No More Learning

By early 1977, denunciations of the Khmer Rouge for having caused unprecedented "murder in a gentle land" and "autogenocide" extended from mass circulation journals such as Reader's Digest (with tens of millions of readers) and TV Guide (circulation nineteen million), to the New York Review ofBooks and the media generally, in addition to a best-selling book by John Barron and Anthony Paul based on their Reader's Digest article and the widely misquoted study by Franrrois Ponchaud mentioned earlier. Similar material continued to flow in abundance in the press and newsweeklies, the New York Times Maga- zine, and elsewhere. Evidence about the 1977-78 period became availa- ble primarily after the Vietnamese expulsion of the Khmer Rouge regime, which brought phase II of the genocide to a close, eliciting new outrage over the alleged "genocide" brought about by the "Prussians of Asia. "
The picture created by this chorus of denunciation, from the first days of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) in 1975, is described sardonically by Michael Vickery as "the standard total view" (STV). According to the STV, prior to the Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975, Cambodia had been a "gentle land" (Barron and Paul) of "gentle if emotional people" who "wanted only to live in peace in their lush kingdom" (Jack Anderson), a land in which hunger was "almost unknown" (Henry
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Kamm). But in 1975, the "formerly fun-loving, easy-going Cambodi- ans" were subjected to the "harsh regime" of the Khmer Rouge, who ordered that all those not under their rule before the victory can be "disposed of' because they are "no longer required," even if only one million Khmers remain (Donald Wise, citing several of the frequently quoted Khmer Rouge statements that were conceded to be fabrica- tions). 81
According to the STV, during the pre-1977 period on which the conclusions were based, the Khmer Rouge leadership was engaged in a policy of systematic extermination and destruction of all organized social and cultural life apart from the Gulag run by the "nine men at the top," Paris-trained Communists, without local variation and with no cause other than inexplicable sadism and Marxist-Leninist dogma. By early 1977, it was alleged that they had "boasted" of having slaugh- tered some two million people (Jean Lacouture in the New York Re- view). This figure remained the standard even after Lacouture withdrew it a few weeks later, acknowledging that he had misread his source (Ponchaud) and that the actual figure might be in the thousands, but adding that he saw little significance to a difference between thou- sands killed and a "boast" of two million killed. This position expresses with some clarity the general attitude toward fact during this period and since, as does his further statement that it is hardly important to deter- mine "exactly which person uttered an inhuman phrase"-the case in question had to do with inhuman phrases he attributed to Khmer Rouge officials but which turned out to be mistranslations of phrases that had been fabricated outright by his source (Ponchaud) or that had appeared not in a Cambodian journal, as he asserted, but in a Thai journal mistranslated by Ponchaud that expressed virtually the oppo- site of what was claimed. The two-million figure was later upgraded to three million or more, often citing Vietnamese wartime propaganda. The examples are quite typical.
Not everyone joined in the chorus. The most striking exceptions were those who had the best access to information from Cambodia, notably, the State Department Cambodia specialists. Their view, based on what evidence was then available (primarily from northwestern Cambodia), was that deaths from all causes might have been in the "tens ifnot hundreds of thousands," largely from disease, malnutrition, and "brutal, rapid change," not "mass genocide. " These tentative con- clusions were almost entirely ignored by the media-we found one important exception in our review-because they were simply not use- ful for the purpose at the time, just as refugee testimony that did not conform to the STY was ignored. Overseas, journalists who had special
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knowledge of Indochina also gave rather nuanced accounts, notably, Nayan Chanda. 82
In his detailed, region-by-region study, Vickery shows that the STY was a picture with little merit, and that the few skeptics had been essentially accurate for the period in question, although in 1977-78, something approaching the STY came to be correct in the context of brutal inter-party purges and the expanding war with Vietnam. He also makes the obvious logical point that "the evidence for 1977-78," which only became available after the Vietnamese conquest in 1979, "does not retrospectively justify the STV ," which reigned on the basis of evidence from the 1975-76 period; "and the Vietnamese adoption of some of the worst Western propaganda stories as support for their case in 1979 does not prove that those stories were valid. "83 Recent work indicates that the worst massacres, including those that left the mass graves and horrifying heaps of skulls found by journalists who entered Cambodia
after the Vietnamese conquest, were in the eastern zone bordering Vietnam in mid- to late 1978. 84
The nature of the Western agony over Cambodia during phase II of the genocide, as a sociocultural phenomenon, becomes clarified further when we compare it to the reaction to comparable and simultaneous atrocities in Timor. There, as in phase I of the Cambodia genocide, the United States bore primary responsibility and could have acted to reduce or terminate the atrocities. In contrast, in Cambodia under DK rule, where the blame could be placed on the official enemy, nothing at all could be done, a point that was stressed by government experts when George McGovern caned for international intervention in August 1978, eliciting much media ridicule. 8s Neither McGovern nor anyone else recommended such intervention against the United States during phase] of the genocide, or against Indonesia and the United States during the Timor atrocities, to which the United States (and, to a much lesser extent, other powers) lent material and diplomatic support, just as there has been no call for intervention as the armies of El Salvador and Guatemala proceeded to slaughter their own populations with
enthusiastic U. S. support in the early 1980s.
The comparison between Timor and phase II in Cambodia was
particularly striking, and was occasionally noted after the fact. The excuses now produced for this refusal to report what was happening in Timor, or to protest these atrocities or act to stop them, are instructive in the present context. Thus, William Shawcross rejects the obvious interpretation of the comparative response to Timor and Cambodia in favor of a "more structurally serious explanation": "a comparative lack of sources" and lack of access to refugees. @6 Lisbon is a two-hour flight
THE INDOCHINA WARS (II): LAOS AND CAMBODIA 28S
from London, and even Australia is not notably harder to reach than the Thai-Cambodia border, but the many Timorese refugees in Lisbon and Australia were ignored by the media, which preferred "facts" offered by the State Department and Indonesian generals. Similarly, the media ignored readily available refugee studies from sources at least as credible as those used as the basis for the ideologically serviceable outrage over the Khmer Rouge, and disregarded highly credible wit- nesses whQ reached New York and Washington along with additional evidence from church sources and others. The coverage of Timor actually declined sharply as massacres increased with mounting U. S. support. The real and "structurally serious" reason for this difference in scope and character of coverage is not difficult to discern (see chapter I), although not very comfortable for Western opinion, and becomes still more obvious when a broader range of cases is considered that illustrate the same conclusions. 87
6. 2. 7. Phase III in Indochina: Cambodia and the bleeding of V ietnam
As we write in 1987, Western moralists remain silent as their govern- ments provide the means for Indonesia to continue its campaign of terror and repression in Timor. Meanwhile, the United States backs the DK coalition, largely based on the Khmer Rouge, because of its "conti- nuity" with the Pol Pot regime, so the State Department informed Congress in 1982. The reason for this differential reaction to the Fretilin guerrillas resisting Indonesian aggression in Timor, and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas attacking Cambodia from Thai bases, is also explained by the State Department: the Khmer Rouge-based coalition is "unquestionably" more representative of the people of Cambodia than Fretilin is ofthe Timorese. 88 There is, therefore, no need to puzzle over the apparent inconsistency during the late 1970S in U. S. attitudes to- ward Pol Pot and the Indonesian generals: the former, the object of hatred and contempt for the massacres in Cambodia under his rule during phase II; the latter, our friends whom we cheerfully supplied and supported as they conducted comparable massacres in Timor at the
same time. This apparent inconsistency, which briefly troubled even the editors of the Wall Street Journal in the early 1980s,89 is now happily resolved: we support both the Khmer Rouge and the Indonesian generals.
