Television News Constructs the 1990 Nicaragua Election: A Study of U.S. and Canadian Coverage in Three Languages.

This paper examines television news coverage of the 1990 Nicaraguan election on six networks m the United States and Canada, representing public and corporate media in English, French, and Spanish. U.S. English-language news shows heavy reliance on U.S. government sources and low coverage of contra activity when compared to other networks Television interpretation of the economic crisis in Nicaragua indicates where the discursive boundaries m news speech lie. The Canadian networks tend neither to endorse nor contradict the hegemonic reading issued by the U.S. sources, while Univision offers the richest array of interpretive positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]