Colombia: missing
in action
How the Citizen-Times distorts news about Colombia
By Brendan Conley and Eamon Martin
Asheville, North Carolina, Sept. 7— The
Asheville Citizen-Times underreports and distorts news about
Colombia, an Asheville Global Report analysis has found. These
reporters analyzed news coverage of Colombia by the Asheville
Citizen-Times during the month of August, 2000 and found that
the Gannett-owned paper failed to report on significant events
and chose articles that slanted and distorted news.
Newspapers have a responsibility to act as watchdogs,
informing the public of significant issues and events, and turning
a critical eye on powerful interests in our society, especially
the government. As the United States government involves itself
more deeply in Colombia’s civil war, Americans look to the media
to learn what is happening. Newspapers must therefore report
extensively and accurately on issues of human rights, war crimes,
and US involvement.
The month of August was a hot one for Colombia.
As President Pastrana began to implement his “Plan Colombia,”
an attack against drug traffickers and rebel armies, he met
profound opposition from civil society, and an offensive from
the rebels. As the Colombian military and paramilitaries massacred
civilians on several occasions, including women and children,
President Clinton exempted the Colombian government from human
rights restrictions that would have prevented the US donation
of $1.3 billion in military aid toward “Plan Colombia.” Clinton
visited Colombia, saying that the money was only for anti-drug
efforts. Let’s look at how the Citizen-Times informed its readers
about Colombia last month.
What got left out
In analyzing coverage of Colombia by the Asheville
Citizen-Times, the first problem one encounters is that there
is not much of it. In the month of August, the Citizen-Times
ran ten articles on Colombia, totaling 2,400 words. By way of
comparison, Asheville Global Report ran articles totaling 3,700
words on Colombia in the month of August. (This does not include
AGR’s Spanish language reporting on Colombia, a total of 2,500
words.) AGR, of course, is a weekly newspaper that publishes
approximately 1,200 fewer pages per month than the corporate
daily. The Citizen-Times does not seem to have anything against
Colombia; rather, the lack of reporting on that nation is symptomatic
of a larger lack of substantive news. The Citizen-Times regularly
devotes more space to its Sports and Living sections than to
international news. The volume of news is important. Readers
– citizens – cannot be expected to inform themselves about current
events when such a small amount of information is available.
Sound bites and 150-word blurbs can only treat the subject in
a shallow way.
The Asheville Citizen-Times showed a pattern of
ignoring and distorting key events in Colombia last month. To
be fair, it may be impossible to accurately cover a month’s
worth of a nation’s major events in only 2,400 words. But within
that limited volume, the Citizen-Times made choices about what
to inform the public about, and what to keep under wraps. Here
we look at seven major events in the month of August. All of
these events were reported by mainstream wire services and were
available to any major media outlet. They were all reported
in Asheville Global Report. We summarize each event, explain
its newsworthiness, and analyze the Citizen-Times’ reporting
of it.
August 3 general strike: Approximately
700,000 workers staged a one-day general strike to protest the
government’s economic austerity measures, and high unemployment.
Police used tanks, water cannon, and tear gas to force the protesters
to disperse. The event is newsworthy because of the size of
the work action, and because it demonstrates the unpopularity
of the government at a time when the US is aiding the government.
The Citizen-Times did not report on this event.
August 7 machete massacre by paramilitaries:
Paramilitary groups slaughtered at least 13 civilians, including
three women. Some of the victims were hacked to death by machetes.
The event is newsworthy because it is a war crime committed
by the paramilitaries, which are linked to the Colombian government,
at a time when the US is preparing to give $1.3 billion to the
Colombian military. The Citizen-Times did not report on this
event.
August 10 statement by Carlos Castano: Carlos
Castano, the leader of Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary death
squads, claimed that he had received a message from US anti-drug
agents requesting his help in wiping out the drug trade. The
statement is newsworthy because it alleges a connection between
agents of the US government and the paramilitary groups, which
have committed human rights violations and have been implicated
in the drug trade as well. The Citizen-Times did not report
on this event.
