ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the Portuguese news coverage of the 1989 Panama invasion, the first unilateral US military intervention in the region in over 60 years, and, at the time, both the largest deployment of US troops since the Vietnam War and parachute drop since the Second world War.1 It followed a degradation in the relationship between the US and Panama, and was the result of mounting hostility as well as of a number of other concurrent events in the territory early that year. First, there was the May 1989 election. This led the US funded candidate Guillermo Endara to defeat the military contestant in a landslide, but the ballot was to be cancelled. A few months later, Noriega survived a military coup and was to assume the presidency. The night when Noriega assumed presidential powers, a US soldier was killed, prompting the US military intervention under shaky pretences. As Cramer adequately purports:
The aim of this chapter is to unveil how the Portuguese press depicted such a controversial intervention, against the backdrop of similar news treatment by the US media. Such a comparative analysis should be revealing concerning the impact of national influences in the news coverage of exceptional circumstances, such as a military intervention in a foreign country. First, however, a brief background is needed on how previous studies have depicted the US media treatment of codenamed Operation Just Cause.
