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Agustin Blazquez and Jaums Sutton.
ABIP. February 20, 2003.
Cuban Americans keep asking: "Why don't Americans understand the
plight of the Cubans? Why do they accept Fidel Castro?" Herein lie the
answers.
The media's goal is supposed to be to disseminate information. And we are
all supposed to be concerned about what is best for the country, so we can
accept a little slant to the information in that direction. But we tend to
loose sight of the fact that the real, working goal of the media is not any of
that. It's to make money.
Ok, perhaps that's a weakness of our capitalist system where the monetary
successes of individuals and groups take the lead. (I would quickly add that
the weaknesses of the alternative systems far outweigh this one.) And an
important characteristic of our system is that the media is self-policed in the
area of slanting of the information being disseminated, since content and
attitude are for the most part, left up to the individuals or the organization.
The current leanings seem clear to many, though the major public forum in which
to raise the issue, the media, is understandably reluctant to publicly admit to
a slant.
And once a slant is established, the tendency is for the slant to increase
because of survival instincts (to attract those with the same slant as both
sources and employees). Thus the employees tend to be like-minded. Most know,
but most don't say it out loud, that the media has been infiltrated by the left.
And, of course, if you are left-minded yourself, you won't notice a slant in
your direction - you will just find yourself liking and agreeing with what you
hear.
This leads directly to the major problem where things can get dangerous.
Beyond its accepted goal of dissemination of information, the media can also
become a tool to change public opinion when someone tries to affect an outcome,
or effect peoples' beliefs by way of choosing what information will be
disseminated. And it's easy to slide down that hill when the road already has a
slant.
Not to frighten, but this is such a fundamental process of communism that
you find it in every single communist government that has ever existed. Not a
single exception. You need tools like that when the advantages of your system
of government are good only for you, and the elite you have to have to surround
and protect yourself, but bad for everyone else. You certainly don't want
everybody to know about that, so you take over the main source of information
for everybody, and carefully plan every bit of information that will be
presented.
But it works quite well even in free societies. For example, most Americans
form their opinions about what is going on outside their immediate lives by
making use of information that comes their way about what is going on around the
world. They tend to seek out information about topics they have a particular
interest in. For other topics, the information tends to come to them seemingly
at random primarily from the media - TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.
Thus individuals' beliefs are significantly effected by information from the
media.
In a free society, however (or should I say "fortunately"), this
slant can't lean too far from the mainstream or the mainstream will turn its
backs and ratings will go down. Note that the money goal is not all bad.
Recently, after Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech providing details
about the goings-on in Iraq, the media did polls to gauge the citizens'
reaction. When a high percentage was found to support the Bush Administrations'
stance, the media realized they had to change their slant from challenging the
Administration's view to instead challenging its challengers, which you could
see on the Sunday morning talk shows of February 9, 2003. And by providing
previously un-disseminated information about Iraq.
Did you see Tom Brocaw on David Letterman on February 6, 2003, talking about
his trips to Iraq? Revealing serious details I'd never heard before that were
in support of the Bush Administration. And he didn't even have a book to
promote.
So, on to answer the question about Castro. The media likes him because he
is a novelty. He is unique in the world. He is working on (against) his 10th
U.S. president. But that's not enough. The fact that he has gotten away with
killing so many thousands of people increases his value to the media because it
increases his novelty to the danger level. Seeing Barbara Walters tooling
around in a jeep with someone who has caused the deaths of some 115,000 people
is too exciting to resist. Ratings go up, so advertising rates go up.
They have to be careful how much truth about him they portray, because too
much bad stuff is a turn off for many viewers. It's a delicate balance. And
anyway, too much truth about him and he will cut off their source of information
and interviews. He has done that many times, but the media won't tell you about
that.
In my first article of 2003, Castro Gets the Coverage, Not His Victims, I
mentioned the latest installment in a series of superficial and misleading
reports from NBC's "good girl" Andrea Mitchell. (I say "good
girl" because she was awarded with an interview for portraying Castro the
way he likes to be portrayed.) I saw a segment of it on December 31, 2002, on
the Today Show,
In my article I talked about Andrea featuring, an affable Castro, looking
all "Presidential" in a suit, talking and joking around. "The
usual, always-beneficial-to-Castro 'reports' about the declared (never
substantiated) wonders of Castroland. Showing the usual, tired (though freshly
painted!) sites, lots of smiling, adoring faces the tyrant wants for Andrea and
the American people to see and NBC graciously provides the opportunity."
