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SANDRA BRAMAN

The "Facts" of El Salvador According toObjective and New Journalism

IntroductionSince the 1960s, each side in the debate over new journalism h*as accused the otherof projecting a fictional view of reality. "Objective" journalists attack colleaguesthey call "new" journalists for distorting facts by refusing to adhere to normativeprocedure, while the latter accuse all who claim they are objective .of inevitablyskewing the facts because of biases'built into the very procedures objectivejournalists use.

Both ypes of narrative, however, clearly fall within a single fact/fiction matrixthat has dominated English-language discourse for the past 400 years. Where theyhave come to differ is in the methods used to discern what is fact, and in theclaimed relationship of fact to reality. Objec~iv e nd new journalism both dependon a notion of "fact" derived from Locke, for whom facts were boundary-definingtechniques for loci of consciousness. Since objective and'new' ournalism differ inthe nature of the reporting locus of consciousness, they use fact in different ways.

In this comparative analysis of two texts that report on the same subject,reportage of events in El Salvador during June of 1982 by TheNew Yo@ Ttvzesand

Sandra Braman is teaching mass communication classes in the School o Journa2-ism and Mass Communication, Univem'ty of Minnesota, where she is a doctoralcandidate. An earlier version of this paper waspresented a t the Annual Conven-tiofz of the Association for Education i ~ z ournalism and IC.1as.s Communication,Gaine.v~ille, lorida, Augz~st 3984.

The "facts" of El Salvador according to objective and new journalism,Journal of Communication Inquiry, 13(2), 1985, 75-96.


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Joan Didion, the characteristics of these different factual techniques may becomeclarified.

Lockean Loci of Consciousness and JournalismLocke's influence upon narrative form began with pubIication of his Essay

Concerning Human Understanding in 1690 and grew in strength during thefollowing centuries. His powerful theor ies described the relationship betweentext an d the reality to which text refers. That relationship, Locke decided, turnedon fact, a concept that has remained the basis of Western written narrative eversince (Locke, 1964; MacLean, 1936; Moore, 1903; Stephen, 1907; Tuveson, 1900;Watt, 1964).

Locke's phi losophy is rooted in a concept of consciousness that is not boundby the human organic unit, but is a way of perceiving and interacting with the

world across time. A center, or locus, of consciousness may reside in a singlehuman being, a group of human beings, or it may exist without cdny physic21manifestation at all. Biologically dispersed but perceptually unified corporationsor administrative bodies are examples of what are he re termed "public" loci ofconsciousness, while loci embodied in single human beings are termed"individual."

According to Locke, the locus of consciousness is an observer that receivesthe sensory information of experience in the form of simple ideas. T l ~ o u g hreflection, consciousness compares ideas, compounds simple ideas into complex,and moves from complex ideas to abstraction.

Facts are statements of simple ideas expressed in language. Onc e ex pr es ed,hc ts beco me aural, visual, or physical elements in a world shared with other loci ofconsciousness. Locke does not claim that facts are concrete, provable, and indispu-table; rather, they are the linguisticproducts of the interaction of loci of consc.ious-ness with their environments-loci that are concerned about their own continuedsurvival, well-being, and growth,

Thus, fact is in essence a technique (Eflul, 1964) used by loci of conscious-ness for boundary definition. Disputes arise when loci of consciousness withshared contexts disagree about a fact or hcts that mark their boundary. Consensualrealities are formed when such loci negotiate a definition of fact tenable to allinvolved parties.

Since som e types of loci of consciousness manifest themselves in characteris-tic narrative forms, a study of the interrelationships between genres may revealrelative characteristics of the reporting loci. Lennard Davis (1983) has argued thatthe lines distinguishing "fact" from "fiction" shift in response to legal pressures.Legal tools, such as fear of libel suits and treason charges, came to have political


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utility dur ing the seventeenth century. In that era, "fact" came to b e identifiedwithcorrectness of ideological position, while "false" meant an unacceptable stance.

Over time, such forces first differentiated newspapers and novels out of th efact/fiction matrix, and then hrther distinguished among types of newspapers.

