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The uneven quality of coverage has improved considerably with the influx of old pros such as Peter Arnett of Cable News Network, a Pulitzer prizewinner for Viet Nam coverage when he was with the Associated Press. The correspondents are a little like political reporters in the U.S., often less interested in ideology and its consequences than in the sheer struggle for power. The Marxist orientation of the guerrillas has been better noted than it was in coverage of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, which was widely portrayed as pluralistic. But reporters have generally failed to distinguish among the five loosely connected rebel groups, which have widely differing philosophies. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal did characterize the factions, in succinct though belated articles, last week.
An even more crucial if common oversight is the fact that women and children, generally presumed to be civilians, can be active participants in guerrilla war. New York Times Correspondent Raymond Bonner underplayed that possibility, for example, in a much protested Jan. 27 report of a massacre by the army in and around the village of Mozote.
Bonner, 39, a boyish and moody former Nader's Raider, is at once probably the most energetic and the most controversial reporter on the scene. Some peers vigorously defend him; others say he is readier to believe guerrillas than the government. A fellow Times reporter says Bonner's reporting caused a rift with Deane Hinton, the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. One of Bonner's most debated stories, published in January, suggested that U.S. military advisers had attended a session at which Salvadoran army officers allegedly tortured two rebel prisoners, one of them a 13-year-old girl. Bonner's only source was a man living in Mexico who claimed to be a Salvadoran army deserter, whose key assertions about his family proved false, and who admitted his brother was a longtime guerrilla.
Bonner's editor, Rosenthal, is critical in turn of the Associated Press for relying heavily on Salvadoran nationals. On returning from an inspection tour he told A.P. executives: "It was really asking a hell of a lot for a stringer to write about a civil war in his own country." Rosenthal and other editors particularly disliked the work of Eduardo Vazquez Becker, recently removed as A.P.'s main local reporter in El Salvador. Becker is, however, credited with exceptional sources among the military and right-wing, largely through family connections and ideological sympathy. United Press International also drew complaints for relying on Salvadoran stringers. One major newspaper's foreign editor said he would not trust wire service coverage from El Salvador even long enough to pull out his reporters for a rest.