The Honecker affaire and the fall of the Berlin wall seen from american newspapers

Abstract

The present article examines the ‘Honecker affaire’ coverage by two American newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post. The episodes analyzed broke out with Erich Honecker’s entrance into the Chilean Embassy in Moscow in 1991, seeking refuge to avoid German justice. Although this case represented one of the most entangled incidents in contemporary Chilean foreign relations, bogging this country down in a major diplomatic crisis with the USSR —then the Russian Federation and then Russia— and Germany, American foreign policymakers and public opinion remained indifferent. Nevertheless, after detailed scrutiny —borrowing tools from content, discourse and framing analyses within the ideological framework of news production— two conflicting political positions are reflected, especially on the GDR ex-leader and consequently on the aftermath of the Cold War. We affirm that when events are not significant or even newsworthy, newspapers’ ‘feet on the ground’ correspondents allow their supporting ideologies to flow and run freely.