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Cheerleader or Critic? Television News Coverage in Canada and the United States of the US Invasion of Panama*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Walter C. Soderlund ,
Ronald H. Wagenberg  and
Ian C. Pemberton
Ian C. Pemberton
Affiliation:
University of Windsor University of Windsor University of Windsor
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Abstract

The role of mass media in reporting United States military operations is a subject on which there is considerable interest as well as diversity of opinion. The significance of media coverage has been recognized by both supporters and opponents of American use of military force to achieve foreign policy objectives. However, analysts disagree on whether the media tend to be supportive or critical of such ventures.

This study examines the above question with respect to the US invasion of Panama which began on December 20, 1989. Coverage of the invasion by three American networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) and two Canadian networks (CBC and CTV) in their major nightly television newscasts was compared for a 23-day period from December 15, 1989 to January 6, 1990. The data set picks up material on Panama beginning five days prior to the invasion and continues for three days following the surrender of General Noriega. In total 197 news stories are analyzed.

Examined in the study are factors such as volume of coverage (number of stories and running time); placement of items in the newscast; substantive issues given prominence; news sources utilized, and whether these sources were favourable or unfavourable toward US foreign policy positions; positive and negative “images” presented of the key actors involved in the invasion (Manuel Noriega, Guillermo Endara and George Bush); and whether overall, in both text and visual impact, the story was likely to be interpreted as either pro- or anti-invasion by viewers.

Résumé

La question du reportage fait par les médias sur les opérations militaries américaines suscite beaucoup d'intérêt mais aussi des avis partagés. L'importance de cette couverture a été reconnue tant par les partisans que par les adversaires de la politique américaine consistant à utiliser la force militaire comme outil de la politique étrangère. Les analystes ne sont cependant pas d'accord sur la question de savoir si les médias soutiennent de telles aventures ou si, au contraire, ils les condamnent.

La présente étude à cet égard examine l'invasion américaine de Panama qui a débuté le 20 décembre 1989. On a comparé les rapports sur l'invasion émis pendant 23 jours, du 15 décembre 1989 au 6 Janvier 1990, par trois chaînes américaines: ABC, CBS et NBC, et deux chaînes canadiennes: CTV et le réseau anglophone de Radio-Canada. L'ensemble des données comprend des émissions à la télévision commençant cinq jours avant l'invasion et se terminant trois jours après la reddition du général Noriega. Un total de 197 reportages sont analysés.

L'étude examine des facteurs tels que le nombre et la durée des reportages, le rang de ceux-ci dans le programme d'informations et les questions substantielles soulignées. Elle cherche à décider si les sources utilisées ont été pour ou contre les prises de position américaines, et analyse les «images de marque » positives et négatives des personnalités principales: Manuel Noriega, Guillermo Endara et George Bush. Elle cherche enfin à décider si, par ses paroles et ses images, le reportage a pu sembler approuver ou désapprouver l'invasion.

Type
Note
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 581 - 604
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1994

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References

1 Braestrup, Peter, Battle Lines: Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Military and the Media (New York: Priority Press, 1985), 20Google Scholar. The basic treatment of the role of the press in foreign policy is found in Cohen, Bernard, The Press and Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

2 Herman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 169.Google Scholar

3 Wisan, Joseph E., Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1895-1898 (New York: Octagon Books, 1965).Google Scholar

4 See Sarkesian, Sam, “Revolution and the Limits of Military Power: The Haunting specter of Vietnam.” Social Science Quarterly 56 (1976). 673–688Google Scholar; Gabriel, Richard, “No Light in the Tunnel: Can US Unconventional Forces Meet the Future,” Foreign Affairs 40 (1962), 566–575Google Scholar; Cohen, Eliot, “Constraints on America's Conduct of Small War,” International Security 9 (1984), 151–181CrossRefGoogle Scholar: and Rockman, Bert, “Mobilizing Political Support for National Security,” Armed Forces and Society 14 (1987), 17–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 In news coverage of the Panama invasion the five television networks used Cold War language in only 6 per cent of their stories. Even this total, however, overstates the salience of the Cold War, as some references were to Soviet-made arms found in Panama and to Soviet-made tanks in Nicaragua. The invasion itself was not framed in the context of the Cold War. Why this is the case is not entirely clear, as Noriega's links to Cuba's Fidel Castro went back at least as far as 1984, and with the defection of Jos6 Blanddn, Panamanian consul general in New York in January 1988, United States intelligence knew in detail the extent to which Castro was involved in providing military hardware, training and advice to Noriega. See Oppenheimer, Andres, Castro's Final Hour: The Secret Story behind the Coming Downfall of Communist Cuba (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 42, 167–192Google Scholar. According to one argument, the Panamanian invasion consciously marks the end of the Cold War framework in favour of a “moral-juridical” aterritorial international logic which now underlies the American “New World Order.” See Sutley, Stewart, “The Revitalization of the United States Aterritorial International Logic: The World before and after the 1989 Invasion of Panama,” this Journal 25 (1992), 435–462.Google Scholar