Thus early story-model newspapers and contemporary new joumalism wereseparated out from the information-model newspapers of objective joumalism(Davis, 1983; Schudson, 1978). A public locus of consciousness dominates thelatter. Th e classic example of objective journalism, T'.eNew York Times, is linkedto the government and multinational corporations; it spreads across the glo be an dhas don e so for over a hu ndred years. Individual loci of consciousness, on t heother hand, report in the genre of new journalism.

Both types of journalism use fact as a technique to define the boundaries ofthe locus of consciousness from which each reports. For each, the facts that aredeemed critical are those held essential to its own interests; information from the

multitudinous data of daily experience thatis

not dee med pertinentto

the survival.

and well-being of the reporting locus of consciousness is ignored or rejected. Butthe ways in which the two forms of journalism wield fact are quite disparate.

The methods of objective journalism have been well explored (Carey, 1969;Fishman, 1980; Flippen, 1974; Gans, 1979; Roshco, 1975; Schudson, 1978; Tuch-man, 1972, 1978a). Explanations of new journalism are not as consensual. Theymay be grouped in to four perspectives:

(1) New journalism is the appropriate genre to describe a reality that won'thold its shape. The concept that reality itself has become discontinuous, frag-mented, chaotic, and fiction-like was particularlypopular during the 1960s, but hascontinued to have prop onents (Eason, 1977; HoIlowell, 1977; Krim, 1974; Mailerin Schumacher, 1983; Molitch & Lester, 1974; Zavarzadeh, 1976).

(2 ) The rise of new journalism is d ue to class-based motives. Class argumentsfor the appearance o f this new literary form range from Marxist (Hollowell, 1977;Podhoretz, 1974; Solotaroff, 1974; Wolfe, 1973), to simpler status-orientedapproaches (Arlen, 1974; Dorfman, 1974; Schudson, 1978; Tuchman, 1978b), to

disputes am ong literary classes (Schudson, 1978; Wolfe, 1973; Talese, 1974), to

economic struggles among writers (Gold, 1974). Kaul(1982) describes the forma- .tion of journalists into a new class that plays the charismatic religious role inAmerican society; from this point of view, new journalism would b e confessionalliterature.

(3) New journalism is a response to new mass communication technologies.Proponents of this view include those who see a battle between the printed wordand film and video media (Enzensberger, 1974; Krim, 1974; Newfield, 1974;Poirier, 1982; Pool, 1982; Podhoretz, 1974; Roth in ~ o l l o w e l l , 977; Zavarzadeh,


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1976), as well as those w ho see journalism itself as part of the technological crisis(Eason, 1977; Talese, 1974).

(4) New journalism is just a way of grouping together a lot of good writers

wh o happened to co me along at the sam e time (Hayes, 1974; Hellmann, 1981;Johnson, 1971; Kaul, 1982; Newfield, 1974; Weber, 1974).Each of these explanations places ne w journalism in the limited time fidme of

the second half of the twentieth century. Returning the narrative form to i t s largercontext, however, allows a comparison between new and objective journalism thatcontrasts the ways in which individual and public loci of consciousness use fact asa technique.

Procedures> methods for defining public occurrences, transform "mere hap-penings into publicly discussable events" (Tuchman, 1978a). Happeningsbeco me events wh en they are useful to a locus of consciousness; once communi-cated, such facts become objects (aural, visual, or tactile) in the environments ofothe r loci of consciousness. Procedures both define the cyclical routines throughwhich facts are gathered an d identified, and reveal the categories through whichthe reporting locus of consciousness perceives th e world.

Selection of sources of in ormation deem ed worthy of attention determineswhich of the myriad details of daily sensory input a re to b e considered facts. Alocus of consciousness will attend to those sources of consciousness that aredeterminative of the conditions of the locus's environment. Dependence upondifferent sources of information will yield disparate versions of facts fiom the samespatial and temporal environment.

Space bounds the environmental dimensions ofwhat is interpreted by a locusof consciousness as fact, determining the shape and size of the material reference.Spatial boundaries mark the limits of the cognizable consequences of any action.Generalized facts assume that this place is like that place, this situation like thatsituation, and thus are metaphoric in nature.

