Bonner is perhaps best known as one of two journalists (the other was Alma Guillermoprieto of The Washington Post) who broke the story of the El Mozote massacre, in which some 900 villagers at El Mozote, El Salvador, were slaughtered by the Salvadoran army in December, 1981. A Times staff reporter at the time, Bonner was smuggled by FMLN rebels to visit the site approximately a month after the massacre took place. When the story broke simultaneously in the Post and Times on January 27, 1982, it was dismissed as propaganda by the Reagan administration, as it seriously undermined efforts by the US government to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran government, which the US was supporting with large amounts of military aid. The Times was strongly criticized by the US government for running the story, and the newspaper was pressured to pull Bonner from the Central American desk. He left the Times shortly thereafter but still contributes to the paper as a freelance correspondent.
In 1992, the details of the massacre as first reported by Bonner and Guillermoprieto were verified.
Bibliography
Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador (1984)
At the Hand of Man - Peril and Hope for Africa's Wildlife (1993) ISBN 0-671-71314-0
Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (2000)
RaymondBonner is an American investigative reporter for The New York Times.
Bonner is perhaps best known as one of two journalists (the other was Alma Guillermoprieto of The Washington Post) who broke the story of the El Mozote massacre, in which some 900 villagers at El Mozote, El Salvador, were slaughtered by the Salvadoran army in December, 1981.
When the story broke simultaneously in the Post and Times on January 27, 1982, it was dismissed as propaganda by the Reagan administration, as it seriously undermined efforts by the US government to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran government, which the US was supporting with large amounts of military aid.
Bonner's failure to report on the radical composition of the human rights groups he was using as a source for data on the number of civilians killed in El Salvador.
It is evident in reading the 51 stories by RaymondBonner that were published in The New York Times during the first half of 1982 that one of his main objectives was to discredit the government and the military forces that were standing in the way of a communist takeover of El Salvador.
Bonner's latest service to the cause of the guerrillas has been to portray the new conservative government in El Salvador as moving full steam ahead to undo the land reform that was adopted by the previous government under American guidance.
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