Nicaragua and media bias in the 1980s

Dean Esmay shows contrition for his Leftist past and his support for Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. Now he wants ABC news anchor Peter Jennings to come clean also.

I was at Rutgers during the time of Sandinista Nicaragua and debated ferociously with the on-campus leftists. In 1990, after Ortega was kicked out of power in the first free election, I gloated mercilessly. It was sweet.

My favorite memory of that time was an article in the New York Times about a pollster who traveled around Nicaragua asking people if they planned to vote for the Sandinista party or the coalition UNO party. Here’s the twist: the pollster used either a plain yellow pencil, a red-and-black pencil representing the Communists, or a blue-and-white pencil which were the colors of the UNO party. When the red-and-black pencil was used, Nicaraguans showed overwhelming support for the Sandinista party. The yellow pencil revealed a smaller majority for Ortega’s group. However, when the UNO pencil was used, suddenly there was wide support for the opposition party…and they won.