Time also bounds individual facts by their cognizable temporal projection.Facts that are a part of history describe faitsaccompli, whereas the events that newshcts describe are still subject to effective intervention.

Contextdescribes the shape of the environment in which facts are found. It isthe context that connects o ne fact to another . Facts are communicated only acrossshared contextual boundaries.

The Use of Fact by Public Loci of ConsciousnessThe twentieth century public locus of consciousness in general believes that

the notion of objectivity is valid. From this perspective, facts are "out there,"independent of the observing locus of consciousness. Schudson (1978) points out


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that this viewpoint def ines ethical responsibility as separating facts from values,where by "values" Schudson m eans preferences for how the world sl-iould be. ForFlippen, the newsman is a "neutral observer," whose "impact on the outcomes ofpolitical controversy, it assumes, is nonexistent" (1974, p. 25).

Facts for public loci of consciousness a re determined by procedures thatdepend up on organizational descriptions of reality-a fact is so because someone(bureaucratically reliable) has said it is so. These facts are sharply limned, catego-rizable, and easily processed. They are valid because they are based on thebureaucratic manifestations of dominant policy decisions (Fishman, 1980;Flippen, 1974; Tuchman, 1978a).

Fact is a powerful boundary-defin ing technique for public loci of conscious-ness, for its own narrative express ion, objective journalism, plays several key rolesin sustenance of those bureaucracies themselves. These procedures are at thesame time protective-Tuchman notes that newspapers "invoke" objectivity thew a y peasants use garlic to ward off evil spirits (Tuchman, 1972, p. 660)-andnutritive. The procedures of objectivity are believed to steer a newspaper clear oflibel while meeting its metabolic needs for consumption and digestion of setquantities of material regularly, continuously, and in a timely manner.

The sources of information for a public locus of consciousness are as aconsecluence almost exclusively bureaucratic. The result is a moral division oflabor: Reporters aren't allowed to know what their sources will no t o r d o not tellthem (Fishman, 1980; Flippen, 1974; Gans, 1979; Sigal, 1973; Tuchman, 1978a).

The space boundaries of facts as used by public loci of consciousness aredelineated by the rounds of bureaucracies and the geographic limits thusdefined-what is commonly described as the beat system. These new s sources

tend to view crpital cities as the center of he universe from which all action flows,and assume that bureaucratic mechanisms are the only possible sources of effec-tive action. As the bureaucratic network is geographically dispersed, particularphysic21 environments are not of high interest.

The time boundaries of fact as determined by the public locus of conscious-ness are also bureaucratically defined. Thus events are predictable and yield alimited, predete rmined set of outcomes; movement of an event from o ne phase toanother signals a news peg (Fishman, 1980; Flippen, 1974).

Reports from a public locus of consciousness claim to b e context-free. Theimplicit context, however, derives from the bureaucratic reification of prevailing

politicxl, economic, and social thought.


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The Use of Fact by Individual Loci of ConsciousnessIndividual loci of consciousness of this era also insist that the facts they report

ar e true. But for individual loci of consciousness, ethical responsibility is definedas explicit recognition of the reporter's role in the shaping of reported facts, bothas an actor in the reality being described, and as selector and framer of what is

being communicated.The procedures used by new journalists are idiosyncratic in detail fromperson to person, based o n a method described well by Sontag: "To understand is

to interpret. And to interpret is to restate th e phenomenon, in effect to find anequivalent for it" (1966, p. 7) . Procedures are used to record and interpret th e dailysensory experience of the writer. Events become newsworthy when they have animpact upon the reporting locus of consciousness (Hellmann, 1981 ; ensen, 1974;Nedeld, 1974; Watt, 1964; Wolfe, 1973).

New journalists work ou t of the human need to make sense ou t o f the rush ofexperience, and to describe a world to which as a writer h e or sh e can testify(Eason, 1977; Kaul, 1982; Zavdrzadeh, 1976). As a boundary-defining technique,fact for an individual locus of consciousness thus demands coherence and places ahigh value upon the specific. It is concerned about the survival of a singlepersonality. The very act of reporting becomes in and of itself sustenance for thepersonality. "We tell stories in order to live," says Joan Didion (1979, p. 11).

