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ABSTRACT
The Committee to Protect Journalists is a world-renowned press freedom organization that advocates on behalf of journalists being persecuted for doing their work. Launched in 1981, CPJ was originally imagined as a group of US journalists who would speak out on behalf of beleaguered colleagues working under both right-wing and left-wing dictatorships. CPJ was a product of the late Cold War, and its members found it particularly challenging to navigate US foreign policy—especially when advocating for journalists in Central America. This article tells the story of CPJ’s first international mission to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, showing that the mission was riddled with internal tension. Such tension centered on the question of how to gain credibility with both conservative and liberal lawmakers in Washington. CPJ members each believed that they could and should gain this credibility by striking a political balance among the delegates themselves, as well as in the official statement that followed the mission. Yet, the political differences among the people who went on the mission ultimately led to bitter disagreements about how to represent journalists’ persecution in that region of the world.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Michael Massing, Interview with the author, March 17, 2020.
2. Michael Massing, Interview with the author, September 12, 2017; and Laurie Nadel, Interview with the author, September 6, 2017.
3. William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
4. Statement of Journalists’ Mission to Central America, April 1, 1982, HR#0010, Box 19, Folder Central America Delegation, The Committee to Protect Journalists Records, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Columbia University. Hereafter referred to as CPJR.
5. Massing, Interview with the author, March 17, 2020.
6. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992.
7. Cynthia J. Arnson, “Window on the Past: A Declassified History of Death Squads in El Salvador,” in Death Squads in Global Perspective, ed. Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner (NY: Palgrave, 2000), 85–124.
8. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard.
9. Henrik Örnebring and Michael Karlsson, Journalistic Autonomy: The Genealogy of a Concept (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2022).
10. Dina Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents: Soviet and American Reporters on the Ideological Frontlines (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020); Sam Lebovic, A Righteous Smokescreen: Postwar America and the Politics of Cultural Globalization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022); and Diana Lemberg, Barriers Down: How American Power and Free-Flow Policies Shaped Global Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019).
11. Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents; Lebovic, A Righteous Smokescreen; Lemberg, Barriers Down; and Margaret Blanchard, Exporting the First Amendment: The Press-Government Crusade of 1945–1952 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1986).
12. In her book, Cold War Correspondents, Fainberg shows that the US government closely surveilled Soviet journalists whose headquarters were based in Washington. The US Justice Department reserved the right to examine the documents of the Russian news agency, TASS, at any time, and the FBI “routinely conducted inspections of TASS offices.” Fainberg, Cold War Correspondents, 32.
13. Lebovic, A Righteous Smokescreen; and Lemberg, Barriers Down.
14. Correspondence from H. D. S. Greenway to Michael Massing, November 12, 1980, HR#0010, Box 1, Folder Board Correspondence 1980, CPJR.
15. Many Voices, One World; Towards a New More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication Order, report by the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, (London, Paris, UNESCO: 1980), IV-34-5.
16. John Nerone, Violence against the Press: Policing the Public Sphere in US History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). See also Sam Lebovic, Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
17. Russell Crandall, The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977–1992 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 20–21.
18. Michael Massing to Cora Weiss, April 9, 1981, HR#0010, Box 19, Folder Central America Delegation, CPJR.
19. Massing to Cora Weiss.
20. Michael Massing to Christopher Dodd, July 11, 1981, HR#0010, Box 19, Folder Central America Delegation, CPJR.
21. Michael Massing to Christopher Dodd.
22. Christopher Dodd to Michael Massing, July 20, 1981, HR#0010, Box 19, Folder Central America Delegation, CPJR.
23. Report of Laurie Nadel’s trip to Washington, DC, August 3–4, 1981, HR#0010, Box 1, Folder 33, CPJR.
24. Massing, Interview with the author, September 12, 2017.
25. Peggy Seeger to David Dillman, January 13, 1982, HR#0010, Box 19, Folder Central America Delegation, CPJR.
26. Massing, Interview with the author, March 17, 2020.
27. Weinstein was a prolific writer, and many of his nonfiction books took a dark view of the Soviet Union. See, for instance, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (London: Penguin Books, 1978) and The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America (New York: Random House, 1978).