This kind of report, while convenient for the media and for Castro, causes
revulsion for a Cuban American - because it makes light of the fact that he
caused the destruction of our country, families and lives. That's all. Take a
look at the comment of Elena M. Borkland, a very talented visual artist and
editor, who wrote to me after MSNBC showed an entire one-hour on Saturday
January 24, 2003. Elena said, "My stomach turned as I watched the first
few minutes of Andrea Mitchell's interview--my husband had to turn it off before
I became--literally--physically ill."
Then she wrote to MSNBC, "After watching less than one minute of Andrea
Mitchell's groveling in front of the western hemisphere's cruelest despot, I was
forced to turn the TV off--the effect was more emetic than two cups of Syrup of
Ipecac.
"Have you no regard for Castro's thousands of victims? So-called
reporters such as Ms. Mitchell continue to help him try to deceive us with his
illusions of social justice, free education and health care, but the world is
less and less deceived as it sees the actual Cuban reality: Dr. Castro lives
like an emperor on the island while his captive subjects are forced to live in
the House of Pain. Castro's monstrous hypocrisy should be exposed by honest
journalists rather than being catered to."
I am sure that Mrs. Borkland's comments will be discounted as usual by the
pro-Castro bias so generalized in the U.S. media. It is "politically
correct" to offend Cuban Americans.
Mrs. Borkland was one of the 14,048 children who were sent, by their
parents, unaccompanied, to the U.S. between 1960 and 1962 to avoid being sent to
the Soviet Union for indoctrination or being indoctrinated in the schools in
Cuba, all of which had been taken over by the communist government. Her parents
sent Elena at 13 to the U.S. in 1961 with her two sisters, Beatriz, 15 and
Silvia, 11. This exodus is known as Operation Peter Pan and was the largest
exodus of unaccompanied children in the Western Hemisphere. And is still
largely unknown to the American public thanks to the U.S. media.
The parents in Cuba made that unimaginable sacrifice so that their children
would be free in America. In the book Diario de una Traicion: Cuba 1961 [Diary
of a Betrayal: Cuba 1961] by Leovigildo Ruiz, 1972, on page 27 says. "On
January 21, 1961, Fidel Castro announced in Cuba that 1000 pre-teen children of
humble workers had been sent by airplanes to the Soviet Union to finish their
elementary and high school."
So, Cuban parents did the right thing by sending their children abroad
before losing their right to be parents. And Elena M. Borkland is one of the
children raised and educated in the U.S. and appreciates what freedom is all
about and understands that what Andrea Mitchell was reporting was inaccurate and
a disservice to the American people and to Castro's millions of victims on both
sides of the Florida Straits.
In the recently released book Embracing America: A Cuban Exile Comes Of Age
by Margaret L. Paris on sale at Barnes & Noble, is the story of Elena M.
Borkland. Elena's mother, Dr. Olga C. De la Maza was a poet who died in 2002.
Before her death, Elena edited and translated her poems in a bilingual book
titled Todo el mar Para mis Sueños/All the Sea for my Dreams which was
published in 2001.
I doubt we will hear much about these books, because as usual, the U.S.
media and academia ignore anything revealing about the Castro regime because it
doesn't fit comfortably with their slant. They are very careful not to offend
the tyrant of Cuba, but have no misgivings about offending his victims.
The American people have to wake up to this reality of the mainstream media
in America. Its main goals are profit and the imposition of their political
left-leaning agenda that contradicts what the Founding Fathers dreamed and
sacrificed for America. It is an alarming reality. That's is why we have to
find alternative sources of news: the mainstream media cannot be relied upon
for balanced reporting.
© 2003 ABIP
Agustin Blazquez, Producer/director of the documentaries
COVERING CUBA, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation & COVERING CUBA
3: Elian (available in VHS & DVD)
Author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING and
translator with Jaums Sutton of the book by Luis Grave de Peralta Morell THE
MAFIA OF HAVANA: The Cuban Cosa Nostra
For preview and information on the documentary and books, click
here. | 
