War Stories

Discovering El Salvador

For more than a year the story was all but ignored by much of the press. Then President Reagan decided to "draw the line" against Soviet and Cuban adventurism in El Salvador, and dispatched some 20 military instructors and $25 million in hardware to the tiny Central American nation. Almost overnight, scores of television, radio, newspaper, wire service and magazine reporters from all over the world descended on the capital city of San Salvador. Soon there were suggestions that El Salvador could turn into another Viet Nam. One reminder of Viet Nam was the press itself. Television crews chased after combat footage, and correspondents clutched their microphones in the jungle as puffs of smoke appeared in distant treetops.

Compared with Viet Nam or even Nicaragua, the fighting was light. Even so, competition among the networks was as ferocious as a TV ratings war, and some correspondents attributed it to just that. With Walter Cronkite's retirement from the anchor position at CBS Evening News, the scramble for viewers has been more intense than usual. Admits ABC World News Tonight Executive Producer Jeff Gralnick: "Without Cronkite on the scene, people are sampling."

Although combat action was in short supply, the random, almost casual violence all around them disturbed the journalists. Says ABC's Barrie Dunsmore: "You can be shot in the hotel coffee shop as easily as in the bush." In the past two weeks, a CBS crew was robbed by guerrillas armed with automatic weapons; an ABC reporter had a gun pointed at his head in downtown San Salvador by a man who then simply drove away; and NBC Cameraman Hermes Munoz was held up by masked men as he left San Vicente. When Munoz protested that he was a newsman, one of the guerrillas muttered, "Newsmen will be the first to die." Indeed, at least five foreign journalists have been among the more than 15,000 killed over the past 15 months; three others are missing.

Dismayed by the intensive coverage it had created, the Administration two weeks ago tried to downplay the story, which was "running about five times as big as it really is," according to a State Department official. Last week, White House Spokesman James Brady said that remark did not reflect the President's thinking. With the Administration unable to decide how big a story El Salvador was, the press was exercising its own news judgment. Says one network hand in El Salvador: "We've been told to do a piece on the effects of the war on the economy, which means the story is winding down." ∎