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Most of us in the U.S. media were wandering what had gotten into Bill Kristol, usually a thoughtful and sensible conservative commentator, to make him come up one day last week on TV with a blanket condemnation of the resolution by the Bush administration of the China incident — "they have won and we have lost" — which the next day, co-signed by Robert Kagan, appeared as an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. Their view was that "the United States has apologized" and that "the fact of our apology is all the most humiliating because the United States was in no way to blame for the incident," although it has been reported by several western correspondents in China that the Chinese people were angry because, even with its text linguistically manipulated by the regime, the U.S letter didn't rate as an apology in Mandarin.
And, anyway, the Kristol-Kagan piece didn't recognize that, no matter what they or the Chinese or anybody else might think of the letter, by accepting this diplomatically low-level piece of paper signed by the U.S. ambassador in Beijing and turning over to the U.S. the 24 American crew members, the Chinese regime had-for its own reasons, presumably the future of its trade with the U.S. — effectively divested itself of the major trump card it had in negotiations: the 24 hostages.
But Ana Baron, the Washington correspondent for Argentina's Clarin, the Buenos Aires daily that has by far the largest circulation of any newspaper in Latin America, avidly picked up Kristol's and Kagan's words as the centerpiece of her reporting. Billing them as "experts in China-U.S. relations," a characterization that even they must have found laughable, she hung her whole story about American public reaction on that single column, quoting abundantly from it as if it reflected widespread views.
Disregarding wire-service dispatches it had available from Associated Press, Agence France Presse and EFE, the Spanish agency, that offered a fair view of the issue, Clarin obligingly ran Baron's piece as its lead story under the headline that "Word from the United States Is That They Gave In to the Chinese in a Humiliating Manner."
Thus one more time the Bush-is-a-dunce-who-can-do-nothing-right agenda that is common to many of the major newspapers in Latin America, and particularly South America, had been served.
Chile's leading newspaper, Santiago's El Mercurio, did better, but not much.
Its main headline was "China Frees Spy Plane Crew" ("spy plane" was the style throughout the Latin American press; no mention was made that it was flying over international waters) but the lead story had the U.S letter as "signed by Secretary of State Colin Powell." It also had the U.S. plane "running into the Chinese interceptor," which was the standard version of the incident in the Latin American media. (Argentina's Clarin even elaborated on this: the collision with the Chinese fighter happened when the "U.S. plane abruptly dropped down, a maneuver for which it is not designed, forcing its pilot to penetrate Chinese air space and make an emergency landing.")
Even though it runs complete the letter to China's Foreign Minister signed by the U.S. ambassador in Beijing Joseph Prueher, Chile's El Mercurio said in its main story that it was signed by Secretary of State Powell.
It also said that "U.S. experts coincide in saying that, while the letter is in English, in the Chinese version terms were used that appeased the Beijing authorities. Thus both sides could present to their respective peoples what they wanted to hear." The fact is, of course, that the U.S. on purpose did not provide Beijing with a "Chinese version." The distorted version made public in China — which did not reach the point of including terms such as "daoquian" or "shenbiao quianyi," which would have been understood as "we apologize" — was provided by Beijing.
Ecuador's El Universo minced no words: "Double Apology from the United States — China's Government Claimed Victory Yesterday Maintaining That Its Struggle Managed to Deter the World's Major Power", said the main headline of the Guayaquil daily over a story datelined Beijing.
In Colombia, Bogota's El Espectador, as well as Lima's El Comercio in Peru and Caracas's El Universal in Venezuela, ran reasonably fair main stories (El Espectador was the only one to provide U.S. opinion polls figures that showed ample backing for President Bush). But, as most of the other papers in the region, their analyses of the incident and its fallout were sadly misreported.
Typical of the bunch is Oscar Raul Cardoso in Clarin, here translated in all its convoluted prose: "The idea of transforming China, the most populous country on earth, and with a gigantic economy, in the new devil of the international scene is a strong temptation [for the U.S.]. It helps justifying any new circuit in the everlasting arms race between great powers that they want to run. And the new Republican administration appears to want to run all of them and some more even."
These readings in the Latin American press of the U.S.-China incident do not change anything for the U.S. or for China. But the constant tergiversations and inventions — and just plain incompetent reporting — by the Latin American media about world events that directly or indirectly affect Latin Americans contributes to maintaining them vulnerable to whatever versions of those events their leaders want to peddle for their own benefit, and misled about the position their countries should take in world fora.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com