VmrVHApK

1from https://fair.org/home/distorting-past-and-present-reuters-on-nicaraguas-armed-uprising/
2
3Past and Present: Reuters on Nicaragua’s Armed Uprising
4
5Joe Emersberger
6Distorting Past and Present: Reuters on Nicaragua’s Armed Uprising
7
8From April 18 until late July 2018, an armed insurrection in Nicaragua left hundreds of people dead. The uprising, backed enthusiastically by private media outlets in Nicaragua (in particular one of its largest circulating newspapers, La Prensa, and the TV network 100%Noticias), was also supported by local NGOs funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The Trump administration and others (the EU parliament, UN officials) publicly backed the opposition’s version of events, as did Amnesty international and Human Rights Watch. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his supporters were held responsible for the vast majority of the “protest”-related deaths, and Ortega (who had been re-elected in 2016) was pressured at first to resign outright, and later to hold “early elections.”
9
10I examined 45 Reuters news articles about the uprising in Nicaragua since April 18, as the London-based wire service, whose news articles are widely reprinted throughout English-language Western media, provides a good sense of the ostensible facts about the conflict as portrayed by corporate journalism. The story conveyed by Reuters is that the Sandinista government is opposed to democracy and human rights in Nicaragua, while the US government supports these things. Various other sources, which may provoke less distrust than a US government led by Donald Trump, were cited in support of this scenario. But a closer look at the picture presented by Reuters reveals numerous distortions about Nicaragua’s past and present.
11Whitewashing the gruesome US track record
12
13Daniel Ortega first came to power in 1979 when the rebel force he was a part of, the FSLN, or “Sandinistas” as they came to be known, ousted the US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza.  The Somoza family’s dictatorship was established in 1937 as a direct result of a US occupation that lasted, almost continuously, from 1912 until 1933. By the end of the occupation, Somoza’s father was head of the US-trained National Guard.
14
15Reuters mentioned the US occupation one time (5/28/18) in the 45 articles, but very misleadingly suggested it lasted only six years. Somoza was mentioned in 11 of the articles. Only one of those (5/28/18) mentioned that Somoza was a “US-backed” dictator. By contrast, Ortega was disparaged as being like Somoza in four articles.  For example, one article (7/19/18) said that the protests had led to 300 deaths, and then quoted a government opponent saying, “He seems more and more like Somoza with the violations of human rights and killings.” Reuters provided no response to this comparison from Ortega’s supporters, but some of the following points would very likely have been made had Reuters looked for one.
16
17Somoza’s National Guard is estimated to have killed between 40,000–50,000 people in his last 18 months in power (John A. Booth, The End and the Beginning, p. 181; Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua,  p. 6).  One three-week bombing campaign alone by Somoza’s military in September of 1978 killed at least 3,000 people.
18
19The level of US support for Somoza is best illustrated by the Carter administration’s maneuvers to thwart meaningful change as Somoza fell (Walker, Nicaragua, p. 37).  A month before Somoza fled to Miami, the US ambassador to Nicaragua, Lawrence Pezzullo, told Washington that with “careful orchestration, we have a better than even chance of preserving enough of the [National Guard] to preserve order and hold the FSLN in check.” Only 11 days before Somoza fled, Pezzullo heinously advised Washington, “I believe it ill-advised to go to Somoza and ask for a bombing halt.” Carter also made no objection to a $66 million IMF loan to Somoza two months before he fled.
20
21The Reuters articles never mentioned the horrendous death toll from Somoza’s last stand, or US efforts to keep his repressive apparatus intact when Somoza himself could not be rescued.
22Ronald Reagan: Stop Communism Central America
23
24Ronald Reagan with a T-shirt promoting the Nicaraguan Contras.
25
26Ronald Reagan, dispensing with Carter’s attempt to use finesse, had the US train, arm and finance the Somocista “Contra” rebels throughout the 1980s. Reagan’s Contra war in Nicaragua cost 30,000 lives. Reuters mentioned Reagan’s backing for the Contras in eight of the 45 articles. Two (6/24/18, 6/3/18) noted the 30,000 people who died as a result of the war against the Contras. None mentioned that the Contras were basically run by Somoza’s ex-National Guardsmen.