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The current U. S. support for the Khmer Rouge merits little atten- tion in the media, just as little notice is given to the Vietnamese posi- tion: a political settlement among Cambodians excluding Khmer Rouge leaders Pol Pot and his close associate Ieng Sary. 9(I As noted earlier, U. S. aid to the Khmer Rouge is reported by congressional sources to be extensive. Furthermore, the Reagan administration, following "Chi- nese rather than Southeast Asian inclinations," has refused to back the efforts of its Southeast Asian allies "to dilute the strength of China's ally, the deposed Pol Pot regime, by giving greater weight to non- Communist guerrillas and pOlitical groupings. "91 Nayan Chanda re- ported in 1984 that the United States had "more than doubled its financial assistance to the resistance forces," mainly through funds earmarked for humanitarian assistance that permit U. S. allies to divert funds to arms purchases, a familiar ploy. 92 While it is claimed that the funds are limited to the (generally ineffectual) non-Communist resist- ance, this is a shallow pretense. "Both Sihanouk's army and Son Sann's KPNLF," the two components of the non-Communist resistance, "are completely discounted in Phnom Penh," James Pringle reports from Phnom Penh in the Far Eastern Econom? c Reviefl). "'AU they do is sit
drinking coca-cola on the border,' said one well-informed Soviet bloc diplomat. " From the Thai border areas, Barbara Crossette reports that "Trucks loaded with men and boys, 150 or 200 at a time, pull away from settlements controlled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge and ru. mble into Cambodia," where the supplies are carried "into the Cambodian inte- rior to stockpile supplies for the Khmer Rouge," in the expectation that they will be able to prevail by military force and terror once the Viet- namese withdraw as demanded by the United States. A spokesman for the Sihanoukisr National Army in Bangkok comments that "The main problem we now have is how to get the Vietnamese to pull out without bringing back the Khmer Rouge," the probable consequence of U. S. policy. Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke com- ments that the U. S. aid "will end up going to Pol Pot and his people," a fact noted also by several journalists. Sydney Schanberg's Cambodian associate Dith Pran, whose story of suffering under DK terror was the
basis for the widely publicized film The Killing Fields and much media commentary, found somewhat greater difficulty in reaching the public with his view that "Giving U. S. weapons [to the Khmer resistance] is like putting gasoline on afire," and is the last thing Cambodia needs. David Haw~ alleges that "it is common knowledge that Reagan- administration political officers and defence attaches from the US Em- bassy in Bangkok have visited Khmer Rouge enc1aves. "9J
The reasons for supporting the Thai-based OK coalition go beyond
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their "continuity" with the Khmer Rouge regime. A more fundamental reason was outlined by our ally Deng Xiaoping in 1979: "It is wise to force the Vietnamese to stay in Kampuchea because that way they will suffer more and more and will not be able to extend their hand to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. "94 This motive of "bleeding Viet- nam" to ensure that it does not recover from its victimization at the hands of the West has additional advantages. By acting in such a way as to enhance suffering and repression in Indochina, we demonstrate retrospectively the "benevolence" of our "noble crusade" of earlier years.
As we discussed earlier, the Cambodians were "worthy victims" when they were being terrorized by the Khmer Rouge under phase II of the genocide> and they achieved this status once again after the Vietnamese invasion brought phase II of the genocide to an end, al- though with a change in the cast of characters, as the United States joined China in support of the Khmer Rouge. After early efforts to charge the Vietnamese with "genocide," the condemnation of the offi- cial enemy shifted to the terrible acts of "the Prussians of Asia," who have "subjugated and impoverished" Cambodia since overthrowing Pol Pot, according to the editors of the New York Times. Recail that of all the horrors of the past years, including the atrocities of phase I, "what cannot be sponged away" are "the Khmer Rouge's butcheries"-evi- dently of lesser moment in Washington now that the Pol Pot forces qualify as resistance forces under the Reagan doctrine.
One would be hard pUt to find any serious observers of the currenl Cambodian scene who believe that the Vietnamese have reduced Cam- bodia to a level below that of the DK period, as these comments imply. Rather, among people who are concerned about the people of Cam- bodia for themselves and not merely because of their value for propa- ganda exercises, few would question that "it is clear that life for the people is far better now than under Democratic Kampuchea,"95 and some Cambodia specialists have suggested that the current regime com- pares favorably with any of its predecessors. Consistent opponents of aggression would have a moral basis for condemning the Vietnamese invasion, despite the rapidly escalating atrocities of 1977-78 and the murderous raids against Vietnam by Cambodian forces under Pol Pot's rule. '~6 It is a little difficult to take this argument seriously, however, when it is put forth by people who condemn the West for not having undertaken more vigorous actions to "rescue" the Cambodians from Pol Pot-a "rescue" that would have been no less self-serving in intent than the Viecnamese invasion, as history makes clear. And we need not tarry over the argument when it is offered by those who tolerate or
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applaud murderous aggression when it suits their ends: the Indonesian invasion of Timor, the "liberation" of Lebanon by Israeli forces in 1982 (as the Times editors called it), or the "defense of South Vietnam," to mention a few obvious cases.
6. 2. 8. Phase III at home: the great silence and the hidden potency of the left
Turning to the home front, phase III illustrates the expectations of a propaganda model in yet a different way. The truth about the response to the Pol Pot atrocities in the media and "the culture" in general, and the dramatic contrast to comparable examples where the United States bears primary responsibility, is not pleasant to contemplate. Since the facts are too overwhelming to refute, it is a better strategy simply to dispatch them to the memory hole. This task having been achieved with the customary alacrity, we may now observe with wonder that "The West awoke to the suffering of Kampuchea in autumn, 1979" (William Shawcross), and then go on to ruminate about the curious inability of the West, always consumed with self-flagellation, to perceive the atroci- ties of its enemies. 97 And so matters have proceeded in the latest phase of the sad tale of Cambodia.
