MediaWatch: January 1990
Table of Contents:
Yesterday's Wimp is Today's Imperialist
PANAMA CANARDS
After months of picking on President Bush for failing to remove Panamanian dictator and drug kingpin Manuel Noriega, most reporters restrained themselves from criticizing Bush's decision to send troops. But some just couldn't hold back from questioning his newly "reckless" and "imperialist" actions.
During a CBS News special report the night after Bush's action, White House correspondent Wyatt Andrews was concerned that "Now, having launched one of the largest American invasion forces since the days of the Vietnam War, Mr. Bush is erasing his old image of being timid, but the new question now, almost overnight, is whether this President is exhibiting signs of being reckless."
While a CBS News-commissioned poll later found 92 percent of Panamanians favored the action, Boston Globe reporter Philip Bennett invoked Yankee imperialism in a December 21 front-page story: "For decades, Panamanians needed only to gaze at the highest point in their capital, to the giant American flag on a promontory called Ancon Hill, to be reminded of the political and military power that ruled their country with the authority of an old-time empire. Today, Panamanians need only to look at their own street corner. An invasion by more than 20,000 U.S. troops appears to have signaled a return to old-time politics, reminiscent of other U.S. military interventions in Latin America."
A frustrated Lucia Newman of CNN noted on the December 31 PrimeNews that "critics accuse the Panamanians of lacking nationalism," and that "There are those who question whether the new U.S.-backed government has any intention of being more than a pawn of the United States." U.S. troops, Newman cautioned, must leave quickly or "today's liberators might be seen as tomorrow's occupiers."
Dan Rather stole the show in a January 4 special on Noriega's capture, asking reporter Doug Tunnell, "there are those who have said...that the sudden appointment of Dane Hinton as the new U.S. Ambassador in Panama is to in effect make him the government of Panama, with his vast experience, including experience in El Salvador. Is that the read on the ground in Panama City?"
Rounding out the Yankee-bashing with a dose of moral equivalence, the January 5 USA Today said "other nations have taken similar if not identical action. Example: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan."