Facts may come from any direction, and source of in ormation, at any time,an d whatever o n e is doing. They ar e considered valid because of their ground inpersonal experience (Didion, 1979,1982; Dunn e in Schaefer, 1982; Murphy, 1974;Newfield, 1974; Talese, 1970a; Zavarzadeh, 1976).

The individual locus of consciousness reports facts in the terms bywhich theycome-scene. Thus the immediate environment defines space boundarie s. That

environment, however, includes memory an d imagination.The boundaries of fact in time for new journalists have the same characteris-

tics. While the present is ofprimary concern, memory and imagination apply heretoo.

Everything is context for the individual locus of consciousness; context is soimportant it may be said to b e the point altogether. The news lies not in the facts,but in how they relate to each other. As Hellmann says, "Ultimately, the news is ofth e efficacy and necessity of patterning itself' (1981, p. 140).

Reporting by Public and Individual Loci of Consciousnessabout E l Salvador

The appearance of Joan Didion's (1982) report on h er visit to El Salvadorduring Jun e of 1982 offered an unusual opportunity for a study that would


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compare reports by both individual and pu blic loci of consciousness about th esame events. While Didion may be classified as a new journalist, the archetypalobjective newspaper, The New York Times, lso covered El Salvador dur ing thesame period via Raymond Bonner.

El Salvador has come to play an increasingly significant role on the newsagenda over the past few years, highlighting longstanding questions about thepaucity and inappropriateness of U.S. media coverage of that country (Berle, 1962;Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1962; Chaplin, 1955; Cline, 1982;Geyer, 1969; Hamilton, 1977; Hester, 1974; Markham, 1961; Maslow&Arana, 1981;Massing, 1983; Nichols, 1981; Olaciregui, 1981; O'Mara, 1975; Shipman, 1983;Young, 1983). In this era, El Salvador's complaints join t he chorus of demand s for aNew World Information Order (Masmoudi, 1981).

While throughout history libel law has enabled individuals to challenge thefacticity of narrative discourse of which they are the subject, today entire societiesand cultures similarly dispute the facticity of narrative discourse o fwhich they arethe subject, and seek legal redress. As part of that process, UNESCO's MacBrideCommission (1981) listed several types of typical distortions of fact in the newsmedia, including silence on issues not considered important by the reportingconsciousness while emphasizing events deemed unimportant to the subject,preconditioning facts by the way in which they are framed, and creating anillusionary context. These characteristic distortions could be relabelled in theterms of objective journalism as dependence upon bureaucratic news sources,administrative news beats, and reliance upon conceptual categories established byadministrative processes. That there is discomfort with the consequences of theapplication of these procedures in othe r cultures should not be surprising, for asGeyer has noted:

most breaking news in Latin America is of little real significance. This is because inthis area the forms-the elections, the drawing up of constitutions, family life, thewords used in political doctrine-are highly observed and cherished but often d onot mirrr he substantive life of the society. (1969, p. 50).

The period reported upo n by Didion and Bonner was within nine months ofthe decision by the U.S. government to "draw the line against communism" in ElSalvador, and followed by 2% years ofcivil war in that country. The results ofMarch,

1982, elections were still being widely disputed. There was international concernabout abuses of human rights by governmental forces and U.S. interest in unsolvedrriurders of four North American religious workers. Recent land reforms seemed tobe slowing despite continued widespread poverty and starvation.


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The Facts About E l Salvador as Reported by me New York Times

The unit of analysis for T b e N w York Timeswas the individual article. Duringthe period under study, 33 pieces about El Salvador appeared in the paper.Raymond Bonner, a reporter with only two years of experience, had begunstringing for The New York Times just a few mon ths earlier. His reports of health

and educational activities in guerrilla-held territory a nd details of massacres a ndtorture by the Salvadoran governmen t received a public rebuke by officials of th eU.S. government. To smooth the water, the newspaper's managing editor hadvisited El Salvador. Shortly after Jun e of 1982, Bonner was removed from th eSalvadoran beat altogether (Bonner, 1984).

