El Salvador Research Paper

Theodore Dawes is a writer and reporter from Alabama, he uses examples from the frustration of the people in view of the media, and but brings a better understanding to the process that reporter and editors have to go though in creating a story. He states that objectivity has no existence in news reporting, but journalists still provide the truth that it does exist. Reporters have only so much face time to provide a segment, how can they possibly provide multiple sides of a story and not expect to get all of the facts. Editors and reporter have to make difficult decisions including, the morality of the story and what facts they can possibly leave out. Even though it seems the media is only trying to persuade and pick sides in a story, this

Journalism is the only source to obtain information to form a personal opinion about events that are happening in society, but often is fueled by sales and viewership that often presents false reports to drive popular opinions. The opinions that are presented to the unaware subscriber or viewer can be dangerous when a person starts to believe in everything that is being presented to them. The expectation of the news media to present only facts is far from the agenda of media. Whereas, the media needs to be profitable like any other corporation. For instance, the media started the Spanish- American war through false journalism as competition between two rival newspapers. William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were owners of separate New

The cultural bias in reporting is prevalent in major US media outlets. For example, on 1 October US news station, NBC reported that “three US soldiers” and “several Afghans” were killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan. Viewers were

Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is located 14.97503° N, -86.26477° E. It is part of Central America and goes on for about 112,492 km squared. Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north by the Gulf of Honduras, a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea. Honduras’ capital is Tegucigalpa, which is also the largest city in the country. Honduras became its own country independent of Spain in the year of 1821 and has not been very good on the political and social side of things. The population of Honduras goes well over 8 million. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, and is one of the

The number one reason the U.S. involved themselves with El Salvador was because the Communist political party started becoming a magnificent threat to the nation. Communism is the belief directed from Karl Marx, where everyone is essentially treated equal. In El Salvador during the 1980s, the Communist group, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (a.k.a. FMLN), and three other political parties were pushing for more power. Since these groups were

Also, the growing presence of the Soviets and Cuba in Nicaragua escalated the cold war and in order to ‘draw the line” the Reagan administration “doubled economic aid for El Salvador to a hundred and forty four million dollars” (pg 40). According to Danner, “the priorities of American Policy in El Salvador had become unmistakable” (pg 41).Second, The American government was “opposed to dispatching American combat forces to Central America” (pg 22) and in order to prevent another Nicaragua, Congress agreed to “reform” the Salvadoran Army by financing, training and arming its troops to fight the FMLN. As Danner notes, “the Americans had stepped forward to fund the war, but were unwilling to fight it”. Third, the Monterrosa led Atlacatl led batallion through American funding descended in El Mozote with “the latest M-16’s, M-60 machines guns, 90 millimeter recoilless rifles, and 60- and 81 millimeter mortars”(pg 39) and with a list of names massacred an entire village because “communism was cancer”(pg 49). The U.S. government was clearly responsible for the Massacre at El Mozote because without the funding, supporting, and training of El Salvador troops the war would have been tilted in the guerillas favor as they had managed to hold the disorganized army in certain areas. In contrast to neighboring departments El Mozote and its inhabitants of born-again Christians did not fit in as guerilla sympathizers. In fact, the training at American hands

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was plagued with a stagnant economy – it had no incentive to promote communism in Central America. Ignoring the USSR’s economic weakness, Reagan asserted squashing the Salvadoran rebels would stem the spread of communism and would reestablish American preeminence in Central America. Reagan believed that enforcing anti-communist ideology would protect American national security interests by protecting the United States from its Bolshevik enemies.

In accordance with Jorge Juarez of UIGCS, the seminar's goal was to "make known to the public a version of the war's historical facts, without passions, without ideology, that presents the truth of the facts" (Britannica, p.2). In spite of all the studies that look at what happened in the civil war in El Salvador, they still have not discovered the underlying causes. This is especially tragic, as studies show almost 75,000 people died during those massacres. Countries throughout the world supported El Salvador during this long rough period of

After the civil war ended, El salvador remained one of the most violent countries, rival to that of Columbia. There’s a huge question with the US involvment. Some people say if they did not get involved the war would have ended earlier. Whether the US was right or wrong giving aid to El Salvador, did they not know how many civilians were being

American attitudes towards Latin America can be summed up as an extension of larger global directives, and the exclusion of foreign powers in the region. This was highlighted especially during the Cold War as US involvement was essentially in competition with the USSR. Latin America was therefore a mere pawn in the larger context of US-Soviet competition for global dominance. The actions and methods used are also characterized by the lack of an international authority, or an atmosphere of inter-state anarchy, which shaped their calculations in the endeavor to increase their influence over Latin America. When one analyzes the situation, it seems only rational that the United States treated its southern neighbors so, due to the geographical

Pinochet was put into power . This is a perfect example of how the US foreign policy replaced genuine democracy with dictatorship for their own benefit, and again, supposedly in the name of National Security. Latin America was a victim of US foreign policy and corporate greed.

It can be said that the mainstream American news media holds objective reporting in a high regard, and rightfully so. Such a journalistic culture finds its roots in the Fairness Doctrine, a policy implemented by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949(Boliek) in response to muckraking and irresponsible journalistic practices of prior times. The Fairness Doctrine mandated that news organizations provide contrasting views of controversial issues in an equal manner. Though the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, and its official language removed in 2011, the effects of this policy still seem to play a significant role in the mainstream media (Boliek). It can be argued that the residual effects of this policy have mutated into a heavy emphasis on fairness and balance (in some cases, and in other cases not as much) that has made many journalists lose their focus on what objectivity actually means.

In times of War, the media plays a crucial role both in reporting, monitoring and giving updates. During the Vietnam War of 1955-1975, the American press played crucial roles of reporting until it ended up shifting its tone under the influence of occurrence of some events like the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, the bombing of Cambodia and leaking of Pentagon papers resulting into lack of trust in the press (Knightly 1975). From the beginning of the war up to present times there have been undying debates over the role of media in the war. The have been various criticisms over the American News Media’s actions and influences on the outcome of the war. The debate is embedded on the particular political assumptions perceived across the

The real situations that many Central Americans faced were either from backlash of communism resulting in U.S involvement or just straight up domination

Thousands of our nation's men and women were fighting for their country, yet the media limited the amount of information that they chose to pass on to the public. Each day the media is faced with the choice of making decisions of what news to pass on, when that news could make a significant difference in someone's life, or in the fate of our nation.