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Showing posts from December, 2011

The Times Remembers the Dasht-e-Leili Massacre

The Times Remembers the Dasht-e-Leili Massacre By Prof. Edward Herman I t is always interesting and enlightening to see the New York Times picking up a story belatedly and tracing through the reasons for its early neglect and later resuscitation. This often fits the Orwellian Big Brother principle of using a story only when it is politically helpful and suppressing it when it is inconvenient—forgetting, "and then, when it become necessary again [drawing] it back from oblivion" ( 1984 ). My favorite case was the failure of the New York Times to mention the Salvadoran army death list of 138 left-wing and liberal politicians back in 1982, when the United States was supporting a "demonstration election" there and publicizing the death list would suggest unfavorable electoral conditions, but then mentioning that list in 1989 when the left was tentatively entering an election and the paper was anxious to put that election in a good light, contrasting it with t