During June , Bonner's byline was on 13 stories. There wer e nin e ne ws briefsdatelined El Salvador, two new s briefs from t he State Department in Washington,DC, four othe r writers received a single byline, an d the re were three editorial pagepieces an d two letters to the editor.

Procedu re. According to the text, Bonner collected facts by attending publicceremonies an d press conferences, reading new spapers an d magazines, listeningto the r adio ( or reading CIA-supplied transcripts of broadcasts, pe r a description ofthe process provided by Didion), an d then making pho ne calls or seeking per-sonal interviews with officials to get their responses to statements made by otherofficials through these publ ic fora. His news beat occasionally reached to guerrillaactivities once they had become officially acknowledged, and to the CatholicChurch. Nonofficial statements by participant observers, most often gove rnmentemployees, were solicited about 50% of the time.Information sources. Thre e types of source s of information were cited in TheNewYork Times stories. The Salvadoran governm ent an d t he U.S. government each

accounted for 40-50% of the cites, while o the r information sources, including theguerrillas and representatives of the Catholic Church, totalled only about 10%.(Most stories cited mo re than o n e source, for a total of 105 cites.)

Space. In datelines, the geographic source of news, San Salvador was cited mor ethan twice as often as runn er-u p Washington, DC. O the r cities mentioned at leastonc e we re San Marcos Lempa, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Ossining, NY. Within th etext, San Salvador was also prominent, though 14 othe r towns ar e nam ed at leastonce. With the exception of the frequently discussed guerrilla stronghold ofMorazan, few provinces were m entioned, a nd only rarely. El Playon, a body du mp ,is mentioned onc e, as is the Pan-American Highway an d "a guerrilla camp." FortBragg and Fort Benning, U . S . military bases wh er e Salvadoran sold iers are trained,were meritioned four times each in the text. Washington, DC, an d New Yorkappeared as often. There were single mentions of Hollywood an d of several cities


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with sizable Salvadoran immigrant populations. Honduras is mentioned fourtimes, Cuba twice, a nd Nicaragua, Argentina, Mexico, South Vietnam, the SovietUnion, and Spain on ce each.

Time. Every news article repor ted on events from "today" or "yesterday," but o the rkey time frames were note d. Th e March 28 elections were dominant as a newsboundary, and the Carter Administration was frequently mentioned as the pastfrom which t he present is distinct. Other time markers included the beginning ofthe war 2Y2 years earlier , the 1972 elections, Duarte's regime, January 1981 (whentwo American labor leaders were murde red in San Salvador), an d 1932 (whe n aright-wing coup destroyed a land reform program). References to the futureplaced it o n a sc hedu le leading from current events to an inevitable conclusion:The war would b e over in two years o r the e nd of this year, aid will co me next yearor next mon th, there will b e elections in 1984, etc.

Context. Nineteen of th e articles ment ioned mo re than o ne significant event orissue as the context of th e news story, for a total of 73 cites. Th e war was cited mostoften (17 times, 11 ofwh ich focused on tactical advice or other involvement by theU.S.). Most of the rest of the stories were also war-related. Land redistribution,abrogation of huma n rights, th e election, and military and economic aid t o ElSalvador from th e United States-all war- rela ted issues-were also me nt ioned atlast 10 times and together accou nted for over half of the cites. Half of theseemphasized U.S. involvement or interests. Other significant elements of thecontext included the state of th e economy and newspaper reporting itself.

Summary. The month's text read as a whole is disjointed. Two kinds of stories

appeared: Ray Bonner reported on the violence, and t he next day there was ananonymous story repeating a State Department statement that the killing haddeclined. Bonner reported that the land redistribution program was stymied, andalmost immediately the re was an anon ymous story quotin g Ambassador Hinton'sdenial of significant changes in that program. Bonner reported that the UnitedStates was heavily involved militarily in El Salvador, bo th in providing training t oSalvadoran troo ps an d through th e activities of military advisers stationed there,and t hose reports were followed u p immediately by anonymo us stories detailingguerrilla-inflicted casualties. Bonner repo rted o n growing anti-Americanism in ElSalvador, and that piece was followed by an anonymous story denying the illegalityof any American actions in that country.

