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You're right Val,

If just one reporter did it, as a big scoop, even if he/she was thrown out. He/she'd become the big story and all would have to report it. Just one live feed of how things really are is all it probably takes.

Don't hold your breath. When Mexican president Vicente Fox visited Cuba (a while back) he met with Cuban opposition leader Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello and members of the dissidence such as Vladimiro Roca.

The second President Fox left Cuba, the Cuban secret police went to Mrs. Roque's house beat her up, tore the clothes from her body and then draged her through the street to their military vehicle. Mrs. Roque is a woman in her 60s.

That same afternoon Lucia Newman from CNN Made no mention of the event as she was too busy reporting on a dog show taking place in Havana.

The only reason the Cuban-American community was made aware of this assault was through Mrs. Roque herself when she called a Cuban radio station in Miami after she was released.

Lucia Newman is an asshole.

The MSM that has official bureaus in Cuba has made a Faustian bargain with the devil that is castro. Like all Faustian bargains the reward isn't worth the price, but these short-sighted assholes don't know a damned thing about Faust or the devil.

If just one does it, he makes all his competitors look really bad. He ought to do it for that alone.

Val, this is the best and most important thing you have ever written!

While I understand that journalists walk a tight rope in Cuba and that they risk being thrown out of the country if they report the truth, how about when they come back to the USA after a stint in Cuba? Many of them still go on reporting the same half truths and repeating the same soundbites about the Cuban health care and education being so grand, and you never read any human interests stories about their life on a tightrope in Cuba. And remember Lucia Newman, after her disasterous stint in Cuba where she helped to prop up the dictatorship by talking about Cuba's beaches, old vintage cars and cigar festivals, etc.. she was interviewed and she was totally unrepetant and in fact spitful towards the exile community. She totally discarded the charge that she was only reporting fluff stories out of Cuba and said that the problem is that the Cuban exiles in Miami [whom she called rightwingers if I remember correctly] wanted her to slant her reporting in their favor and that she would not compromise her journalistic integrity to do that. What a bitch!

So, while reporters do walk a tightrope in Cuba, many of them I believe simply don't care to tell the truth. Who knows? Maybe Castro bribes them with jineteras in Varadero.

Wasn't there a story going around about some secret video with Lucia and a pinguero??

Great Post

I’m sure most people who become journalists probably do so because they want to make a difference in the world by telling the truth and exposing injustice.

Journalism is a noble profession.

It’s great idea to remind the journalists in Cuba that we in the Cuban community are behind them and that all we ask is that they to tell the truth. Nothing more.

Here's an AP article from cnn.com that illustrates perfectly how the MSM in a subtle way endorses the arguments made by the regime:

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/08/10/cuba.espionage.ap/

Here's the excerpt:

On Wednesday, the full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, with two judges dissenting, rejected the men's argument that pervasive community prejudice against the Cuban government and publicity surrounding the case prevented them from receiving a fair trail.

In Havana, the Communist Party daily Granma noted the ruling coincides with recent events in Cuba, where Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul on July 31 after announcing he had undergone intestinal surgery.

"All of these occur in an unusual way and at a time when Miami is calling for an end to a sovereign nation," Granma said.

"This has been a political case from the beginning," Granma said, and demonstrates "hate and vengeance against the Cuban nation."

Here they take the statements of the Cuban government and report that as "news". There is no attempt to get a legal expert to comment on whether these accusations by Cuba have any merit. No attempt to talk to the prosecutor or a source inside the government. No explanation of how long it takes to process an appeal in Federal Court, what the procedures are and how and when decisions are published.

They just put a statement out there and nothing to counter it. It's garbage. It's either laziness or it's outright bias.

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/ap-bureau.htm

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- A fire apparently caused by an electrical malfunction gutted the Havana bureau of the U.S. news agency. . .

http://www.apbroadcast.com/AP+Broadcast/About+Us/Press+Releases/General/Gramling+Awards.htm

The other Gramling Achievement Award went to Chief of Bureau in Cuba, Anita Snow, who was cited for reopening the AP bureau in Havana. . .

Val,

You know me, I am the "and the horse you rode in on" individual.

If your doing what you say your doing, why not give the people of Cuba some solace? Isn't it alright to say that help is coming? You won't be saying anything that the Cuban police don't know. Can't you tell them of subtle ways they can do passive resistance? Do you think that no one in Cuba is reading your blog?

Ray (Captain's Quarters)

Journalism is supposed to just tell the truth or the facts about what is actually happening...but many western journalist are the biggest "whores" ever.

I don't see anything "noble" about just telling the truth. If they did their jobs, the world could decide what to think about Cuba. Lucia Newman has no "journalistic principles" or she wouldn't have been in Cuba in the first place.

Brilliant commentary; should be printed worldwide.

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