Cryan, US mainstream reporting on Colombia

From USA Today to the Washington Times, dozens of US newspapers published reports of a May 22 bombing that killed seven people in a dance hall in Apartado, a municipality in the northwestern province of Antioquia.

But not a single one of these papers reported on a massacre that killed 11 peasants two days earlier in Tame, a municipality in the northeastern province of Arauca. The only major English-language news of the carnage amounted to 191 words May 25 from London-based Reuters.

The discrepancy in coverage is not because one attack was more brutal than the other. If anything, the Tame massacre warranted the most attention because more people were killed and the bodies showed signs of torture.

The inconsistency likely stems, rather, from who did the killing and where. The military attributed the Apartado bombing to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest guerrilla group.

But the Tame massacre, by all accounts, was carried out by the Colombian government's paramilitary allies. And it occurred just 30 miles from an oil pipeline used by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. The United States is sending $100 million a year in military aid earmarked for protecting that pipeline. Last year, Washington stationed 70 US Special Forces troops in the province to train Colombian soldiers for the effort.

Instead of exploring whether the pipeline protection had anything to do with the massacre, the US reporting from Colombia during those days focused on the Apartado bombing and other explosions that could be blamed on the guerrillas. Many reports followed the US State Department's script by describing the blasts as a FARC campaign leading up to the group's 40th anniversary May 27. And they ignored a May 25 press conference by Colombian Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe, who disavowed such descriptions: "We don't have any indications this is the FARC's plan."

Most negligent was Dow Jones Newswire, whose May 26 report went as far as to excise the paramilitaries entirely from the bloody landscape: "Colombia's civil war pits government forces against the FARC, killing an estimated 3,500 people every year." Never mind, in other words, that paramilitaries carry out two-thirds of those killings.

Colombian news outlets also showed more interest in the Apartado bombing than the Tame massacre, but most at least mentioned the latter. The MedellÌn daily El Colombiano did the best job. A May 25 report in that newspaper noted that the massacre led to a mass civilian displacement. But like every other major outlet, El Colombiano seemed to ignore a report from a human rights group that six other peasants near Tame disappeared the day of the massacre, raising the casualties to as many as 17.

And from the looks of the coverage back in the United States, nothing happened in Tame at all. Reporters and editors ought to heed a May 24 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights statement on the attacks: "Massacres are always unacceptable and unjustified, regardless of where they are committed and who is responsible for them."

© 2004 Colombia Week, republished by permission. Phillip Cryan returned to the United States in November after 18 months of human rights work in Colombia. Next year Common Courage Press will publish a book he's writing about US policy in the country. Find previous installments of "Media," his biweekly Colombia Week column, at http://www.colombiaweek.org/series.html#media.

Also in this section:
Leis, Justice on trial
What they're saying about Iraq
Gore, Disgrace and humiliation
Bush, Speech to the Air Force Academy graduating class
Gutman, The timid Honduran press
Cryan, Mainstream reporting about Colombia
Carpio, The Latin America and Caribbean - European Union summit
Bond, Brown's broken promise
Durán, Split in the Panamanian left
Jackson, No blank check for the Electoral Tribunal

opinion

All massacres are not alike