Bonner's writing was p rodu ced by collecting and processing aural and writ-ten official statements from governmental bureaucracies on a beat with centers inth e Salvadoran and American capital cities. But t his procedure was applied by a


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relatively inexperienced and demonstrably independent mind that had been .trained both as an attorney (Bonner had worked for Ralph Nader) and in theMarine Corps (h e had also served in Vietnam). Thus, it turns out, the newspaper'scoverage of El Salvador during June of 1982 is not a pure example of objective

journalism. Instead, the work of an individual locus of consciousness, treading thelines ofacceptability, is mixed with the newspaper organization's accommodatingresponses.

Bonner's twist in the procedures of objective journalism was to describe t hestalls and dysfunctions in bureaucratic events as they progress through administra-tive The governments staged an election, and Bonner found evidenceof administrative fraud. The governments put o n ceremonies passing land titles topeasants; and Bonner discovered that the Land to the Tiller Law had been sus-pende d, an d five times as many peasants were being evicted from their land aswere receiving title. The governments claimed a return t o normalcy, and Bonnerreported details of body dumps , indicating the breakdown of a system of any kind.

The Facts of El Salvador as Reported by Joan DidionThe unit of analysis forJoan Didion's bo ok Salvadorwas the scene. Determi-

nation of scene boundaries was subjective, for there were n o clear delineationswithin a text-a sce ne is shorte r than a chapter, but may be longer than a singlegroup of paragraphs. Thirty-eight scenes were defined within Salvador.

Didion an d her husband, new journalist John Gregory Dunne, were in ElSalvador for two weeks in th e middle of June. They stayed at the same hotel inwhich most reporters were billeted and apparently had access to the same sources.Didion had the advantage of hindsight in he r writing, for sh e was able to collect

information until shortly before much of the bookwas first published as a series ofarticles in The New York Rez~iew f Books in October of 1982.Salvadorwas not Didion's first writing about Latin America. Her 1977 novel A

Book of Common Pr ayer is se t in a fictional Central American country, an d severalof her essays reflect an influence by Latin American events, writers, and travels tothe region (Didion, 1973a, 1979b).

Procedure. Didion's hct-gathe ring procedure was polymorphous. She attended toinformation from her own senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch. Her writtenand aural sources were extfemely diverse; sh e worked with an orientation thatinterpreted any communication a s information. She visited a numbe r of sources,

participated in informal and formal social gatherings, and absorbed facts duringdaily transactions' such as at the drugstore o r in u restaurant. Her "beat" includedofficial American an d Salvadoran sites, quasi-official sites such as the morgue, andunofficial sites like a num ber of neighborhoods in San Salvador, hotels, shopping


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centers, and restaurants. She also visited churches, a priests' home, a craft festival ina small town, the closed National University, th e Salvadoran Human Rights Com-mission, two body dumps , and went as close to the war front as sh e could get.

Didion made a point of debunk ing the procedures of objective journalism.

She described th e depe ndence of the U.S. embassy upon Salvadoran newspapersfor the weekly body count by which the State Department makes its policydecisions; th e provision to reporters of daily typed CIA traqslations of broadcastsby the allegedly clandestine rebel radio station, Radio Venceremos; and theconcoction of events by the Salvadoran Ministry of Defense for the benefit ofreporters, and their dutiful attendance. Didion writes about interviews with repre-sentatives of the governments' officials as i f they were performances by theofficials.

Information sources. Her broad range of information sources include written,aural, and physical. Among written sources, government documents p redominate

(with twice as many from th e U.S. as from the Salvadoran government). There are,however, almost as many cites to North American newspapers an d wire services asthere are to North American government sources. Othe r written sources include,in descending order of frequency, periodicals (more Latin American than North~mer ican) , ommercial texts (signs, bu mper stickers, advertising, contracts), doc-uments from Salvadoran and international human rights organizations, NorthAmerican history books, religious texts, and a written p ho ne message.

