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Until last week the press pack had nonetheless maintained a wry esprit de corps. Some correspondents sported T shirts that said in Spanish DON'T SHOOT. Others groused that the capital's supply of Beaujolais had been drunk up by the legions of new arrivals. The newcomers complained that all the cars had been rented. Newspaper writers watched with envy and amusement as the U.S. TV networks started a bidding war for the services of an able woman interpreter.
Most of the journalists are from the U.S., but there are contingents from Britain, France, Germany, Norway, Japan and Brazil. Paul Ellman of the Times of London, looking at the "circus" at breakfast at the Camino Real, sighed for the days a year ago when "only one floor of the hotel was operating, for six or seven reporters." Back then, he said wistfully, "it was a great little war."
Now the press corps is so big and the country so small (4.9 million people in an area the size of Massachusetts) that reporters often end up at the same skirmishes, trying to match one another, quote for quote and photo for photo. Earlier this month a crew for Cable News Network struggled along a dirt road as bumpy as a creek bed toward a former school where the army had installed an antiguerrilla operation. With its armed soldiers and landing helicopters, the place provided the kind of "visuals" that television thrives on. Only one sight marred this otherwise perfect photo opportunity: Richard Wagner of CBS and his crew had got there first. Wagner, who had spent a week negotiating his way into the encampment, was exasperated. "This country's too damn small," he said. "You can't even get an exclusive."
Reporters cluster at the same scenes of combat because they all monitor the same radio reports and get the same tips. The congestion of journalists is irksome, but it has provided a check on facts and, more important, judgment. Many reporters are new to the country and do not know Spanish. Network crews, for example, stay only three to five weeks and might not return there. Some of the reporters in El Salvador have little experience reporting. When one young newspaperman tried to tell a tableful of war-wise colleagues that 5,000 refugees had been trapped and shelled by government forces—the essence of a rebel propaganda broadcast—the graybeards picked the story apart. Only a handful of bodies had been found. There was no trace of large numbers of others. If 5,000 people had been there, they had been made to disappear without leaving a shred of proof.
But even the oldest hands have trouble getting to the truth. Accounts by witnesses are often skewed by political bias or fear of reprisal, and prisoners who might offer useful testimony rarely survive long with the army. When a reporter asked one lieutenant colonel if he had anyone in custody, the officer replied: "We had a prisoner, but somehow he died."
The guerrillas are extremely press conscious. As Author David Halberstam observed last month in a Wall Street Journal column, "The conduct of a guerrilla war is largely political." By contrast, the army is not used to having to justify itself and has little sense of public relations. Says one TV producer: "The army does not try to distinguish between a liberal Italian newspaper and the National Broadcasting Company."