Press: Missing a Story in El Salvador

The high turnout startled everyone—including journalists

To the list of recent events that have surprised reporters—the fall of the Shah in Iran, the upsurge of feeling against Anwar Sadat in Egypt, the suppression in Poland by Polish rather than Soviet troops—the world press can add last week's elections in El Salvador.

Viewers of U.S. network television news and readers of leading newspapers were left unprepared for the most hopeful news from Central America in a long time: the record turnout of 1.4 million voters, more than double what U.S. officials had predicted. In the aftermath,...