How Television Sold the Panama Invasion (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)
How Television Sold the Panama Invasion
The media go to war
By Jeff Cohen and Mark Cook
Two weeks after the Panama invasion, CBS News sponsored a public opinion poll in Panama that found the residents in rapture over what had happened. Even 80 percent of those whose homes had been blown up or their relatives killed by U.S. forces said it was worth it. Their enthusiasm did not stop with the ousting of Gen. Manuel Noriega, however. A less heavily advertised result of the poll was that 82 percent of the sampled Panamanian patriots did not want Panamanian control of the Canal, preferring either partial or exclusive control by the U.S. ("Panamanians Strongly Back U.S. Move," New York Times, 1/6/90).
A "public opinion poll" in a country under martial law, conducted by an agency obviously sanctioned by the invading forces, can be expected to come up with such results. Most reporters, traveling as they did with the U.S. military, found little to contradict this picture. Less than 40 hours after the invasion began, Sam Donaldson and Judd Rose transported us to Panama via ABC's Prime Time Live (12/21/90). "There were people who applauded us as we went by in a military convoy," said Rose. "The military have been very good to us (in escorting reporters beyond the Canal Zone)," added Donaldson.
While this kind of "Canal Zone journalism" dominated television, a few independent print journalists struck out on their own. Peter Eisner of Newsday's Latin America bureau, for example, reported (12/28/89) that Panamanians were cursing U.S. soldiers under their breath as troops searched the home of a neighbor--a civilian--for weapons. One Panamanian pointed out a man speaking to U.S. soldiers as a "sapo" (a toad--slang for "dirty informer"
and suggested that denouncing people to the U.S. forces was a way of settling old scores. A doctor living on the street said that "liberals will be laying low for a while, and they're probably justified" because of what would happen to those who speak out. All of Eisner's sources feared having their names printed.
The same day's Miami Herald ran articles about Panamanian citizen reactions, including concern over the hundreds of dead civilians: "Neighbors saw six U.S. truck loads bringing dozens of bodies" to a mass grave. As a mother watched the body of her soldier son lowered into a grave, her "voice rose over the crowd's silence: 'Damn the Americans.'"
Obviously there was a mix of opinion inside Panama, but it was virtually unreported on television, the dominant medium shaping U.S. attitudes about the invasion. Panamanian opposition to the U.S. was dismissed as nothing more than "DigBat (Dignity Battalion) thugs" who'd been given jobs by Noriega. And it was hardly acknowledged that the high-visibility demonstration outside the Vatican Embassy the day of Noriega's surrender had been actively "encouraged" by the U.S. occupying forces (Newsday, 1/5/90).
Few TV reporters seemed to notice that the jubilant Panamanians parading before their cameras day after day to endorse the invasion spoke near-perfect English and were overwhelmingly light-skinned and well-dressed. This in a Spanish-speaking country with a largely mestizo and black population where poverty is widespread. ABC's Beth Nissen (12/27/89) was one of the few TV reporters to take a close look at the civilian deaths caused by US bombs that pulverized El Chorillo, the poor neighborhood which ambulance drivers now call "Little Hiroshima." The people of El Chorillo don't speak perfect English, and they were less than jubilant about the invasion.
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