Washing U.S. Hands of the Dirty Wars: News Coverage Erases Washington’s Role in State Terror
Washing U.S. Hands of the Dirty Wars: News Coverage Erases Washington’s Role in State Terror
by Kevin Young
ERRATUM: This version of "Washing U.S. Hands of the Dirty Wars" reflects a number of editing and proofreading corrections entered on July 1.
Recently the Latin American “dirty wars” of the 1960s through 1980s have resurfaced in mainstream media discussion. One reason is the trials in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, Peru, and Uruguay against some of the late twentieth century’s most vicious criminals, who are collectively responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of political dissidents and their suspected sympathizers. Some of the highest-profile defendants are Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83), Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-86), and various officials from Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976-83). Dozens of former Argentine military officials have been convicted since 2008, while prosecutions against Ríos Montt and other Guatemalan officials and Haiti’s Duvalier have been attempted since 2011.
Despite dedicating substantial coverage to these events, U.S. news outlets have usually ignored the role of the U.S. government in supporting these murderous right-wing regimes through military aid and diplomatic support. This pattern also applies to press coverage of current U.S.-backed “dirty wars,” in Honduras and elsewhere.
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Coverage of Honduras illustrates how what Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky call the propaganda model: the crimes of U.S. allies are ignored, and violence and suffering merit attention only when U.S. enemies can be blamed (or when the crimes are safely in the past and the record of U.S. support for them can be forgotten). Recent coverage of Colombia, Mexico, and many other countries conforms to this pattern.16 Even when the press does acknowledge repression by U.S. allies, it usually omits the U.S. government’s role or presents it as a force for democracy and human rights.
The U.S. role in the world should be the foremost focus of U.S. citizens in discussions of global affairs, but it is seldom described honestly in the press. Most of the public favors a foreign policy based on international law and universal human rights but has little knowledge of what the government and U.S. corporations do overseas. If the public knew, it would be more difficult for U.S. elites and their allies to continue violating human rights abroad. Mainstream press coverage systematically fails to provide the most basic information about history and current political realities, highlighting the importance of alternative media not reliant on corporations or the state.
More:
https://nacla.org/article/washing-us-hands-dirty-wars-news-coverage-erases-washington%E2%80%99s-role-state-terror