August 15 massacre of children by Colombian
army: The Colombian army massacred six schoolchildren on
a field trip. The event is newsworthy because it is a war crime
committed by a military force that is funded and trained by
the United States. The Citizen-Times reported on this event
on August 19, four days after it happened, and two days after
Asheville Global Report covered it. The Citizen-Times devoted
154 words to this event.
August 23 waiver of human rights conditions:
President Clinton signed a waiver exempting the Colombian government
from human rights conditions that would have prevented it from
receiving US military aid. The decision was opposed by Members
of Congress and human rights groups. The event is newsworthy
because it contradicts the claims of Clinton and other government
officials that human rights are a priority in US foreign policy.
The Citizen-Times did not report on this event when it happened,
though it was mentioned briefly in a Sept. 4 article.
August 26-27 massacre by paramilitaries:
About 150 paramilitary soldiers massacred 22 civilians in two
separate attacks, pulling some from their beds and some from
a dance hall. The event is newsworthy because it is a war crime
committed by the paramilitaries, which have ties to the Colombian
government and alleged ties to the US government. The Citizen-Times
did not report on this event.
August 30 visit by Clinton to Colombia: President
Clinton traveled to Cartagena, Colombia, to symbolically deliver
$1.3 billion in military aid, ostensibly to fight drugs. Protests
erupted around the country, though the Colombian government
banned demonstrations in Cartagena. The event is newsworthy
because of the size of the aid package, and because it demonstrates
the extent of US involvement in Colombia. The Citizen-Times
reported on this event on August 31, devoting 346 words to it.
So what did the Asheville Citizen-Times
report about Colombia during the month of August? Two of the
ten articles are referred to above. Of the remaining eight,
five are reports of attacks and other actions by the rebel groups,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National
Liberation Army (ELN). Of these, three are short articles of
100-200 words. The other two articles are more substantial,
and they are essentially the same, though they ran five days
apart. They report on rebel killings of Colombian police and
raise the question of whether US aid should be used to fight
guerrillas in the civil war, rather than just fighting drug
traffickers. The other three articles are: a short report on
US training of Colombian troops, a short report on the opposition
to Plan Colombia, and a more substantial report on the concerns
of Colombia’s neighboring countries about the civil war.
Distorting the news
Beyond simply reporting the facts about events
taking place in the world, newspapers must inform their readers
of the issues behind the events. We analyzed the Citizen-Times’
treatment of some of the primary issues involving Colombia and
the US role in the civil war. First, it should be noted that
the articles in question were Associated Press dispatches; they
were not written by Citizen-Times staff. However, the Citizen-Times
editorial board is ultimately accountable for their selection.
The editorial act of selection is an exercise in power that
carries enormous responsibilities with profound implications
for a citizenry whose public trust and political engagement
with its government depends on the media. Bearing this in mind,
after reviewing Colombian events in the month of August as presented
by the Citizen-Times, when held against the complete spectrum
of available news, what emerges is a consistent pattern of bias
by issue omission and issue emphasis.
Choosing sides: One way to distort the
news is to tell the story of a conflict from one side or the
other – to use humanizing language that encourages the reader
to identify with people on one side of the conflict, and to
see people on the other side as enemies. On August 1 and 6,
(“Killings of Colombian police raise questions on limits of
US aid” and “Colombian police fearful,” respectively) we learn
that Colombian police officers’ hands are tied because the US
Black Hawk helicopters sent by the US “to fight rebels and others
who protect drug crops” are legislatively out-of-bounds for
counter-insurgency warfare. As a result (we are told in great,
humanizing detail) the police are virtually defenseless, and
in one instance were “one by one…shot to death,” after rampaging
“guerrillas…had attacked a small mountain town.” This is a political
scenario in which “officer Jose Borney Trujillo nervously surveys
the forested mountains where leftist rebels roam virtually unimpeded,”
and where “word has come” to his “tiny police outpost that Colombia’s
biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
now executes policemen captured after attacks.” The police “say
that without reinforcements, they’d be overrun and likely killed.”
The terrified Trujillo was quoted as saying, “They will kill
us all…we won’t be able to surrender and ask for mercy.”