27
28Four articles stated that Nicaragua was “one of the poorest countries in the Americas” (4/20/18), or words to that effect—which is unsurprising, given that 78 years of Nicaragua’s history consisted of direct US military occupation, a brutal US-backed dictatorship, and the Reaganite terrorist war. It wasn’t until about 2008 that Nicaragua’s real GDP per capita recovered to the level it had reached when Somoza was overthrown.
29
30It should be noted that Reuters is capable of putting sweeping indictments in its news articles, provided they are aimed at the Official Enemy. One article (5/28/18) stated that “Ortega has consolidated his rule by neutralizing and co-opting credible opposition and stalling the development of independent institutions.”
31Casting doubt on Ortega’s democratic legitimacy
32
33“‘No Surrender,’ Say Opponents to Nicaraguan President After Clampdown,” was the headline of Reuters‘ story (7/18/18) accompanying this photo of Nicaraguan police.
34
35One Reuters article (7/18/18) stated that “Ortega is a former Marxist guerrilla leader who has held elected office since 2007 and also ruled the country from 1979 to 1990.” The contrast between “elected office” and “ruled” erases Ortega’s electoral victory in 1984 from history; it was never mentioned in any of the articles. One of the ways Reagan justified his aggression against Nicaragua during the 1980s was to claim that Ortega was a dictator, ignoring the 1984 election,  which Ortega won with 67 percent of the vote, or claiming it was fraudulent. FAIR (Extra!, 10/87) noted in 1987, “Eighty percent of the [New York] Times sources about Nicaragua’s election were US officials and Nicaragua’s boycotting opposition.”
36
37Another Reuters article (6/24/18) contains this jaw-dropping passage:
38
39    Some in Nicaragua are looking to the lessons of the 1990 election when Ortega was defeated by an alliance led by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of a murdered opposition journalist. Her pitch was to end the civil war that claimed more than 30,000 lives.
40
41The “opposition journalist” Reuters  mentioned, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, was murdered in 1978 as a fierce opponent of the Somoza dictatorship, but Reuters’ wording deceptively suggests he was killed by the Sandinistas. Even more disgracefully, the “lesson” from 1990 was that if you are US-backed candidate promising to end US military and economic attacks on your country, you can use that to win an election. Chamorro’s “pitch,” based on the exploitation of violent foreign intervention, should completely discredit her victory in the eyes of reasonable observers.
42
43Much of the US establishment has questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 US election based on reports of email hacking by Russia. If email hacking invalidates an election, then what about terrorist attacks and economic blackmail in support of the winning candidate?
44
45Another Reuters article (5/16/18) said that
46
47    Ortega, 72, first took power in 1979 after the Sandinista rebels overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. His government then fought a war against US-backed “Contras” before he was voted out in 1990.
48
49Again, Ortega’s 1984 electoral victory is edited out of history, and he is presented as finally bowing to the will of voters in 1990. In the eyes of Western journalists, elections don’t exist when Washington doesn’t like the results, but US aggression does not mar an election result that the US government applauds.
50
51In contrast to its knee-jerk acceptance of Chamorro’s electoral victory in 1990, Reuters relayed opposition allegations of electoral fraud against Ortega in eight articles. One of them (5/28/18) stated that Ortega was “re-elected in 2016 with nearly three-quarter of the votes after limiting opposition participation.” But an OAS report on the 2016 election defended the election’s legitimacy; the OAS’s observer mission, according to the OAS press office, identified
52
53    “important advances” and  “weaknesses typical of all electoral processes” that have “not affected substantially the popular will expressed through the vote.”
54
55The OAS has never been inclined to give governments targeted by Washington a pass; quite the contrary, which is why several years ago leftist governments in the region worked to create alternative organizations, like CELAC and UNASUR.
56
57A year after Ortega’s last re-election, Latinobarometro, a pollster that tends to be biased against governments Washington dislikes, found Ortega’s government to be the most popular in Latin America, according to a broad range of questions.
