Hindsight on Romantic Haze

By Thomas Griffith

When particular press misjudges a major turn of events, right-wingers in particular are apt to suspect a liberal bias. That charge infuriates press professionals who think they know how to put aside whatever political opinions they have when going after a story. The reason the press misjudged some events in Poland, Egypt and Nicaragua is more complicated. It was less a case of bias than of mindset, to apply a clumsy but useful vogue word.

In Poland, the mind-set was that the army would not act against the Polish people. Never mind that the U.S. Government, most West Europeans and perhaps the Poles believed this too. The press prides itself on listening to a lot of opinions but making up its own mind, and so must share in the error. Some analysts are now convinced that the Polish government was more effective in persuading the army than the Polish people that Solidarity had "gone too far."

In Egypt, the press misjudged Anwar Sadat's popularity with his own people. With his bold gesture to Israel, Sadat was the first modern Arab to capture the non-Arab world's fancy. He was so articulate, attractive and reasonable in chatting with "Barbara" or "Walter" or "John." When in the last weeks of Sadat's life, he arrested upwards of 1,000 critics, the mind-set in the Western press was that he was overreacting to domestic opposition. Not until after his assassination did Western journalists learn how little loved he was at home.

Mind-set too was involved in misjudging the Sandinistas who took over Nicaragua when the Somoza dictatorship collapsed. In a remarkable article in the Washington Journalism Review, Shirley Christian, Pulitzer-prizewinning correspondent for the Miami Herald, analyzes with more "soul-searching" than anger how the New York Times, Washington Post and CBS covered the story in the crucial years of 1978 and 1979.

Because Somoza's regime was corrupt and reporters witnessed the brutality of his National Guard, the opposition Sandinistas were seen by the press through a ";romantic haze." "Probably not since Spain has there been a more open love affair." The press correctly reported the Marxist origins of the Sandinista movement but believed that it had been taken over by "the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie . . . The sources quoted on this trend were primarily the non-Marxists themselves, most of whom are now in exile or otherwise disillusioned." The Marxists insisted that they were not strong enough to take over and thus favored a "pluralistic democracy." SANDINISTAS DISCLAIM MARXISM was a Washington Post front-page headline. Perhaps these preconceptions explain what Christian regards as the press's worst misjudgment in Nicaragua.

A longtime specialist on Latin America, Christian faults her colleagues for ignoring, then misinterpreting, the rise of Tomas Borge. A friend of Fidel Castro's with "almost mystical stature" among Latin guerrillas, Borge was jailed and tortured during Somoza's rule. When Somoza fell and Borge got control of the Interior Ministry and the security forces, both the Post and the Times forecast that Borge was now, in the Times 's words, "in a position to control the most radical elements among the rebels." Before long, Borge's men killed one business leader, arrested others, and sent mobs to attack the newspaper La Prensa. Christian concludes: In Nicaragua the American media went on a "guilt trip." The story that reporters told-- with a mixture of delight and guilt-- was the ending of an era in which the U.S. had once again been proved wrong. . . "Intrigued by the decline and fall of Anastasio Somoza, they could not see the coming of Tomas Borge."

Christian is now covering the troubles in El Salvador. In some ways the situation is similar to Nicaragua, but in important ways different. El Salvador is too violent, too confused, too changing to report except in grays. But, Christian said last week, one European journalist of her acquaintance has been reproached by his editor for not seeing more clearly in black and white the approaching and deserved victory of the guerrillas. Mind-sets again.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.