increase Salvador Advisers”. The Times described the President’s exchange with his audience as follows:

''I can give you assurances and there is no parallel whatsoever with Vietnam,'' he declared in response to a question from the audience. But a moment later he said of the leftist insurgents:

''If they get a foothold, with Nicaragua already there, and El Salvador should fall as a result of this armed violence on the part of the guerrillas, I think Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, all of these would follow…

''It is vital to us that democracy be allowed to succeed in these countries,'' he said.

The Washington Post also relied on subtle devices to suggest that Reagan was oblivious to the parallels between El Salvador and Vietnam:

After saying "there is no parallel whatsoever with Vietnam," Reagan proceeded to tick off his domino theory of what would happen if El Salvador falls to guerrillas, whom he described as trained by Cuba "and others of the Iron Curtain countries" and supplied with weapons coming through Nicaragua.

A decade and a half later, William LeoGrande made this premise more explicit:

Reagan was adamant: “There is no parallel whatsoever with Vietnam.” But he proceeded to describe the importance of El Salvador with a vintage recitation of the domino theory that could have been lifted directly from a speech by Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s, with only the names of the countries updated.

The number of American soldiers involved in training the Salvadoran armed forces had remained constant since the middle of 1981. The comparison between El Salvador and Vietnam – to which President Kennedy committed 10,000 soliders and President Johnson 500,000 – reflected the obsession of American journalists with a tragic past. The prominence and validation given to such comparisons at the expense of Reagan’s comments about democracy demonstrates how journalists’ selection and shaping of their articles’ content enables them to promote unequivocal and highly controversial interpretrations of political events without violating official standards of what constitutes objectivity. The de-emphasis of Reagan’s comments about democracy also demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to grasp the President’s main point: that whereas the United States had lost hearts and minds by not even trying to promote democracy in Vietnam, it had already played a decisive role in the holding of internationally-monitored elections in El Salvador.

Since I don't know how to do footnotes with Blogger, I'll just state for the record that both newspaper articles cited above were from March 5, 1983. Both appeared on the front page. The quote from LeoGrande is on page 201 of the hardcover edition.

In the context of American politics circa 1983, this sort of partiality in the media obviously favored liberals and damaged conservatives. To some degree, this sort of coverage was a response to the extremely deceptive way in which administration officials described the conflict in El Salvador, primarily for the purpose of covering up gross violations of human rights. However, my sense is that the unjustified credibility and prominence given to the Vietnam scenario reflected an honest assessment by journalists of what was most likely to happen in Central America.

By the same token, a quagmire is what journalists honestly saw ten days into the invasion of Iraq and continued to see thereafter. If such journalists were more aware of their own history, however, they might developer a sharper eye for the direction of current events.

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