Didion's aural sources were als o dominated by official voices (23 Americangovernment sources vs. 7 Salvadoran). Several anonymous Salvadorans are citedonce each: a woman wh o runs a slum grocery store , "a well-off Salvadoran," "a

high-placed Salvadoran," a taxi driver, Salvadoran women at an embassy party, anartist, and a group of intellectuals. Representatives of Protestant churches are asevident as those from Catholic churches, surprisingly (three times apiece), whilecomrnercial sources, environmental noise, Radio Venceremos, and television playas large an aural ro le. About 10% of the hers Didion received from aural sourcescame from other reporters.

Physical sources of facts for Didion came most frequently &om the landscape,though cars and architecture also provided significant information. Other recur-ring physical sources of facts included garbage, roadblocks, household objects,and art. The bodies, disappearances, and photographs of bod ies actuallywitnessedwere left uncounted.

Didion monitored her aural and written information sources for the mostcommonly used words ("reorganization" and disaparecw-"to disappear"),


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Context. All news in El Salvador is news o ft he context, "the situation." In Didion'swords: "El Salvador is o n e of those places in the world where the re is just onesubject, the situation, the problems, its various hcets presented over and overagain, as on a stereopticon" (1982, p. 55). She cited the situation 12 times as the .

context within which t o understand political events such as coups, legal issuessuch as land reform, the ubiquitous violence, and contorted social forms. Even thewar itself is understood to be just a facet of the situation.

The paramount feature of the situation is disappearances. Didion mentionedmurder 31 times specifically in her text and makes innumerable links between thisphenomenon and other aspects of Salvadoran culture. The inducement of terror isdescribed five times. Over a dozen times sh e notes the country's lack of aconsensual reality and its mutating appearances-what sh e calls la noche obscura,or "heart of darkness," quoting Conrad. All facts, numbers, names, and events in ElSalvador seem to sink into Za rzocbe obscura, and it is within this context that eventssuch as the question of the disputed election or of the amount of moneywhich hasleft El Salvador must be understood. Within this situation, she comments severaltimes, there are personalities and plots rather than issues, and acquiescence is theoperating mode.

Summary. Didion's reportage w-as vely much bound u p with her own personalityand experience. Collecting faczs was a 24-hour job and occurred whether asituation was explicitly reportorial or not. She methodically described relation-ships between people and the social, political, and economic manifestations. ofthose relationships in arenas as diverse as the tourist indust~y, ntermarridge withinthe S~lvadora n ligarchy, and inter- and intragovernmental maneuvering.

For Didion, events in El Salvador were not either successful or unsuccessfulexpressions of a process, but occurred in a vacuum of process altogether.

Comparison Between the Two TextsThough Joan Didion and Raymond Bonner reported from the same small

geographic entity, El Salvador, during th e same limited time period, June of 1982,the realities to which their writings refer differ significantly. Bonner and TheNewYork Times rely almost exclusively upon facts that list numbers-of dead, ofdisappeared, of land titles, ofvotes-and names-the Iand for the Tillers program,the election, the president. Didion, on the other hand, specifically notes theuselessness of this kind of fact in El Salvador:

All numbers in El Salvador tended to materialize and vanish and rematerialize in adifferent form, as if numb ers denot ed only the "use" of numbers, an intention, awish, a recognition that som eone , somewhere , fix whatever remon, needed tohear the ineffable expressed as a number (1982, p. 61).


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Not only num bers but names are understood locally to have only a situationalmeaning, and the change of a name is meant to be accepted as a change in then a t u r e of the thing named (1982, p. 63).

Procedurally, TbeNew York Timesgenerally followed the methods identified

with the narrative form of a public locus of consciousness, objective journalism.,Bonner's routine beat took him through governmental bureaucracies, collectingofficial statements for translation for the mass audience of the paper. Almost allinformation sources cited are formal bureaucratic sources in the capital city. Incontrast, Didion embodied the methods of a reporter w ho writes from an individ-ual locus of consciousness. Her procedure can be summarized as an attempt to putherself into as many different situations a s possible; .her information sourcesincluded facts as received by any of her senses from any direction. Though s he diduse official information sources, they were not considered the most reliable-comments underbreath at the corner drugstore were considered as valuable asgovernmental pronouncements, if not more so.