"There was silence in the mid-1970s during the mass murders by the Khmer Rouge" (Floyd Abrams), and "The atrocity stories coming out of Cambodia after 1975 quite simply were not believed" (David Hawk)-at a time when accusations of genocide of the Hitler-Stalin variety were resounding from the New York Times and Washington Post to the Reader's Digest and TV Guide to the New York Review ofBO<Jks, and the mass media extensively. "The West woke up to the horror of what had happened only after the Vietnamese invasion" (Economist)'
and "hardly anyone outside, on Left or Right, had noticed [the horrors of the Pol Pot regime] at the time they were actually going on (1975- 1978)" (Conor Cruise O'Brien)-that is, at the time when Jimmy Carter branded Pol Pot "the world's worst violator of human rights," and a British Foreign Office report condemned the regime for the death of "many hundreds of thousands of people. "98 One might imagine that such outlandish claims could not pass without a raised eyebrow at least, but that is to underestimate the ability of the ideological institutions to rally to a worthy cause: in this case, the cause of suppressing the truth
THE INDOCHINA WARS (II); LAOS AND CAMBODIA 289
about the Western response to "the decade of the genocide" and other atrocities.
That there was "silence" over Pol Pot atrocities was also an insistent claim right at the peak of the bitter outrage over Pol Pot genocide. Time magazine published a major article by David Aikman on July 31, 1978, claiming that the Khmer Rouge "experiment in genocide" was being ignored, and adding a new twist that was also taken up with enthusiasm in the subsequent reconstruction of history: "there are inteJJectuals in the West so committed to the twin Molochs of our day-'liberation' and 'revolution'-that they can actually defend what has happened in Cam- bodia"; "some political theorists have defended it, as George Bernard Shaw and other Western intellectuals defended the brutal social engi- neering in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. " Noone was mentioned, for the simple reason that no one could be found to fit the bill, although Time did vainly attempt to elicit positive statements about the Pol Pot regime from antiwar activists to buttress this useful thesis.
Each of these themes-the "silence" of the West, the defense of Pol Pot by Western intellectuals-is unequivocally refuted by massive evi- dence that is well known, although ignored, by the mobilized intellec- tual culture. But this level of misrepresentation in the service of a noble cause still does not suffice. The two themes were combined by William Shawcross in an inspired agitprop achievement that carried the farce a step further. 99 This new contribution evoked much enthusiasm; sev- eral of the comments just cited are from reviews of his book, or are
obviously inspired by it.
In his study of "Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience,"
Shawcross muses on the relative "silence" of the West in the face of Khmer Rouge atrocities. The facts are radically different, but the idea that the West ignores Communist atrocities while agonizing over its own is far more appealing to the Western conscience. Shawcross then proceeds to adopt Aikman's second thesis, applying it in an ingenious way to explain the mechanism that lies behind this unwillingness of the West to face up to Communist atrocities, so notable a feature of West- em life. The silence over phase II of the genocide, he argues, resulted from "the skepticism (to use a mild term) displayed by the Western left toward the stories coming OUt of Democratic Kampuchea. That skepti- cism was most fervently and frequently expressed by Noam Chomsky . . . , [who] asserted that from the moment of the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975 the Western press colluded with Western and anti-Communist Asian governments, notably Thailand, to produce a 'vast and unprece-
dented' campaign of propaganda against the Khmer Rouge. "IOO
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To buttress this claim, Shawcross provides what purports to be a quote-but without citing an identifiable source, for two good reasons. First, the quote does not exist,101 although even his version undermines his basic claim, with its reference to "the grim reality" of Cambodia under Khmer Rouge rule. Second, the source of the manufactured quote is a work published in November 1979, almost a year after the fall of the Pol Pot regime. To cite the date would have raised the question of how this "fervent and frequent" expression of skepticism could have intimidated governments and the media from 1975 through 1978. Furthermore, we made it crystal clear that the record of atrocities was "gruesome," perhaps even at the level of the most outlandish fabrications.
Note that Shawcross could have cited real examples of "skepticism"; for example, the skepticism of State Department analysts at the height of the furor over Cambodia, or the retrospective comments of Douglas
Pike and others cited earlier (pp. 265-66), or the comments of journal- ists during phase II who were willing to conclude only that refugee accounts "suggest that the Khmer Rouge is finding it hard to govern the country except by coercion" and "even suggest that terror is being employed as a system of government," noting that refugees "did not appear to be in a sorry condition" and that if the Khmer Rouge are perpetrating an "atrocity," as claimed, then "the atrocity did not begin in April [1975J-it simply entered its sixth year" (William Shaw- cross). 102 But the truth plainly would not have served the purposes of this exercise. 103
Perhaps there was some other example of this "fervent and frequent" expression of skepticism that silenced the West. Shawcross is wise to avoid examples, because as he knows well, his primary source, Pon- chaud, went out of his way to praise Chomsky for "the responsible attitude and precision of thought" shown in what he had written on Cambodia, referring to our 1977 review of his book cited earlier and unpublished correspondence he had seen, which exhausts anything relevant that appears during the DK period. 104 So Shawcross would have us believe that a single 1977 article in The Nation silenced the West, an article in which, furthermore, we praised the book written by his primary source, Ponchaud, as "serious and worth reading," with its "grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the bar- barity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge," and stated that we are in no position to draw any conclusion about the actual extent of the atrocities, in conformity to State Department specialists and other informed sources at the time.
To be clear, in our one article, to whic. 1t Ponchaud alludes, we did
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express some "skepticism," not only about claims that had already been withdrawn as fabrications but also about others that remained to be assessed. Thus in reviewing Ponchaud, we expressed skepticism about his estimate ofcasualties caused by American bombing, which appeared to us excessive and possibly based on misinterpretation of figures he cited; and we raised questions about some of the quotes attributed to the Khmer Rouge on which he (and later others) crucially relied, but which he had presented in very different forms on different occasions- and which he later conceded to have no basis whatsoever. lOS It is noteworthy that our skepticism about charges against the United States, although based mereJy on suspicion, has elicited no comment, while our skepticism about charges against the Khmer Rouge, which was based on textual evidence and, as it later turned out, was much understated, has aroused great fury in what Vickery describes as "in- competent, even dishonest" and "often scurrilous" commentary. l06
The differential reaction is easily explained. It is taken for granted that U. S. actions must be recounted with scrupulous care and in nuanced manner, so our insistence on this is simply what is to be expected, meriting no comment. (We agree. ) In contrast, the acts of official ene- mies merit no such scruples, and it is an unforgivable crime to question propaganda exercises undertaken in the service of power.
