BIASED COVERAGE OF THE ARIAS PEACE PLAN BY AMERICA'S PRESS On August 7, 1987, five Central

	   BIASED COVERAGE OF THE ARIAS	PEACE PLAN BY AMERICA'S PRESS

	  On August 7, 1987, five Central American nations -- Costa Rica,
     El	Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua --	signed a regional
     peace proposal that was authored by Costa Rican president,	Oscar
     Arias. The	proposal, known	as the Arias Plan, set specific	guidelines
     and target	dates for each nation to comply	with in	order to stabilize
     Central America and bring peace to	the region.
	  Two separate studies monitoring U.S. press coverage of the Arias
     peace plan	revealed a startling bias in how America's leading
     newspapers	covered	the region following August 7th.  A national media
     watchdog group, the New York-based	Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
     (FAIR), concluded that the	peace accord set off a U.S. media reaction
     that "showed once again the extent	to which White House assumptions
     are shared	by the national	press corps" and how "Reagan's obsession
     with Nicaragua has	turned into a media obsession."	 FAIR's 90-day
     analysis of THE NEW YORK TIMES found that the TIMES devoted three
     times as many column inches of news space to Nicaragua than it did	to
     Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador combined.
	  The other study, by the Media	Alliance, a San	Francisco-based
     nonprofit organization of media professionals, monitored stories about
     the peace plan that appeared in seven major dailies -- THE	N.Y. TIMES,
     L.A. TIMES, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, SAN	JOSE MERCURY NEWS, S.F.
     CHRONICLE,	S.F.EXAMINER, and the OAKLAND TRIBUNE. The conclusion was
     the same -- most newspapers followed the Reagan administration's
     direction as to what deserved coverage in Central America.	Altogether,
     the cmmittee members read,	sorted,	and analyzed a total of	406
     individual	articles and editorials	and found:
	  1) More than 80% of the articles published during the	first six
     weeks after the signing of	the plan focused entirely or almost
     entirely on Nicaragua -- the Reagan administration's demands on
     Nicaragua's Sandinista government, the prospects for renewed contra
     aid, or the extent	to which Nicaragua was abiding by the Arias plan;
	  2) While the seven newspapers	published numerous articles
     critical of the Sandinistas and their efforts to comply with the plan,
     serious human rights problems and violations of the plan by the
     governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala went largely
     unreported;
	  3) Sources quoted for	comments and analysis in the seven papers
     were almost always	either administration officials, contra	leaders, or
     representatives of	other conservative organizations that advocate
     military solutions	to the region's political conflicts;
	  4) Editors at	the seven papers, when contacted by the	SAN
     FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN for	its article, generally acknowledged that
     the national press	has allowed the	Reagan administration to set the
     tone for Central American news coverage.
	  One result of	the biased coverage of Central America last year
     was that Americans	were outraged when the Sandinistas shut	down the
     CIA-subsidized LA PRENSA (now reopened) while they	were not even aware
     that 70 journalists had been murdered by death squads in El Salvador
     and Guatemala during the past decade. And that death squad	activities
     have increased in those two nations since August 7th.
	  SOURCES: SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN, 1/6/88, "On Central America,
     U.S. Dailies Parrot Reagan	Line," by Jeff Gillenkirk, pp 7, 9-11, 33;
     EXTRA, Aug/Sept 1987, "Media Put Reagan Spin on Arias Plan," by Jeff
     Cohen and Martin A. Lee, pp 1, 5-6.