58
59Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (4/27/18) offered an explanation for why Ortega might be far more popular among Nicaraguan voters than he is with Western journalists:
60
61    Since 2006, Nicaragua’s per capita GDP has increased by 38 percent — more than in Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras. Inequality, too, is lower in Nicaragua than any of those other countries, save El Salvador. Poverty has been cut nearly in half, according to World Bank data, from 48 percent to 25 percent.
62
63None of the Reuters articles mentioned the poverty reduction that took place during Ortega’s recent years in office.
64Concealing opposition support for social security cuts
65
66Protests erupted in response to the government announcing changes to the social security system. Reuters (4/19/18) described the changes as follows:
67
68    Employees will now have to contribute 7 percent of their salary to social security, up from a current 6.25 percent. Employers will have to contribute 22.5 percent of salaries from a current 19 percent. Pensioners will also have 5 percent of their pension taken out to be used for medical expenses.
69
70An article by the Tortilla con Sal collective in Telesur (4/21/18) clarified that the 5 percent benefit cut would be taken from “retirees’ pensions so they receive the same healthcare benefits as active workers (which they currently do not).” Moreover, the changes removed “the salary ceiling so that people earning high salaries pay social security contributions proportionate to their income.”
71
72The majority of Reuters’ articles (27 out of 45) noted that proposed “social security” (or “welfare”) changes sparked “the protests.” Many of those articles referred to the changes as “cuts.” The word “slash” was also used.
73
74But tellingly, not a single article reported that COSEP, the business lobby that joined the coalition to overthrow Ortega, itself supports very deep and unpopular cuts to social security. On April 19, right after protests began, a COSEP press release called on Ortega to “be responsible,” even if it meant “paying the political price,” and endorsed a plan for a 20 percent cut in social security. The opposition newspaper La Prensa (4/18/18) also made clear that it supported much deeper cuts to social security than the Sandinistas, dismissing Ortega’s proposal as “just a patch” in an April editorial that called for “profound structural changes.” The specific plan COSEP endorsed was based on recommendations by the IMF and FUNIDES, a Nicaraguan NGO funded by the US government through the NED. NED funding for the Nicaraguan opposition was never brought up by Reuters.
75
76One Reuters article (5/28/18) spun the opposition’s lack of coherence beyond an “Ortega must go” line by calling it a “broad new coalition” that is “looking to the lessons of the 1990 election.” Another (6/24/18) described the “uneasy union” and “division,” but somehow never reported the basic fact that key groups within the opposition want much deeper cuts to social security than what Ortega proposed. Of course, if you are looking to seize power by applying the “lessons of 1990,” why worry about such details?
77Hiding violence of ‘mainly peaceful’ opposition
78Reuters photo of armed opponents of the Sandinista government
79
80Reuters would be unlikely to characterize protesters as “mainly peaceful” if they were shooting mortars at the police force of a pro-Western government.
81
82The Reuters articles generally stuck to uncritically reporting what local rights groups claimed about the victims of violence. These claims were backed up by prominent international outfits like Amnesty International. Amnesty’s Erika Guevara-Rosas was quoted by Reuters (7/18/18) as saying “President Ortega has shown time and again that he will stop at nothing to crush all those who dare to oppose his government and anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way.”
83
84A few times Reuters dispensed with quoting sources, stating directly that Ortega was guilty of a “thuggish response to weeks of protests” (5/28/18) or “violent repression of dissent” (7/24/18,  7/23/18). Even the Trump administration was uncritically quoted by Reuters (7/17/18) as joining the “outcry” over human rights. The same article quoted UN human rights spokesperson Rupert Colville as saying “the protesters were mainly peaceful, though some were armed.”
85
86They “protesters” weren’t simply “armed,” though. They killed people.
87
88Independent journalist Max Blumenthal (Mint Press News, 8/6/18) went to Nicaragua and spoke to numerous family members of people killed by the “mainly peaceful” opposition, who did a lot more than simply “oppose the government.” One high-profile victim miraculously escaped death, a student leader named Leonel Morales, who initially led protests against Ortega’s social security proposals. Soon after protests began, Morales held a nationally televised press conference saying that armed groups had infiltrated the protest movement at a major university. La Prensa (4/26/18) ran a hostile news article about Morales’ press conference, saying he “tried to delegitimize the protest movement.”