Notice that even had the "skepticism" of "the Western left" to which Shawcross alludes existed to any significant degree, the idea that this could have the consequences he describes, coming from people sys- tematically barred from the media and mainstream discussion, is a construction of such audacity that one must admire its creator. Shaw- cross argues further that this alleged "left-wing skepticism" not only silenced Western media and governments but also prevented any mean- ingful Western response to Khmer Rouge atrocities. This thesis is too ludicrous to merit comment, and we can assess Shawcross's seriousness in advancing it by turning to his own proposals at the time as to what could be done, recalling that he had easy access to the mainstream
media throughout. We find not a word suggesting what might be done107-for the simple reason that neither he nor anyone else could think of anything useful. The situation was, of course, quite different during phase I of the genocide, or with regard to Timor during phase II and since, and in innumerable other cases where Shawcross's charge would indeed be valid. We learn a good deal about "holocaust and the modem conscience" by observing this exercise and the reaction it elicited.
Shawcross attributes this "left-wing skepticism," which had such awesome consequences because of the influence of the left on Western
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institutions, in part to Vietnamese propaganda. Vietnam's "spokesmen had undercut the refugee stories about Khmer Rouge conduct," he writes, "thus adding to disbelief in them, particularly on the Western left,"I08 which naturally takes its cues from Hanoi and closely parrots its doctrines, according to approved dogma-although it is interesting that Shawcross also insinuates that the influence of Hanoi extended beyond its acolytes. And why not? If we have reached the point of claiming that the Western left silenced the media and governments, why not proceed to maintain that even outside these dangerous circles, Vietnamese propaganda is a powerful force in shaping opinion? Natu- rally Shawcross does not make even a pretense of providing any evi- dence for what he knows perfectly well to be the sheerest fantasy, from beginning to end.
We may place this outlandish explanation of the "silence" of the West alongside the similar claims that State Department Communists lost China, that the media are threatening the foundations of democ- racy with their "adversarial stance," etc. The reaction, however, was not ridicule, but rather great enthusiasm. To cite just one typical exam- ple, David Hawk observes that Shawcross "attributes the world's indif- ference" to "the influence of antiwar academics and activists on the American left who obfuscated Khmer Rouge behavior, denigrated the post-I975 refugee reports and denounced the journalists who got those stories. "I09 He accepts this thesis as valid but cites no evidence either for the "indifference" to the atrocities, which were being denounced worldwide as genocidal, or for the alleged behavior of the American left, nor does he explain the mechanisms whereby this behavior, had it existed, could have controlled the mainstream media, or even margin- ally influenced them. Convenient mythologies require neither evidence nor logic. Nor do they require any attention to Hawk's own perform- ance at the time, as an Amnesty International official and specialist on Southeast Asia. The AI Annual Report for 1977 noted that the number of alleged executions in Cambodia was "fewer than during the preced- ing year," and while it summarizes a number of reports of executions and disappearances, its account is restrained. The 1978 Annual Report, while stronger in its allegations of violence, pointed out that refugee reports, on which it was necessary to rely heavily, "are often imprecise
or conflicting," thus leaving AI and Hawk in the Shawcross-Hawk category of those who "denigrated the post-I975 refugee reports. " It is so easy to moralize in retrospect.
Shawcross develops his thesis further in interesting ways. ll0 To show that Western commentators refused to recognize that "the Khmer Rouge was a Marxist-Leninist government," he states that British jour-
THE INOOCHI"'A WARS (II): LAOS AND CAMBODIA 293
natist John Pilger "constantly compared" the Khmer Rouge with the Nazis, suppressing the fact that he explicitly compared their actions with "Stalin's terror," as Pilger noted in a response to one of the many reviews that repeated Shawcross's inventions. I l I Shawcross claims fur- ther that the present authors "were to believe for years" that "the refugees were unreliable, that the CIA was cooking up a bloodbath to say, 'We told you so. ''' He cites our one article (The Nation, 1977), in which there is no hint of any such thesis, as there is none elsewhere. In that article we were clear and explicit, as also subsequently, that refugee reports left no doubt that the record of Khmer Rouge atrocities was "substantial and often gruesome," and that "in the case of Cam- bodia, there is no difficulty in documenting major atrocities and oppres- sion, primarily from the reports of refugees. "112 To support his contention with regard to our alleged denial of the reliability of re- fugees, Shawcross cites our comment on the need to exercise care in analyzing refugee reports, carefully suppressing the fact that we are quoting Ponchaud, his primary source, and that the comment he cites is a familiar truism. His reference to the CIA cooking up a bloodbath is pure fantasy, although we might add that by the time he wrote, although after our book appeared, Michael Vickery did present evi- dence that the Barron-Paul Reader's Digest account was in part a CIA disinformation effort. In Shawcros$ states further his view, "contrary to Chomsky and Herman," that the U. S. government was "remarkably inactive" in anti-Khmer Rouge propaganda. We proposed no U. S. government role whatsoever in orchestrating the deceit we docu- mented, by William Shawcross and others, and in fact endorsed State Department reports as the most plausible then available. And so on, throughout.
But Shawcross and others who are deeply offended by our challenge to the right to lie in the service of one's favored state understand very well that charges against dissident opinion require no evidence and that ideologically useful accusations will stand merely on the basis of end- less repetition, however ludicrous they may be-even the claim that the American left silenced the entire West during the Pol Pot period.