28. Massing, Interview with the author, March 17, 2020.
29. Massing, Interview with the author.
30. Massing, Interview with the author, September 12, 2017.
31. Anne Nelson, interview with the author, January 7, 2022.
32. Jonathan Z. Larsen, interview with the author, March 14, 2022.
33. Gloria Emerson, Winners and Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses, and Ruins from the Vietnam War (New York: Norton & Company, 2014 [1976]), 7.
34. Nelson, Interview with the author.
35. Massing, Interview with the author, March 17, 2020.
36. Jonathan Z. Larsen, The Perfect Assignment: A Memoir of Journalism in the Golden Age (Cambridge, MA: Tidepool Press, 2020).
37. Quoted in “J. Randolph Ryan, 61, Boston Globe Writer on Latin America,” Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2003.
38. Massing, Interview with the author, March 17, 2020.
39. Massing, Interview with the author, September 12, 2017.
40. Michael Massing, “Central America: A Tale of Three Countries,” Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1982, 47.
41. CBS Evening News, March 19, 1982, Vanderbilt Television News Archive, Record #282710.
42. CBS Evening News.
43. ABC Evening News, March 19, 1982, Vanderbilt Television News Archive, Record #77164.
44. Massing, “Central America,” 47.
45. George Watson, “FOI in the Banana Belt,” RTDNA Communicator, May 1982, 9.
46. Statement of Journalists’ Mission to Central America, April 1, 1982, HR#0010, Box 19, Folder Central America Delegation, CPJR.
47. Örnebring and Karlsson, Journalistic Autonomy, 7.
48. Örnebring and Karlsson.
49. Statement of Journalists’ Mission to Central America.
50. Massing, March 17, 2020; and Larsen, March 14, 2022.
51. Draft Statements of Journalists’ Mission to Central America, Box 15, Folder 7, Allen Weinstein Papers, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University. Hereafter referred to as AWP.
52. Massing, March 17, 2020; and Larsen, March 14, 2022.
53. Allen Weinstein, “The State of Press Freedom in Sandinist Nicaragua,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1982.
54. Allen Weinstein, “Real Problems with this Procedure,” Box 15, Folder 8, AWP.
55. See, for example, ABC Evening News, March 18, 1982, Vanderbilt Television News Archive, Record #77144; and Raymond Bonner, “Story of Slain Newsmen Pieced Together,” New York Times, March 20, 1982.
56. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard, 144.
57. Watson, “FOI in the Banana Belt,” 8.
58. Massing, “Central America,” 51.
59. Nelson, Interview with the author, January 7, 2022.
60. Nelson.
61. Massing, “Central America.”
62. Nelson.
63. Nelson.
64. George Watson, “FOI in the Banana Belt,” RTDNA Communicator, May 1982, 9.
65. Gloria Emerson, List of Prisoners in El Salvador, Box 19, Folder Central America Delegation, CPJR.
66. Allen Weinstein, “Journal—2 Articles or One,” Box 15, Folder 7, AWP.
67. Massing, “Central America,” 47.
68. Massing.
69. Statement of Journalists’ Mission to Central America, CPJR.
70. Michael Massing, “Courting Guatemala,” New York Times, May 5, 1982.
71. Massing, “Courting Guatemala.”
72. US Congress, Senate, S.J. Res. 144, 97th Congress, 2nd Session, Introduced in the Senate on February 10, 1982.
73. US Policy in the Western Hemisphere: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, 97th Congress, second session on S. J. Res. 144, April 1, 1982.
74. Larsen, interview with the author, January 7, 2022.
75. Statement of Journalist’s Mission to Central America, CPJR.
76. Massing, Interview with the author, March 17, 2020.
77. Weinstein, “The State of Press Freedom in Sandinist Nicaragua.”
78. Weinstein, “Real Problems with this Procedure.”
79. Weinstein.
80. Michael Massing, “Curbs on the Press in Nicaragua,”Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1982.
81. Massing, “Curbs on the Press in Nicaragua.”
82. Massing.
83. “No Press Freedom in Nicaragua,” US Congressional Record 128, no. 44, April 21, 1982.
84. Massing, Interview with the author, September 12, 2017.
85. Massing.
86. This number is based on a search for the term “Committee to Protect Journalists” in the US Congressional Documents database located at HeinOnline.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Lindsay Palmer
Lindsay Palmer is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She studies global media from both historical and ethnographic perspectives. Palmer’s first book is called Becoming the Story: War Correspondents since 9/11 (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Her second book is titled The Fixers: Local News Workers and the Underground Labor of International Reporting (Oxford University Press, 2019).