Memo to CBS

You've stepped in it again. I think you're wrong in claiming that your Elian interview is 'newsworthy.' Is that the best you can do to justify this travesty?

First, I think you respond to rank so I'm gonna pull some rank. Your patronizing remarks on your blog suggest contempt for bloggers and right now you think you're reading a blogger but I'm gonna tell you something - I am criticizing you as a peer - a full-blown mainstream media journalist as reported by the Miami Herald. I know what 'news' is so don't even think that from the inside you can fool me.

I'm telling you that your claim this staged "interview" is 'newsworthy' is total baloney. It's not news. It's theatre. That interview could have been conducted any day of the week, any time of the year, there was not one compelling time factor that made this interview utterly critical at this news date. It's mainly linked to your ability to get permission from the communist government of fidel castro at this very time, which just happened to correspond to a time when this dictator needed some kind of support. No other media agency from the U.S. got such an interview and it's not because they didn't think of it. It's because no one else made the kinds of COMPROMISES you made to get this particular interview.

What did you give 'em, CBS? castro always exacts something in return for his granted favors - like 'interviews' - and that's who called the shots on this event. I'll tell you what you gave them: You gave them your integrity.

But you insist the whole exchange was worth it because it was 'newsworthy.'

Newsworthy is such a loose term. Do you perhaps mean the ratings you got? Is that how you measure newsworthiness? What a long way you've come from the days of Edgar R. Murrow. In those days, the driving force was 'public interest' and by the way, you had better ratings in those days with Murrow-thought, too.

But let's get more detailed.

There is only one person who benefits from this 'newsworthiness' and that person's name is fidel castro. Not the public. Not the public interest. You're leveraging public curiosity to prop up this vicious dictator at a time of his choosing. He just happens to need some good PR right now, and if you need a clue about this, go back and read the news about how he tried to get publicity over 'help' for victims of Hurricane Katrina. The bastard's desperate to get some good PR. He's out on a serious campaign to take over the hemisphere and he needs to be viewed as something more these days than a mass murdering dictator whose peers include Mao and Pol Pot. Putting the American public to sleep with this sopoforic about 'happy Elian' fits his needs right now perfectly.

But here is where the real damage is done: You are not telling the truth. That alone strikes out your claim that this is news. You colluded with the castro regime to bring this dog and pony show to the American public and mislead them on the facts of this sad sorry staged case. You screwed the public. You concealed the fact that this interview was conducted under controlled conditions in a totalitarian regime. You even casually admitted you worked with fidel castro's own cameraman. Do you think he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart? He was doing it to make sure it was stage-managed to a vicious dictator's satisfaction, that's literally his job! And you went right along with it.

To get the 'interview.'

Let me tell you were further damage is:

That kid was speaking under incredible watchfulness and coercion of the world's worst secret-police organs, with his responses visible from the news product itself, and from the conditions under which it was created. He very well may not have been speaking his mind. But he's 11. Regardless of where he lives, he has to go along with whatever adults in his life want. Top that with a totalitarian regime and you've got a clear cut case of a young person who must bear the burden of not having spoken his mind to the public. How must that feel, in the private of his room? In a regime where everyone conceals his thoughts anyway, in something known as 'la mascara.'?

In the end, he is going to feel taken advantage of and used. Because none of these things he said were his real uncoerced, unpressured thoughts. What do you think the consequences would be to him if he didn't answer his question in precisely the way castro wanted? Who do you think benefited most from fooling the American public that this atrocious act of sending him back to a totalitarian regime was a good thing? Who NEEDS that kind of justification of this sorry ending? Who? It's castro.

You have done a despicable act of child abuse with an interview that you know very well was conducted in an atmosphere of coercion. You are not journalists. You just are castro's shills.

Posted by Mora at October 6, 2005 08:34 AM