Shawcross's charges against other enemies follow the same pattern- another factor, presumably, in the appeal of his message. Thus in pursuit of his fashionable quest to attribute primary responsibility for the continuing tragedy of Cambodia to Vietnam, not to those who were responsible for phase I of the genocide with their "careless" policies and who are now supporting Pol Pot, Shawcross rationalizes the cur- rent support for Pol Pot as a natural response to Vietnamese actions. Given Hanoi's invasion of Cambodia and subsequent conduct, he ex-
294 Mtr. NUFtr. CTURING CONSENT
plains, China and the ASEAN countries of Southeast Asia (not to speak of their "Western partners") were bound "to seek to apply all possible forms of pressure upon Hanoi" to renounce its intentions, and "the Vietnamese could have predicted that such pressures would include support for the Khmer Rouge. " Thus the Vietnamese are to blame if China and the United States support Pol Pot, along with such dedicated advocates of human rights and the strict reliance on peaceful means as Indonesia and Thailand. Such analysis is, however, not extended to the Vietnamese, who are always carrying out cold-blooded strategies in a world without threats from China or the United States, threats that might allow us to "predict" (and thus implicitly exonerate) these strate- gies. According to Shawcross, "Vietnam's conduct since its invasion of Cambodia rarely suggested that it wished to see a compromise in which the Khmer Rouge were removed as a viable force in Cambodia-which was what the ASEAN countries and their Western parmers insisted was their aim. " "It is impossible to predict whether any such suggestion [from Hanoi] would have been accepted by the Chinese or the ASEAN countries, but the point is that it was never made," Shawcross asserts without qualification. 1 l 4 Hanoi has repeatedly offered to withdraw in favor of an indigenous regime, the only condition being the exclusion
of the top Khmer Rouge leadership. Whether these offers were serious or not, we do not know, as they have been dismissed by the Deng- Reagan alliance and, with more vacillation, the ASEAN countries. These rejections, in favor of continued support for Pol Pot, have not been featured in the media, which would hardly surprise a rational observer. But these facts are hardly supportive of Shawcross's analysis, to say the least.
In a further effort to cast the blame on the approved enemy, Shaw- cross asserts that the Vietnamese "placed more confidence in the tor- turers than in their victims, that many of those people were actually being promoted by the new order into positions of new authority over them. " As his sale evidence, he cites a story, told twice in his book, about an old woman he met in Cambodia "who described with great passion how the Khmer Rouge murderer of her son was living, unpun- ished, in the neighboring village. " He repeated the same story in the
New York Review of Books~ eliciting a letter from Ben Kiernan, who accompanied him when this alleged incident took place (and was his interpreter). Kiernan cited the tape of the woman's statement, which reveals that she had simply said that the murderer had "run away" to a neighboring "district," suggesting, as Kiernan notes, that he feared punishment, but not that he had been "promoted" to "new authority. " Confronted with this evidence, Shawcross maintained his position
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while retreating to the claim that some officials he met "seemed rather unpleasant," which suffices to prove the point, according to his logic. 115 These examples are quite typical. ll6
6. 2. 9. Summary
Summarizing, prior tQ "the decade of the genocide," media treatment of Cambodia was as predicted by the propaganda model, and the same is true, quite dramatically, during the two phases of this terrible period aod since. During phase I, refugee testimony was considered uninter- esting, and little is known today apart from the fact that there was obviously vast slaughter and destruction; this phase does not enter the record as a "holocaust" or exercise in "genocide," and the source is forgotten. During phase II, the myth of the "gentle land" was extended through 1975, and the U. S. role and responsibility for what then took place was also quite commonly effaced, although some did not sink to this level of vulgarity. Refugee testimony was eagerly sought, although only ifit lent support to the STV, and evaluations by State Department specialists and other knowledgeable commentators that gave a more nuanced (and in retrospect, essentially accurate) picture were dismissed as lacking utility. There was massive outrage, reaching its peak in early 1977 when the death toll was still well below that of phase I, with a record of deception that is highly illuminating. 117 As something like the STV came to be realized in 1977-78, its horrors were downplayed in official government circles, and subsequent U. S. support for Pol Pot arouses little notice.
Phase III proceeded along a dual course. In a fanciful reconstruction that maintains the level of integrity shown throughout, it is alleged that "left-wing skepticism" so dominated Western opinion and governments that there was "silence" throughout the DK period; the wide accept- ance of this thesis, despite the quality of the evidence provided and its manifest absurdity, counts as yet another example of how readily the most implausible contentions can become doctrine, as long as they are serviceable. In Indochina, a new phase of Western concern about the victimization of Cambodia began, with outrage now directed not against Pol Pot but against the new oppressors who overthrew him.
The United States took a leading role in orchestrating the new concern, which combined Chinese and U. S. interest in "bleeding Vietnam" with a renewed exhibition of the Western conscience, properly bounded to
exclude phase I and its long-term effects, and bypassing the U. S. role in support of Pol Pot-in part via its Chinese allies, who have been
296 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
admirably frank in explaining their stand. This carefully channeled benevolence succeeded in the goal of keeping the Pol Pot forces active and injuring Vietnam and also, incidentally, the suffering people of Cambodia who are the objects of our profound concern. The relief effort in 1979-80 did succeed in aiding Cambodians in distress, but it has also sustained the Pol Pot forces and thereby impeded Cambodia's recovery and, perhaps, its independence, although about this we can only speculate.
Putting aside the undoubtedly sincere reactions of many people who
were exposed to evidence of properly selected atrocities that passed through the media filter, the only rational conclusion from this il- luminating record is that the West was consumed with horror over Khmer Rouge atrocities during phase II not because of a sudden pas-
sion for the fate of the suffering people of Cambodia-as the record during phase I, and elsewhere, makes sufficiently clear-but because
the Khmer Rouge had a useful role to play: namely, to permit a retro- spective justification for earlier French and American crimes in Indo- china, and to facilitate the reconstruction of Western ideology after the Vietnam trauma, so as to overcome the dread "Vietnam syndrome" and prepare the ground for a "resurgent America" pursuing its historical vocation of defending freedom and justice. The actual facts were, and j remain, of little interest, for the same reason. ,1
,'
,. - 7
. -~
Conclusions
-~
DEFENDING THE MEDIA AGAINST THE CHARGE THAT THEY HAVE become too independent and too powerful for the public good, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times writes that
The press is protected [by the First Amendment] not for its own sake but to enable a free political system to operate. In the end, the concern is not for the reporter Or the editor but for the citizen-critic of government.
What is at stake when we speak about freedom of the press "is the freedom to perform a function on behalf of the polity. "l Lewis cites Supreme Court Justice Powell, who observed: "no individual can obtain for himself the information needed for the intelligent discharge of his political responsibilities. . . . By enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process, the press performs a crucial function in effecting the societal purpose of the First Amendment. " Therefore, as Judge Gurfein ruled in supporting the right of the New York Times
298 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
to publish the Pentagon Papers after the government had failed to show any threat of a breach of security but only the possibility of embarrass- ment: "a cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know. "
We do not accept the view that freedom of expression must be defended in instrumental terms, by virtue of its contribution to some higher good; rather, it is a value in itself. But that apart, these ringing declarations express valid aspirations, and beyond that, they surely express the self-image of the American media. Our concern in this book has been to inquire into the relation between this image and the reality. In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their inde- pendence of authority, we have spelled out and applied a propaganda model that indeed sees the media as serving a "societal purpose," but not that of enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities. On the contrary, a propaganda model suggests that the "societal purpose" of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics,
distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of accept- able premises. We have sought to show that the expectations of this model are realized, and often considerably surpassed, in the actual practice of the media in a range of crucial cases. We quite agree with Chief Justice Hughes, whom Lewis also cites, on "the primary need of a vigilant and courageous press" if democratic processes are to function in a meaningful way. But the evidence we have reviewed indicates that this need is not met or even weakly approximated in actual practice.