6 Draimin, Tim and North, Liisa, “Canada and Central America,” in Molot, Maureen Appel and Hampson, Fern Osier, eds., Canada among Nations, 1989: The Challenge of Change (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1990), 225–243Google Scholar. See also Baranyi, Stephen, “Canadian Foreign Policy toward Central America, 1980-1984: Independence, Limited Public Influence and State Leadership,” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 10(1984), 23–57.Google Scholar

7 Soderlund, Walter C., “Canadian and US Coverage of Latin American Elections,” Newspaper Research Journal 13(1992), 48–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 While the boundaries of the study could have been extended in either direction, these dates seem best to frame what were the actual military invasion and subsequent operations aimed at capturing Noriega. Thus the findings cannot be taken as indicative of television coverage either with respect to pre-invasion US policy toward Panama or to events subsequent to Noriega's removal from the country.

9 Dinges, John, Our Man in Panama: How General Noriega Used the United States and Made Millions in Drugs and Arms (New York: Random House, 1990)Google Scholar; and Scranton, Margaret C., The Noriega Years: U.S.-Panamanian Relations, 1981-1990 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991).Google Scholar

10 For an overview of US relations with Panama and the invasion in addition to the books by Dinges and Scranton, see Kempe, Frederick, Divorcing the Dictator: America's Bungled Affair with Noriega (New York: Putnam, 1990)Google Scholar; Donnelly, Thomas, Roth, Margaret and Baker, Caleb, Operation Just Cause: The Storming of Panama (New York: Lexington Books, 1991)Google Scholar; Buckley, Kevin, Panama: The Whole Story (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991)Google Scholar; McConnell, Malcolm, Just Cause: The Real Story of America's High-tech Invasion of Panama (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991Google Scholar; and Conniff, Michael L., Panama and the United States: The Forced Alliance (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992).Google Scholar

11 Special thanks go to Dot Hamilton of the Television News Archive and to Lydia Miljan of the National Media Archive for their prompt and professional assistance in assembling the research materials. Neither organization of course is in any way responsible for coding decisions or interpretations of data which they furnished to us in raw form.

12 Length of story is a special case. For US stories the running time was indicated on the video of the newscast. For Canadian material running time was not indicated and was determined by reading the story transcript aloud and recording the elapsed time on a stopwatch. On a sample of eight stories read by the authors and a professional broadcast journalist, identical times were recorded on four stories, five-second differences were recorded on three stories and a ten-second difference recorded on one story. We calculate that in 87 per cent of cases, our cited running time is within five seconds of the actual time of the story as it was broadcast.

13 Intercoder reliability was calculated on the basis of percentage of agreement following formula in Holsti, Ole R., Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), 140.Google Scholar

14 All coding was done jointly by Soderlund and Wagenberg working in a concentrated period of time of under a month. Each story was viewed or read at least three times and any disagreements were settled to the satisfaction of both coders prior to a final decision being made.

15 James F. Larson points to a similar phenomenon in his study of television news coverage of Iran. See “Television and US Foreign Policy: The Case of the Iran Hostage Crisis,” Journal of Communication 36 (1986), 112-13,119-20, 127.

16 Paletz, David L. and Entman, Robert M., Media Power Politics (New York: Free Press, 1981), 219Google Scholar. While not many “experts” were interviewed for Canadian news stories, all were located in the United States.

17 Kern, Montague, Levering, Patricia W. and Levering, Ralph B., The Kennedy Crises: The Press, the Presidency and Foreign Policy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983)Google Scholar identify domestic political opponents as the President's chief rivals for media access.

18 See Smith, Anthony, The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Merrill, John C., Global Journalism: A Survey of the World's Mass Media (New York: Longman, 1983)Google Scholar; and Gitlin, Todd, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media and the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

19 The “press pool,” which was created as a response to the lack of journalists' access to Grenada, was alerted at approximately 8:00 p.m. on December 19, left Washington at 11:20 p.m. and arrived in Panama at 4:55 a.m. on December 20. It witnessed combat at 10:00 a.m. and sent its first video to the US at 5:20 p.m. on December 20. It was disbanded after four days. See Alex S. Jones, “Editors Say Journalists Were Kept from Action,” New York Times, December 22, 1989, A19; and Kevin Merida, “The Panama Press-Pool Fiasco,” Washington Post, January 7, 1990,B2.

20 Charges of denial of access were confined to treatment of the press pool and focused on two points: (1) it arrived after the majority of the fighting was over and (2) helicopters were not available to transport it to combat sites around Panama. For a report on a Pentagon-commissioned report on problems of press coverage see Michael R. Gordon, “Cheney Blamed for Press Problems in Panama,” New York Times, March 20, 1990, A8.

21 Larson, “Television and US Foreign Policy,” 127-28.

22 While sources used on Canadian networks tended to be American, over 90 per cent of the reporters used reported directly to those networks. Canadian stories were not American network material purchased for use on Canadian newscasts.