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Abstract
Who decides how to frame todays version of reality? When presenting a news story, objective mass media journalists focus on perspectives that, though not necessarily untrue, are limited in scope. These frames saliently assert viewpoints while subliminalizing critical content or dissent. This research focuses on the print medias framing of the annual School of the Americas (SOA) protest. Critics accuse the SOA (or Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) of instructing courses on torture techniques to Latin American mercenaries. Upon graduation, these skills are used to intimidate (sometimes fatally) democratically elected government officials, religious leaders, labor organizers, activists and civilians. A contextual analysis was conducted on national print coverage of the event and protest literature available at the 2006 vigil. This research will reveal the frequency of SOA-related coverage, how the events of the vigil were framed, and what issues were most often presented in the protest literature sample.