It is frequently asserted that the media were not always as indepen- dent, vigilant, and defiant of authority as they allegedly are today; rather, the experiences of the past generation are held to have taught the media to exercise "the power to root about in our national life, exposing what they deem right for exposure," without regard to exter- nal pressures or the dictates of authority (Lewis). It is this period, then, that poses a challenge to a propaganda model, and we have therefore taken it as the focus of our inquiry. Many of the examples we discuss are from the past decade, when the liberal media were allegedly in confrontation with a "conservative" administration that they would
have been expected to oppose vigorously. In a further effort to ensure that we are not selecting exceptional cases, we have cast the net widely. We have selected for close examination cases that pose the most severe challenge to our model, namely, those put forth by critics as demon- strating that the media have gone too far in their exuberant indepen- dence and challenge to authority, so far that they must be curbed if democracy is to survive: for example, the coverage of the Tet offensive, the prime illustration of alleged excesses of the media offered in the 1970S and 1980s. Even these cases demonstrate the subordination of the media to the requirements of the state propaganda system. At the peak of alleged media independence, as the Vietnam War entered its final period and the media were threatening Nixon's presidency, the subor- dination to these demands never flagged, as illustrated by the media
coverage of the Paris peace treaty of 1973, one of the most flagrant examples of media misrepresentation based on an uncritical reiteration of official claims and adherence to the political agenda of the state.
We may illustrate the point in yet another case, chosen by those who defend the standard version of the media as their strongest ground: the Watergate affair. To many critics of the media, this incident illustrates their irresponsible excesses; to those who prOUdly defend the media, it illustrates their independence of higher authority and commitment to the values of professional journalism. What, then, are the lessons of Watergate?
The major scandal of Watergate as portrayed in the mainstream press was that the Nixon administration sent a collection of petty criminals to break into the Democratic party headquarters, for reasons that remain obscure. The Democratic party represents powerful do- mestic interests, solidly based in the business community. Nixon's ac- tions were therefore a scandal. The Socialist Workers party, a legal political party, represents no powerful interests. Therefore, there was no scandal when it was revealed, just as passions over Watergate reached their zenith, that the FBI had been disrupting its activities by illegal break-ins and other measures for a decade, a violation of demo- cratic principle far more extensive and serious than anything charged
during the Watergate hearings. What is more, these actions of the national political police were only one element ofgovernment programs extending over many administrations to deter independent political action, stir up violence in the ghettos, and undermine the popular movements that were beginning tc engage sectors of the generally marginalized public in the arena of decision-making. 2 These coven and illegal programs were revealed in court cases and elsewhere during the Watergate period, but they never entered the congressional proceedings
CONCLUSIONS 299
300 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
and received only limited media attention. Even the complicity of the FBI in the police assassination of a Black Panther organizer in Chicago was not a scandal, in marked contrast to Nixon's "enemies list," which identified powerful people who were denigrated in private but suffered no consequences. As we have noted, the U. S. role in initiating and carrying out the first phase of "the decade of the genocide" in Cam- bodia entered the Watergate proceedings only marginally: not because hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were slaughtered in the course of a major war crime, but because Congress was not properly notified,
so that its privileges were infringed, and even this was considered too slight an infraction to enter the final charges. What was true of Con- gress was also true of the media and their inveMigative reporting that "helped force a President from office" (Lewis) in what is held to be a most remarkable display of media independence, or arrogance, depend- ing on one's point of view.
History has been kind enough to contrive for us a "controlled experi- ment" to determine just what was at stake during the Watergate period, when the confrontational stance of the media reached its peak. The answer is clear and precise: powerful groups are capable of defending themselves, not surprisingly; and by media standards, it is a scandal when their position and rights are threatened. By contrast, as long as illegalities and violations of democratic substance are confined to mar- ginal groups or distant victims of U. S. military attack, or result in a diffused cost imposed on the general population, media opposition is muted or absent altogether. ) This is why Nixon could go so far, lulled into a false sense of security precisely because the watchdog only barked when he began to threaten the privileged.
Exactly the same lessons were taught by the Iran-contra scandals and the media reaction to them. 4 It was a scandal when the Reagan administration was found to have violated congressional prerogatives during the Iran-contra affair, but not when it dismissed with contempt the judgment of the International Court of Justice that the United States was engaged in the "unlawful use of force" and violation of treaties-that is, violation of the supreme law of the land and custom- ary international law-in its attack against Nicaragua. The sponsorship and support of state terror that cost some 200,000 lives in Central America in the preceding decade was not the subject of congressional inquiries or media concern. These actions were conducted in accord with an elite consensus, and they received steady media support, as we have seen in reviewing the fate ofworthy and unworthy victims and the treatment of elections in client and errant states. 5
In the case of the Vietnam War as well. as we showed in chapter 5.
i
even those who condemn the media for their alleged adversarial stance acknowledge that they were almost universally supportive of U. S. pol- iey until after large numbers of U. S. troops had been engaged in the "intervention" in South Vietnam, heavy casualties had been taken, huge dollar sums had been spent, and elite protest had surfaced on grounds of threats to elite interests_ Only then did elements of the media undertake qualified reassessments of the "cost-benefit" trade-off. But during the period of growing involvement that eventually made extrication difficult, the watchdog actually encouraged the burglar to make himself at home in a distant land, and to bomb and destroy it with abandon.
In short, the very examples offered in praise of the media for their independence, or criticism of their excessive zeal, illustrate exactly the opposite. Contrary to the usual image of an "adversary press" boldly attacking a pitiful executive giant, the media's lack of interest, investi- gative zeal, and basic news reporting on the accumulating illegalities of the executive branch have regularly permitted and even encouraged ever larger violations of law, whose ultimate exposure when elite inter- ests were threatened is offered as a demonstration of media service "on behalf of the polity. " These observations reinforce the conclusions that we have documented throughout.
