The truth behind US' Operation Just Cause in Panama

[Judi Lynn]

3. Reporting on Panamanian Truth Commission, Al Jazeera Cites FAIR’s 1990 Work

Reporting on Panamanian Truth Commission, Al Jazeera Cites FAIR’s 1990 Work

Jan 31 2016

Writing in Al Jazeera (1/31/16) about Panama’s establishment of a truth commission to investigate the consequences of the 1989-90 US invasion of that country, Belén Fernández cites FAIR’s 1990 critique of invasion coverage (Extra!, 1-2/90):

As media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) noted at the time, Just Cause saw the impoverished Panama City neighborhood of El Chorillo pulverized to the point of being referred to by ambulance drivers as “Little Hiroshima.” In other words, no surgical strikes here….

Consider a passage from FAIR’s critique of the US media’s leap onto the Just Cause bandwagon—from which vantage point said media determined that Panamanians were, in fact, totally in favour of the death and destruction being rained upon their country:

Few [American] TV reporters seemed to notice that the jubilant Panamanians parading before their cameras day after day to endorse the invasion spoke near-perfect English and were overwhelmingly light-skinned and well-dressed.

More:
http://fair.org/home/reporting-on-panamanian-truth-commission-al-jazeera-cites-fairs-1990-work/