89
90Days after that press conference, Blumenthal (Shadowproof, 8/5/18) recounted, Morales was “kidnapped from his girlfriend’s house by a truck full of armed men. He was shot in the face, shot in the stomach, stabbed, and thrown in a ditch to die.” La Prensa never reported the near-fatal assault on Morales, nor did Reuters. Blumenthal, who visited Morales in the hospital, was shocked that many high-profile and readily accessible victims of opposition violence were ignored by foreign journalists.
91
92    I visited Leonel Morales today. He is in the hospital in Managua going through a string of surgeries. An armed opposition affiliated gang kidnapped him at his gf’s house, tortured him, slashed and shot him, and left him for dead in a drainage ditch. He miraculously survived. pic.twitter.com/Ols3Vg2FtV
93
94    — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 22, 2018
95
96Blumenthal (Gray Zone, 7/30/18) also wrote about the case of Gabriel de Jesus Vado, “a police officer from Jinotepe, who was kidnapped, dragged from a moving car, and burned alive on video.” The atrocity took place at one of hundreds of roadblocks set up by protesters.
97
98An Ortega government supporter compiled a detailed spreadsheet of the deaths reported by local human rights groups. It includes police reports and news articles from both pro-opposition and pro-government sources about each death, when available. After two months of protests (when Reuters reported that local human groups were claiming 300 victims), his tally broke the 293 deaths down as follows:
99
100    20% (60) deaths implicate the opposition
101    20% (59) protester deaths implicate the government
102    16% (46) bystanders
103    17% (51) deaths not related to protests (crime, accidents)
104    26% (77) deaths for which information available is too limited
105
106(An updated spreadsheet covering three months of the uprising—405 deaths—is here.)
107
108Obviously, a breakdown like this compiled by a partisan source can be challenged. Depending on the standards for evidence applied, the classification of deaths can change significantly. I checked through each death in his first category (deaths that implicate the opposition), gave zero weight to police reports (the opposite of what Western journalists do at home), and gave most weight to sources, regardless of political bias, that quoted family members. I concluded that the opposition was implicated in 52 deaths, most of them very strongly. Applying that same standard, the government (police or armed supporters) is implicated in 28 of the 46 bystander deaths, with the other 18 being unclear. (Based on 2017 figures for homicides, Nicaragua under normal circumstances would have had about 80 homicides in a two-month period, so the claim that 51 of the deaths were from crime unrelated to the protests is plausible.)
109Wolf Blitzer interviews DeRay Mckesson on CNN
110
111Wolf Blitzer (CNN, 4/28/15) repeatedly pushed DeRay McKesson to condemn “violence” in protests against seven killings by the Baltimore police in the previous year.
112
113Consider the very different standard for “peaceful” applied in the US to protests against impunity for police killings. In 2015, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (4/28/15) badgered Black Lives Matter supporter DeRay Mckesson after protests in Ferguson resulted in property damage and some police officers hurt. At one point Blitzer commanded, “I just want to hear you say there should be peaceful protests, not violent protests,” after Mckesson had already said exactly that a few times.
114
115Samantha Bee (Full Frontal, 11/14/16) set the bar even higher suggesting that truly “peaceful protesters” would shake hands with police (FAIR.org, 11/16/16). Barack Obama urged Colin Kaepernick to “think of the pain” he may cause by kneeling during the national anthem to protest killings by police. A movement in the US, or resisting a US-backed government, would not be labeled “mainly peaceful” if it killed any police or civilians at all.
116
117Even the relatively minor crimes perpetrated by the opposition in Nicaragua—like using piles of concrete blocks to set up roadblocks all over the country that were kept in place for months—would never be tolerated in the United States, or be described as “peaceful” acts of “dissent.” The unarmed protesters of Occupy Wall Street in the US had their camps evicted by police on the grounds that they were too dirty: a “public health hazard.” An Occupy march that stalled traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for a few hours led to 700 arrests.