The existing level of media subordination to state authority is often deemed unsatisfactory by critics. We have discussed several examples. Thus, Freedom House and others who are concerned to protect state authority from an intrusive public condemn the media for lack of sufficient enthusiasm in supporting official crusades, and even the lim- ited challenge to established authority during the Vietnam War and the Watergate period aroused concerns over the excessive power of the media. Quite commonly, the slight opening occasionally granted to dissent is considered far too dangerous to permit. This perception sometimes even takes the form of a paranoid vision of left-wing power that sweeps all in its path: for example, the plea of Claire Sterling and others who dominated media coverage of the Bulgarian Connection that they could barely be heard above the din of Soviet propaganda. A still more striking case is the Aikman-Shawcross fantasy, eagerly echoed by many others, about the "silencing" of the international media and governments by the left during the Pol Pot era. In reality, there was a huge chorus of protest over Khmer Rouge atrocities, which reached an extraordinary level of fabrication and deceit. The signifi- cance of these facts, and of the pretense of left-imposed "silence," is highlighted by the contrast with the real silence over comparable atroci- ties in Timor at the same time, and the evasions and suppressions
CONCLUSIONS 301
302 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
during the first phase of "the decade of the genocide," to mention two cases where the United States was the responsible agent and protest could have been effective in diminishing or terminating large-scale atrocities.
A propaganda model provides a ready explanation for this quite typical dichotomous treatment. Atrocities by the Khmer Rouge could be attributed to the Communist enemy and valuable propaganda points could be scored, although nothing useful could be done, or was even proposed, for the Cambodian victims. The image of Communist mon- sters would also be useful for subsequent U. S. participation in terror and violence, as in its crusades in Central America shortly after. In EI Salvador, the United States backed the murderous junta in its struggle against what was depicted as "the Pol Pot left," while Jeane Kirkpatrick mused darkly about the threat to EI Salvador of "well-armed guerrillas whose fanaticism and violence remind some observers of Pol Pot"- shortly after the archbishop had denounced her junta friends for con- ducting a "war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population. "6 Some are more circumspect-for example, Wil- liam Buckley, who observes that "the Sandinistas have given their people genocide" and are clearly heading in the direction of Pol Pot, although they have not quite reached that level yet. 7 The utility of the show of outrage over Pol Pot atrocities is evident from the way the fate
of these worthy victims was immediately exploited to justify U. S. orga- nization of atrocities that, in fact, do merit comparison to Pol Pot.
Atrocities in East Timor, however, have no such utilitarian function; quite the opposite. These atrocities were carried out by our Indonesian client, so that the United States could readily have acted to reduce or terminate them. But attention to the Indonesian invasion would have embarrassed a loyal ally and quickly disclosed the crucial role of the United States in providing military aid and diplomatic support for aggression and slaughter. Plainly, news about East Timor would not have been useful, and would, in fact, have discomfited important do- mestic power groups. The mass media-and the intellectual community generally-therefore channeled their benevolent impulses elsewhere: to Cambodia, not Timor.
As we have stressed throughout this book, the U. S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit-indeed, encourage-spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness. No one instructed the media to focus on Cambodia and ignore East Timor.
They gravitated naturally to the Khmer Rouge and discussed them freely8-just as they naturally suppressed information on Indonesian atrocities in East Timor and U. S. responsibility for the aggression and massacres. In the process, the media provided neither facts nor analyses that would have enabled the public to understand the issues or the bases of government policies toward Cambodia and Timor, and they thereby assured that the public could not exert any meaningful influence on the decisions that were made. This is quite typical of the actual "societal purpose" of the media on matters that are of significance for established power; not "enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process," but rather averting any such danger. In these cases, as in numerous others, the public was managed and mobilized from above, by means of the media's highly selective messages and evasions. As noted by media analyst W. Lance Bennett,
The public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to these messages. . . . Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public. 9
More significantly for our particular concerns here, the media typically provide their own independent contribution even without being "used," in the manner and for the reasons that we have discussed. Another media analyst, Ben Bagdikian, observes that the institutional bias of the private mass media "does not merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world. "lo That conclusion is well supported by the evidence we have reviewed.
A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free- market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national medja typi- cally target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal "profile" for advertising purposes, and, on the other, playa role in decision-making in the private and public spheres.
The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience's needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their "societal purpose" also requires that the media's interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups.
CONCLUSIONS 303
304 MANUFACTUIUNG CONSENT
A propaganda model also helps us to understand how media person- nel adapt, and are adapted, to systemic demands. Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, con- formity to the needs and interests of privileged seeton; is essential to success. In the media, as in other major institutions, those who do not display the requisite values and perspectives will be regarded as "irre- sponsible," "ideological," or otherwise aberrant, and will tend to fall by the wayside. While there may be a small number of exceptions, the pattern is pervasive, and expected. Those who adapt, perhaps quite honestly, will then be free to express themselves with little managerial control, and they will be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no pressures to conform. The media are indeed free-for those who adopt the principles required for their "societal purpose. " There may be some who are simply corrupt, and who serve as "errand boys" for state and other authority, but this is not the normY We know from personal experience that many journalists are quite aware of the way the system operates, and utilize the occasional openings it affords to provide information and analysis that departs in some measure from the elite consensus, carefully shaping it so as to accommodate to required norms in a general way. But this degree ofinsight is surely not common. Rather, the norm is a belief that freedom prevails, which is true for those who have internalized the required values and perspectives.
These matters are of some importance. We can readily understand
why Guatemalan reporters do not report the atrocities of the 1980s;
some fifty corpses dramatically illustrate the costs of deviance from authority on the part of independent journalists. To explain why American reporters avoid such topics, and even go so far as to describe Guatemala as a model for Nicaragua (see p. uS), requires further explanation, and the same is true in innumerable other similar cases,
some of which we have analyzed in detail. A propaganda model pro- t vides a basis for understanding this pervasive phenomenon.
No simple model will suffice, however, to account for every detail of such a complex matter as the working of the national mass media. A propaganda model, we believe, captures essential features of the pro- cess, but it leaves many nuances and secondary effects unanalyzed. There are other factors that should be recognized. Some of these con- flict with the "societal purpose" of the media as described by the propaganda model; some support it. In the former category, the human- ity and professional integrity of journalists often leads them in direc- tions that are unacceptable in the ideological institutions, and one should not underestimate the psychological burden of suppressing ob- vious truths and maintaining the required doctrines of benevolence
(possibly gone awry), inexplicable error, good intentions, injured inno- cence, and so on, in the face of overwhelming evidence incompatible with these patriotic premises. The resulting tensions sometimes find limited expression, but more often they are suppressed either con- sciously or unconsciously, with the help of belief systems that permit the pursuit of narrow interest, whatever the facts.