In the latter article, in case the reader should
miss the point, journalist Andrew Selsky drives it right on
home to the US with the desperate, who-will-save-us-now call
for the hero, typical of the preliminary, strategic propaganda
prose style used by journalists to generate public support before
an escalated military intervention. We learn that “whether reinforcements
save them…hunkered down in their brick building, which is laced
with chicken wire to repel hand grenades” could “depend” on
the “interpretation” of the military aid agreement. The police
are under siege. “The officers say they could fend off a large
assault for several hours, but that reinforcements would have
to arrive quickly.” “Rescue from the air is the best hope,”
Selsky asserts. And, “Tolemaida military base, where US special
forces have been training army counternarcotics troops, is only
about a five-minute flight away.”
The police officers, of course, are human beings,
and their fear is real. It should be noted, however, that they
are official agents of a government that is fighting a civil
war. The school children killed by the army and the villagers
hacked to death by the paramilitaries are human too, and the
stories certainly lend themselves easily to the sort of heart-rending
journalism that the Citizen-Times employs to describe the police
officers. Yet the Citizen-Times chose AP articles that humanized
police officers and chose to leave out articles that humanized
the victims of the army and the death squads.
The Citizen-Times is not unique in its bias.
This pattern of distortion is being repeated in every corporate
media outlet in the United States. It serves the function of
providing the government with a public that is ready to believe
in the need for greater US involvement in Colombia.
In reality, of course, US weapons are already
being used against the rebels; just two weeks after President
Clinton signed the aid bill, the Black Hawks were employed to
repel a July 30 FARC offensive in the town of Arboleda. Arboleda
is a town in coffee-producing western Colombia, where neither
coca nor poppy is grown. Some government officials are pushing
for greater use of US weapons in Colombia. In fact, just a few
days earlier, on July 25, US House International Relations Committee
Chair Ben Gilman (R-NY) had complained that the helicopters
hadn’t been used to thwart an attack on July 14. “Since the
US Embassy maintains the absurd fiction that US aid could only
be used for counter-narcotics purposes, the Black Hawks were
not called in,” he said.
The missing paramilitaries: Another way
that the news media distort the news is by ignoring reports
of killings by the government and death squads, as we saw earlier,
and overemphasizing attacks by the rebel armies.
In the Citizen-Times World Digest of August 9,
a news brief explains that the US helicopters “are to seize
vast swaths of drug-producing areas from the FARC and other
armed groups.” As in the Selsky article which identifies the
criminal suspects as “rebels and others who protect drug crops,”
we’re never informed who these mysterious “others” are. There
is never any mention that the government-linked paramilitaries
have as much of a hand in the drug trade as the FARC.
Four days later, the Citizen Times informs us
in another, 171-word, World Digest tidbit that the FARC released
hostages, among them, an “American.” The next day, in the same
section, the FARC will be blamed for a car bomb explosion. The
day after that –August 15, while the Colombian army was busy
massacring six school children— we discover in the Digest that
the most significant thing about Colombia is an almost heartwarming,
little “human interest” tale in which American biologist John
Lynch has only “one regret” after he “emerged from captivity
at the hands of leftist rebels.” The freed hostage “did not
find a caecilian - a giant wormlike creature he’(d) been hunting
for years.”
In the month of August, the Citizen-Times reported
rebel attacks five times, and military and paramilitary attacks
once. This serves to distort reality for the reader, as the
military and paramilitary activities are far more numerous and
deadly. As Cecilia Zarate-Laus of the Colombia Support Network
told AGR, “There are more killings by the paramilitaries and
the army than by the guerrillas. The guerrillas are not saints,
but the paramilitaries and the army are much worse.”
Underreporting a massacre: The Citizen-Times’
reporting on the massacre of children deserves a closer look
here. We are talking about civilian children as young as six
years old being slaughtered by a military force that is trained
and funded by the United States. As mentioned before, on August
19 the Citizen Times, within 154 words, caught up to the massacre.