118
119That isn’t to say that Nicaraguan police and armed supporters didn’t perpetrate serious crimes in putting down the uprising. However, a violent insurrection like this in the US would never be legitimized by Reuters—not that such a revolt would ever be allowed to get a millimeter off the ground, or that foreign governments would dare support it. In the extremely unlikely event such a revolt developed, it would certainly be put down very brutally.
120
121Some leftists in rich Western countries say that they live under “dictatorship.” It‘s a silly and defeatist claim, but it will not put their own countries at risk of invasion, foreign-backed violent insurrection or devastating economic assault. It’s quite different when a government in the Global South gets the “dictatorship” label pinned on it, thanks to very biased reporting about a foreign-backed insurrection.
122
123 
124
125Subscribe: Android | RSS
126Filed under: Nicaragua, Reuters
127About The Author
128Joe Emersberger	
129Joe Emersberger
130
131Joe Emerberger is a writer based in Canada whose work has appeared in Telesur English, ZNet and Counterpunch.
132
133Related Posts
134The Good, Bad and Ugly in Oregon Standoff CoverageThe Good, Bad and Ugly in Oregon Standoff Coverage January 15, 2016
135In Syria, Western Media Cheer Al QaedaIn Syria, Western Media Cheer Al Qaeda January 4, 2017
136‘We Do Not Want That to Be Our Legacy’‘We Do Not Want That to Be Our Legacy’ November 27, 2017
137‘The Black Athlete Has Been Involved in the Political Struggle From the Beginning’‘The Black Athlete Has Been Involved in the Political Struggle From the Beginning’ June 20, 2018
138Hide 6 comments
139
140    Doug Latimer	on August 24, 2018 at 10:38 am
141
142    You don’t have to believe a gummint is pure as the driven snow to oppose US attempts to subvert it. By the same token, you shouldn’t ignore its very real contradictions – whether in Nicaragua or Venezuela or Brazil (before the soft coup), et alia.
143
144    Of course, the corpress will edit out most every contradiction of the opposition, and paint any “official enemy” in the worst light, but that doesn’t absolve us of the duty to see the situation in as clear eyed a manner as possible.
145
146    Doing so can elicit bile from both sides.
147
148    Nobody said intellectual honesty was a good way to make friends.
149    Reply	
150    Allan Desmond	on August 24, 2018 at 1:13 pm
151
152    Socialist always slaughter an kill their own, History has in fact shown time an time again the vile an sickness imbrued in the Leftist ideology . An yet consistently defended by Rich leftist in the west whom live far outside its murderess influences.
153    Reply	
154    Gary Fitzgerald	on August 24, 2018 at 1:47 pm
155
156    This article was very disappointing. For a more nuanced and accurate inquiry into the current state of Nicaragua take a look at the 7/18/18 episode of Democracy Now. It was a debate between Camillo Mejia and Julio Martinez Ellsberg addressing this very issue.
157    Reply	
158    Marvin	on August 24, 2018 at 5:07 pm
159
160    Wow, talk about omissions! Please answer these questions: Ortega won 67% of the vote in 1984, and in 2007 it was what percentage? Who is his VP? Do his sons hold prominent positions in the government and, if so, what are they? Is he in any way related to the new chief of police? The answers to these questions are all FACTS; that is, not subject to the silly interpretations that the misguided left manages to produce. Furthermore, please educate us on the last time that the U.S. police saw it beneficial to cover their faces. As the other reader commented, this is a severe disappointment of an article.
161    Reply	
162    Leave a comment
163    Cancel reply
164
165    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
166
167Frank	on August 24, 2018 at 8:48 pm
168
169What is the Monroe Doctrine?
170Reply	
171Joe Emersberger	on August 24, 2018 at 8:57 pm
172
173Marvin, please educate me on what point you are trying to make. Is it (as appears) that you are arguing the USA is a far freer and more democratic place than Nicaragua because police don’t cover faces? I’ve seem many videos of US police murdering and ruthlessly beating unarmed people without bothering to cover their faces. Are you sure you brag about that?