In the category of supportive factors, we find, first of all, elemental patriotism, the overwhelming wish to think well of ourselves, our insti- tutions, and our leaders. We see ourselves as basically good and decent in personal life, so it must be that our institutions function in accord- ance with the same benevolent intent, an argument that is often persua- sive even though it is a transparent non sequitur. The patriotic premise is reinforced by the belief that "we the people" rule, a central principle of the system of indoctrination from early childhood, but also one with little merit, as an analysis of the sociahlnd political system will quickly reveal. There are also real advantages in conformity beyond the re- wards and privilege that it yields. If one chooses to denounce Qaddafi, or the Sandinistas, or the PLO, or the Soviet Union, no credible evi- dence is required. The same is true if one repeats conventional doc- trines about our own society and its behavior-say, that the U. S. government is dedicated to our traditional noble commitment to de- mocracy and human rights. But a critical analysis of American institu- tions, the way they function domestically and their international operations, must meet far higher standards; in fact, standards are often imposed that can barely be met in the natural sciences. One has to work hard, to produce evidence that is credible, to construct serious argu- ments, to present extensive documentation-all tasks that are super-
fluous as long as one remains within the presuppositional framework of the doctrinal consensus. It is small wonder that few are willing to undertake the effort, quite apart from the rewards that accrue to con- formity and the costs of honest dissidence.
There are other considerations that tend to induce obedience. A journalist or commentator who does not want to have to work too hard can survive, even gain respectability, by publishing information (official or leaks) from standard sources;12 these opportunities may well be denied to those who are not content to relay the constructions of state propaganda as fact. The technical structure of the media virtually compels adherence to conventional thoughts; nothing else can be ex- pressed between two commercials, or in seven hundred words, without the appearance of absurdity that is difficult to avoid when one is chal- lenging familiar doctrine with no opportunity to develop facts or argu- ment. In this respect, the U. S. media are rather different from those in
CONCLUSIONS 305
306 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
most other industrial democracies, and the consequences are noticeable in the narrowness of articulated opinion and analysis. The critic must also be prepared to face a defamation apparatus against which there is little recourse, an inhibiting factor that is not insubstantial. Many such factors exist, related to the essential structural features brought to light by a propaganda model but nevertheless worthy of derailed examina- tion in themselves. The result is a powerful system of induced conform- ity to the needs of privilege and power.
In sum, the mass media of the United States are effective and power- ful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propa- ganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions. and self-censorship, and without significant overt coercion. This propa- ganda system has become even more efficient in recent decades with the rise of the national television networks, greater mass-media concentra- tion, right-wing pressures on public radio and television, and the growth in scope and sophistication of public relations and news man- agement.
This system is not all-powerful, however. Government and elite domination of the media have oot succeeded in overcoming the Viet- nam syndrome and public hostility to direct U. S. involvement in the destabilization and overthrow of foreign governments. A massive Rea- gan-era disinforrnation and propaganda effort, reflecting in large mea- sure an elite consensus, did succeed in its major aims of mobilizing support for the U. S. terror states (the "fledgling democracies"), while demonizing the Saodinistas and eliminating from Congress and the mass media all controversy beyond tactical debate over the means that should be employed to return Nicaragua to the "Central American mode" and "contain" its "aggressiveness" in attempting to defend itself from a murderous and destructive U. S. assault on al: fronts. But it failed to win public support even for proxy army warfare against Nicaragua, and as the costs to the U. S. mounted, and the proxy war accompanied by embargo and other pressures succeeded in restoring the "Central American mode" of misery and suffering in Nicaragua and aborting the highly successful reforms and prospects for development of the early years after the overthrow of Washington's ally Somoza, elite opinion too shifted-quite dramatically, in fact-toward resort to other, more cost-effective means to attain shared ends. 13 The partial failures of the very well organized and extensive state propaganda effort, and the simultaneous rise of an active grass-roots oppositional movement with very limited media access, was crucial in making an outright U. S. invasion of Nicaragua unfeasible and driving the state underground, to illegal clandestine operations that could be better
concealed from the domestic population-with, in fact, considerable media complicity. 14
Furthermore, while there have been important structural changes centralizing and strengthening the propaganda system, there have been counterforces at work with a potential for broader access. The rise of cable and satellite communications, while initially captured and domi- nated by commercial interests, has weakened the power of the network oligopoly and retains a potential for enhanced local-group access. There are already some 3,000 public-access channels in use in the United States, offering 20,000 hours of locally produced programs per week, and there are even national producers and distributors of pro- grams for access channels through satellites (e. g. , Deep-Dish Televi- sion), as well as hundreds of local suppliers, although all of them must struggle for funding. Grass-roots and public-interest organizations need to recognize and try to avail themselves of these media (and organizational) opportunities. 15 Local nonprofit radio and television stations also provide an opportunity for direct media access that has been underutilized in the United States. In France, many local groups have their own radio stations. In a notable case, the progressive cooper- ative Longo Mai, in Upper Provence, has its own 24-hour-a-day Radio Zinzine, which has become an important community institution that has helped inform and activate many previously isolated farmers. The potential value of noncommercial radio can be perceived in sections of the country where stations such as Pacifica Radio offer a view of the world, depth of coverage, and scope of discussion and debate that is generally excluded from the major media. Public radio and television, despite having suffered serious damage during the Reagan years, also represent an alternative media channel whose resuscitation and im- provement should be of serious concern to those interested in contest- ing the propaganda system. 16 The steady commercialization of the
publicly owned air waves should be vigorously opposed. In the long run, a democratic political order requires far wider control of and access to the media. Serious discussion of how this can be done, and the incorporation of fundamental media reform into political programs, should be high on progressive agendas. 17
The organization and self-education of groups in the community and workplace, and their networking and activism, continue to be the fundamental elements in steps toward the democratization of our so- ciallife and any meaningful social change. Only to the extent that such developments succeed can we hope to see media that are free and independent.
CONCLUSIONS 307
Appendix I
THE u. s. OFFICIAL OBSERVERS IN GUATEMALA, JULY 1-2, 1984
For the July I, 1984, elections in Guatemala, the Reagan administration sent an observer team, headed by Republican Congressman Ralph Regula, that also included Congressmen Jack Hightower (Democrat, Texas) and Mickey Ed- wards (Republican, Oklahoma); Secretaries of State Jack Brier, of Kansas, and Ed Simcox, of Indiana; Father Kenneth Baker, editor of Homiletic and Pastoral Review, New York City; John Carbaugh, a Washington attorney; Jesse Fried- man, of the American Institute of Free Labor Development; Tom Kahn, of the AFL-CIO; Max Singer, of the Potomac Organization; and Howard Penni- man,theelectionspecialistoftheAmericanEnterpriseInstitute. l Thisgroup, in Guatemala for a very brief stay, was transported around the country to "observe" on election day by helicopter, and made a brief statement and held a press conference on July 2. That statement and the press conference pro- ceedings were released by the U. S.