Immediately after the first two paragraphs of the article introduce
its central thrust, the Colombian army’s suspension of 41officers
and soldiers “allegedly involved” in the killings –presumably,
exemplary evidence of the military’s capacity for self-correction
and self-cleansing—a paragraph appears, dead center, that has
nothing to do with the story whatsoever. In fact, it is as garish
as it is clumsy in its appearance: “Also on Friday (August 18),
the police said two other children were killed, and five people
injured, by a bomb planted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces
Colombia, the country’s largest guerrilla army.”
The article then continues: “Military investigators
are examining the claims of top army officials who say the six
students were shot during a fire-fight between rebels of the
National Liberation Army, or ELN, and government troops.”
Without even touching the inherent dubiousness
of “military investigators examining the claims of top army
officials,” subsequently these “claims” have since proven to
be lies, as yet uncorrected or clarified by the Citizen-Times.
According to interviews of the survivors and eye witnesses in
Pueblo Rico, on August 15 no kind of armed confrontation occurred
between the insurgency and the Colombian army. The children’s
group was attacked for 47 minutes with firearms and fragmentation
grenades.
It’s worth noting that the Citizen-Times wasn’t
alone in this distortion. Incredibly, this report of the Colombian
army battling left-wing troops that in truth were not there
at all made the media rounds pretty quickly. On August 16 the
Washington Post, deep inside on page A32 in “For the record…,”
a one paragraph synopsis of a few world events, 29 words read:
“schoolchildren were killed in cross-fire between government
troops and leftist rebels.” The same day, on page A12, the New
York Times, in a 52 word article reported that the children
were “caught in the cross-fire of Marxist rebels fighting the
army.”
This is important. Eight days after this massacre,
President Clinton signed the waiver exempting the Colombian
government from human rights conditions that would have prevented
it from receiving the $1.3 billion US military aid. One could
imagine a scenario in which newspapers across the country carried
front-page stories about the massacre, American citizens became
outraged at this misuse of their tax money, Clinton was forced
to obey the law regarding human rights restrictions on US aid,
and the US contribution to Plan Colombia was canceled. But because
the Citizen-Times and the rest of the corporate media failed
to inform the public, the money has been delivered.
The Citizen-Times headline on August 31 read:
“Clinton visit supports antidrug plan.” Next to the article
was placed a photograph of a student spray painting “Yankee
Go Home” on a banner painted like a US flag during a protest
in Bogota. The picture is the only indication of political opposition
to Clinton’s presence in Colombia at a time when turbulent protests
were breaking out all over the countryside in direct response
to his arrival. This news piece all but trumpets the president’s
trip, and in describing the necessity of the military aid falls
just short of describing the visit/aid package as benign and
benevolent. It is mentioned that during Clinton’s brief stay,
he will “meet Colombian National Police and talk with widows
of police officers who have been killed in the line of duty.
Later, he will go to tour…one of 20 centers funded by the US
Agency for International Development that gives Colombia’s poor
greater access to the justice system.”
What’s missing from all of these articles is any
mention of the actual form of “aid” the US has been providing
to the Colombian poor: the US Army’s School of the Americas
(SOA), located in Fort Benning, Georgia. Colombia has sent over
10,000 soldiers to train at the SOA – more than any other country.
A recently released Human Rights Watch Report on Colombia cites
seven SOA-trained Colombian military for recent human rights
atrocities and for support of paramilitary forces. The report
entitled, “The Ties That Bind: Colombia & Military - Paramilitary
Links” documents the involvement of SOA grads in kidnapping,
murder, massacres, and setting up paramilitary groups. Likewise,
the 1999 US State Department Report on Human Rights – as in
previous years — links SOA graduates to current atrocities in
Colombia. All of this is invisible to the corporate media.
The US involvement in Colombia’s 36 year-old civil
war is by no means a trivial matter in which the core issues
can be succinctly abbreviated to 150-word, World Digest briefs
about the plight of the caecilian. This comprehensive news distortion
might concern any US taxpayer compelled to think critically
about their direct involvement in the escalated promotion of
what is one of the bloodiest arenas of human rights abuses in
the world today.
|