Manuel David Orrio, CPI
HAVANA, May - Our colleague in independent journalism, Raúl Rivero
Castañeda, said that "Cuba is a peculiar case where the press is
completely dead. There is no need to take repressive action against journalism
because it is out of business." This he said to Agence France Presse (AFP)
May 3, at the same time that he stated that "many so-called independent
journalists have as their objective to obtain a refugee visa, rather than inform
on what is happening in the island."
I don't know if Rivero or AFP said that for independent journalists to
receive economic help from abroad is a liability, "because that is the
primary accusation leveled against them by the government: receiving money from
abroad."
Finally Rivero said that "there is no revolutionary or counter
revolutionary journalism. There either is or there isn't journalism."
Definitely the strange case of the "dead" press has mysterious
aspects. To find a straw in your neighbor's eye has always been a way to hide
the beam in your own.
Rivero points out that political commitments weigh down the work of the
independent journalists. But he, who supposedly sets an example, undertook the
political commitment of signing on to the Varela project and, earlier, to
Concilio Cubano. It is he who puts himself at the same level as the official
journalists.
I would ask Rivero when will the double morality end, that allows some to
say one thing and do another.
Rivero tries to erase the real, objective, existence of something called
party journalism that in Cuba has its maximum example in the independentist
newspaper Patria.
Freedom of expression, simple freedom of expression, consecrates as an
unalienable right the existence of the same, as professional honesty demands
that we not dress as 'independents' when in reality we are 'party.'
Whether due to honest belief, vulgar opportunism, or Cuban complicity
between fear and double morality, excellent professionals work for media subject
to the control of the government. Pedro de la Hoz, Magda Resik, and Reinaldo
Taladrid are some examples.
I don't understand Rivero. I don't understand where the profit is for
independent Cuban journalism in denying water and salt to the merits of
competitors and adversaries, not to mention the efforts of the growing Catholic
press in the island, or independent colleagues with respect earned before a
Fidel Castro that quotes them, which means credibility, even unwillingly.
Even in the slave chains of censorship, it is possible to find the flight of
a good pen. It is true, close to 60 percent of independent journalists have left
the country. Due to misery, to opportunism, because not everyone can stand
social ostracism. But those present, many of them and others to come if they are
intelligent, if they don't close the doors, don't see reasons for pessimism.
If Rivero is tired, let him say so honestly. But let him not dump on the
backs of others his own tiredness.
A commentary about the topic of help to independent journalists and the "political
ballast" that they cause, says the article, as if imitating Fidel Castro's
round tables. Many in the world receive government help to promote values such
as freedom of expression, and not only from the United States.
What a paradox! The strange case of the "dead" press has these
aspects. Rivero, on his balcony in Peñalver Street, seems overcome by the
grey of pollution that he sees from there. His problem. My eyes get refreshed
with an image of José Martí next to my work table, where I can
read an idea of his: "Only oppression should fear the full exercise of
freedom." CubaNet's motto, by the way.
Versión original
en español
Related news
En Cuba la prensa
está muerta, afirma periodista disidente /Yupi Internet
Destacan un clima
"fúnebre'' en el día de la prensa / El Nuevo Herald
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