The Ne w York Times' identification of news pegs derives Erom the passage ofbureaucratically recognized events through administrative procedures. Thus thepaper focused on such formal events as he March 28 elections and changes in landdistribution plans. Didion remarks, however, that phrases such as "land reform"and "the initialization of a democratic political process" are "so remote in situ-as torender them hallucinatory" (1982, p. 38); elsewhere she comments about theimportance to everyone of maintaining such symbolic forms for the sake of th eUnited States. For her, attention is focused on he nonexistence ofany solid realityand the ubiquitousness of death and terror. What The New York Times limned asthe important events in El Salvador, Didion describes as illusory symbols.

The paper's time field is restricted to a very limited present, referring onlyrarely to a past that goes back only as far as 1932. Didion, on the other hand, placespresent events within the context of a history that goes back to precolonial times.For Didion, present and past are filled with significant events; for the newspaper,not many important events were visible at all.

All events noted by TbeNew York Timesrelated to the interests of the UnitedStates and were described from that perspective. Didion's references to the UnitedStates were more personal, comparisons of her own known culture with that of anew environment. She placed El Salvador on an Ibero-American map that includedMexican and Panamanian power centers, Spanish influence, and a myriad of Latin

American countries with which El Salvador interacts. Ibero-America is placed on amap that includes Scandanavia, Europe, and Asia as well as he United States andth e Soviet Union. The New York Times placed El Salvador on a latin American


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map that tied th e country to Cuba and Nicaragua and had a Honduran border; ~1

Salvador was connected to the United States, in a world that contained the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union.

In this case study, Raymond Bonner of The New York Times displayed a dual

allegiance-he wrote from both his own individual locus of consciousnessand

from the public locus of consciousness of The New York Times. He did s o bydescribing the physical ho rrors and social and political chaos which were the factsof his own experience as well as th e procedural viewpoint of his employer and theSalvadoran .and th e U.S. governments . In the latter case, however, his reportingrevealed the failures of normative bureaucratic processes. With the subsequentr e m o v ~ l f Bonner from El Salvador, NYTreporting from that country has reportedthose bureaucratic ~ ro ce s se s s successes, adhering completely to the proceduresof objective journalism in reports of administrative events (Massing, 1.983).

Joan Didion, on th e other hand, wrote solely from her own individual locus ofconsciousness about a society which wouldn' t resolve into a sensible pattern. Thisrepon is strengthened by her own history as a new journalist-Didion's reputationw24 largely built o n her ability to clarify th e myriad ambiguities of th e 1960s (DufTy,1979; Hulbert, 1979; "Review," 1979). The keynote of her writing about El Salvadoris terror and the desperation that results from dissolution of tenable social forms.

Conclusion

The many accusarions flung back and forth between objective and newjournalists sidetrack and obstruct what shou ld b e a reflective and maturing devel-opment of narrative form. I t cannot b e said that creators of narrative within o nejournalistic genre are telling lies while those within the other are telling the truth.

Both are reporting the facts as understood-and needed-by their respective lociof consciousness.But the public locus is ultimately comprised of distinct human beings; any

indiviclual writer may choo se from which locus of consciousness to report. Thefact-determining methods of public and individual loci of consciousness, and theirnarrative expressions in objective and new journalism, yield quite different ver-sions of reality. In the texts compared here , the objective journalism of The NewYork Times and Raymond Bonner depicted a society that may be understood byand controlled through normative bureaucratic procedures that appear to bealigned with U.S. interests in El Salvador, even if sometimes those proceduresdon't work. The new journalism ofJo an Didion, on th e other hand , described ElSalvador as a perpetual frontier where there appears to b e n o appropriate role forU.S. nvolvement.


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The nature of the reporting locus of consciousness thus has ethical andpolitical dimensions that have rarely been examined and are only vaguelyunderstood. Further studies that examine loci of consciousness and their use ofhc t in specific situations as a boundary-defining technique are needed to deepe nour understanding of individual texts, forms of journalistic narrative, and theethical dimensions of those forms.


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