“Monitoring intelligence” is journalese for “aware of rumors”

The tactics from No 10 echo those of Trump in the US, who has been known to try to exclude journalists from reporting on his activities, and represents an escalation of Johnson’s tensions with the media, which have been increasing in recent weeks.

The answer had been articulated by Richard Nixon years earlier. As was borne out by Nixon’s direct experience during Watergate, few things are more dangerous to conservative priorities than good journalism. Therefore, as a top Nixon aide later recalled, Nixon believed that it was necessary to “fight the press through … the nutcutters as (the president) called them, forcing our own news. Make a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition.”

The Reaganites shared this perspective. News outlets were “the opposition” that had to be brutally, viciously attacked, and individual journalists were fair game as a way to discredit their employers. Bonner was therefore caught in the White House crosshairs.

The pushback began with congressional testimony by Enders. “There is no evidence to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians,” he told a House subcommittee.

What about the number of victims? Bonner’s article had mentioned a list of 733 compiled by villagers, as well as a tally of 926 from a human rights organization. Elliott Abrams, who’d just taken office as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, informed the Senate that “the numbers, first of all, were not credible. … Our information was that there were only 300 people in the canton.” This was clear, conscious deceit on the part of Abrams. Both the Times and Post articles had mentioned that the massacre had taken place in several locations.

Then came the assault from the administration’s outside allies. On February 10, the Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy editorial headlined “The Media’s War.” Americans were “badly confused” about the situation in El Salvador thanks to the U.S. press. El Mozote was not a massacre, the Journal wrote, but a “massacre.” On the one hand, the number of dead had obviously been exaggerated and on the other, maybe the killing had been carried out by rebels dressed in government uniforms. Bonner was “credulous,” “a reporter out on a limb,” and, like reporters in Vietnam, a sucker for “communist sources.” One of the editorial’s authors appeared on PBS to proclaim that “obviously Ray Bonner has a political orientation.”

Accuracy in Media, the conservative media criticism organization, went further. Bonner, it declared, was waging “a propaganda war favoring the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador.” Meanwhile, a Times editor later said, the administration was engaging in a “really vicious” whisper campaign about him.

Stephens has written extensively in defense of speech that provokes "discomfort," especially against what he has characterized as the "siege of the perpetually enraged." Some on Twitter accused Stephens of wanting discomfort for others but not for himself.

The Herald and Brown "took on immense risk in reporting this story," Poynter Institute vice president Kelly McBride wrote on Twitter on Monday. "When journalists expose the wrong-doing of the rich/powerful, they invite a libel suit. Many rich/ powerful people would like to make it easier to win those cases, to discourage such reporting."