Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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American peace initiative of the so-called Contadora countries came to a
standstill in June when Nicaragua demanded that the participants take
up the issue of Washington’s support for the anti-Sandinista forces.” In
the real world, the Contadora initiative foundered when the US angrily
rejected the draft proposal it had previously supported after it was
accepted by Nicaragua, and induced its clients in the region to do
likewise, with a hysterical outburst to which we return.
Another useful device is extensive paraphrase of Administration
spokesmen, as in a reference to Elliott Abrams, whose deep concern for
human rights and democracy was reviewed earlier, who “said the only
way to satisfy the security concerns of the United States was with a
democratic government in Nicaragua.” No doubt Abrams produced such
words, but when the columnist reports them in her own paraphrase, this
helps blur the difference between fact and opinion; and with incessant
repetition, overwhelmingly one-sided, the doctrine approved by state
propagandists soon becomes “fact,” whatever the facts. The Times
would not, for example, permit a reporter to write, without quotes, that a
high Soviet official said that the USSR could not deal with Israel unless
it established a democratic government, or that El Salvador is trying to
induce Nicaragua to abandon its concern for democratization in El
Salvador. Exploitation of such devices in what is called “news” is
ultimately more effective in imposing the Party Line than outright state
propaganda.
To take another striking case of the technique of indoctrination by
selective citation, consider Christian’s highly-praised book denouncing
the Sandinistas, largely drawn from her Pulitzer Prize-winning news
reports on Nicaragua in the Miami Herald. George Black observes that
Christian’s news stories dealt almost exclusively with Reagan
Administration charges: “broken promises” to “those who wanted
democracy,” human rights abuses by the Sandinistas, Soviet military