At the risk of editorializing...

Well, that's pretty much what we do here anyway, so here goes. A Question about Reliability of Reporting and Media-Government relations:

Yesterday I had an interesting meeting with an anthropologist at my university. She has done some interesting research on the El Salvadoran civil war and was a correspondent there during the conflict, mostly covering violations against health care workers and civilians. She also did some reporting in neighboring Nicaragua during their civil war, which was occurring during roughly the same time period. During our discussion about the conflict, she seem particularly interested in addressing the problems she encountered reporting during the war and about how much bias and misinformation there had been.

The obvious problem was that the Salvadoran government was not happy with reporters taking pictures of and writing stories on the 1000s of civilian deaths they were causing every year. The more surprising problem she addressed was how reluctant her editors were to run many of her stories. Apparently, the New York Times (as well as other major dailies) informed reporters that for every episode of state-sponsored violence included in their stories they needed to include two episodes of insurgent violence. The problem here was that the balance was already hugely skewed, so even if they were able to cover every instance in which a rebel killed a civilian they would only capture a tiny portion of the violence done by the regime. At any rate, the impetus for this restriction was that the State Department was constantly hounding editors and claiming that they were either biased in their reporting or that they were endangering national security by helping turn public opinion in favor of Marxist rebels--e.g. emboldening congress to restrict military aid to the Salvadoran government.

The group Accuracy in Media (a well known conservative watchdog group) also launched a campaign against what they called biased reporting on the conflict. This campaign largely targeted the NYT reporter Ray Bonner, whose reports of the El Mozote massacre and similar atrocities committed by the Salvadoran government led to a backlash against the Reagan regime's support of the government (Reagan and AIM called the reports propaganda). Following AIM's campaign and pressure the Reagan admin Bonner was pulled from El Salvador and demoted to a metro beat reporter in NY. Needless to say, it became extremely difficult to get accurate information about the conflict, as well as others in the region.

I had read similar stories about reporting during this conflict and heard similar anecdotes. It was interesting, though, to discuss the issue with someone who experienced the whole thing first hand. Interestingly, her opinion of the US media in general was less than favorable, and she thought that for international news particularly the BBC and other European news outlets were far more reliable. This conversation also made me think about related stories I have heard regarding accuracy in reporting and state interference in the media in the context of the War on Terror.

So, this all begs the important questions:
1) How much faith do we have that the media reports that we read (and post on this blog) are in any way an accurate representation of what is happening in the world? 2) Is it ever appropriate for the government to lean on, pressure, or otherwise restrict the scope or slant of journalism? (and how much does this still occur?) 3) Have American news outlets particularly fallen far behind their counterparts in Europe in terms of journalistic integrity? Relatedly, what does this say about freedom of the press in this country, both now and historically?