We spend a lot of time and effort here and at all the anti-castro blogs criticizing the MSM – and rightfully so I might add – about their less than authentic and dare I say castro adulating tone in their coverage of Cuba and Cuban issues. For those of us who actually know a thing or two about Cuba and fidel castro’s government, listening to, watching or reading a report from an MSM journalist on Cuba is equivalent to fingernails on a chalkboard. From Herbert Matthews to Dan Rather to Barbara Walters to pretty much every single reporter or journalist on down the line, we always know we arent getting the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
We take these MSM folks on one at a time usually, criticizing and debunking their sugar coated coverage of the dictator and his government on a case by case basis.
Well, with a huge hat tip to my friend Joe D of Attaboy – who found and sent me the link – we now have a one stop shop documenting the media love affair with fidel castro and his ridiculous “revolution”:
Fidel’s Flatterers: The U.S. Media’s Decades of Cheering Castro’s Communism
By Rich Noyes, MRC Research Director
February 7, 2007While every other country in the Western Hemisphere moved towards democracy, Cuba has remained a one-party state under dictator Fidel Castro, who held power without free elections from 1959 until health problems forced him to step aside in 2006. Castro’s communist regime has executed hundreds of political opponents and driven tens of thousands more into exile; hundreds of dissidents today languish in Cuban prisons. The U.S. State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have all listed Castro’s Cuba as among the worst violators of human rights on the planet, while the Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the harassment and imprisonment of journalists.
Yet liberals in the U.S. media — who have rightly condemned such abuses when perpetrated by dictators such as Chile’s Augusto Pinochet — inexplicably remain enchanted with Castro and his socialist revolution. For more than half a century, positive profiles of Castro have appeared in U.S. papers. Back on January 18, 1959, New York Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews exulted in Castro’s seizure of Cuba: “Everybody here seems agreed that Dr. Castro is one of the most extraordinary figures ever to appear on the Latin-American scene. He is by any standards a man of destiny.”
For 20 years, the Media Research Center has documented the liberal media’s infatuation with Fidel Castro and Cuba’s communism. Below are some of the choicest examples from MRC’s archives, many accompanied by audio and video clips, plus links to further evidence.
Rich Noyes takes on the entire media establishment and highlights their absolute and unabashed hypocrisy, misinformation and outright lies and offers proof via quotes, commentary and video.
This Media Research Center Special Report is an absolute must read and should be linked and prominently hilighted on all of our blogs and websites to prove just how biased the MSM is when it comes to Cuba.
UPDATE – Henry
I want to chime in here. I took the time to view every single one of the clips available in the piece linked above. I have to say that even though it’s lunch time I’ve lost my appetite watching how the media simply lets castro slide on abuses they would never let any other world leader slide on. The clips are a who’s who of castro apologists in the mainstream media, including of course Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and a young “Katherine” Couric.
I’d like to point your attention to 3 clips in particular.
The first is Peter Jennings claiming that before castro only a third of the Cuban population “could read and write”. This a such a grotesque lie that even if you were to invert the numbers and say two thirds were literate you’d still be selling Cuba’s pre-castro literacy rate short by 9%. That’s right, UN statistics from 1950-53 pegged Cuba’s literacy rate at 76%. That’s 43% greater than what Jennings said in his report. How does such a heinous lie appear on the evening news?
The second can’t miss clip is of Lucia Newman, formerly of CNN and now of Al Jazeera, touting the benefits of an electoral process where there is only one choice for each post. This would hilarious if it were a sketch on Saturday Night Live or a spread in Mad Magazine but the fact the “pioneer” in 24 news coverage would run this piece, though not surprising, is an incredible indictment of the channel.
And last but certainly no least is Eleanor Clift asserting that “To be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami…” At least in this clip her fellow panelists scoff at her ridiculous statement.
It’s no wonder that Americans are abandoning the MSM in increasing numbers.
Of course, Noyes should have written that “Castro’s communist regime has executed tens of thousands of political opponents and driven millions more into exile.” Not “hundreds” of executions or “tens of thousands” of exiles.
Well, Manuel, Im not one to nitpick and that minor oversight does not take away from the strength of the piece.
What great and damning evidence against the regime.
What great and damning evidence against the regime.
Val:
Yes, it’s a powerful and useful chronicle of the media’s reflexive kowtowing to Castro. But it is hardly “nitpicking” to point out that Noyes miscalculated the number of people that Castro has killed by tens of thousand or the number of exiles by a couple of millions. We certainly wouldn’t excuse that in an enemy and shouldn’t overlook it in a friend, either.
I wonder whether it will matter to the MSM when Cuba is free, and we start hearing about the stories that went unreported at the same time that Dan Rather, Barbara Walters and others were fawning over castro. If they had any shame they would be embarassed, but of course, they already have shown they have no shame. As one all too familiar with how the MSM operates, I will not hold my breath.
Marc:
The New York Times never apologized for its refusal to report on the Holocaust while it was happening or for its mendacious coverage of the Stalin era. So don’t expect the media ever to acknowledge their sins of omission much less their sins of commission.
I can hear a reporter standing in the middle of Cuba’s recently excavated killings fields: “For 48 years, there was nothing to indicate that this was happening in Cuba. Even now there are those who cannot believe that such a thing is possible. Apparently, somebody buried these corpses here. We will never know whether this was done with Castro’s knowledge or by overzealous officials who never informed him. In any case, it is not an expected legacy for a government that was justly known for its embrace of social justice and egalitarianism.”
Has the New York Times ever apologized for Herbert Matthews and his “coverage” of Cuba, even though it is now beyond dispute that he propagated pernicious lies and served as only-too-eager PR man for a murderous liar and ruthless dictator? Case closed, I’m afraid.
This link should be renamed the Cuban-American quick weight loss method as watching the liberals spew their lies made me want to throw up. Great article though! Someday when Cuba is free there will be some charges against the accomplices of castro.
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asombra:
No, The New York Times has never apologized for Herbert Matthews, although in 1961 it did remove him as its editorial writer on Cuba, thus acknowledging his bias when it was too late. On the positive side, at least there is no portrait of Matthews in The Times’ lobby, as there is of Walter Duranty, a KGB agent who reported on Stalinist Russia for The Times. While millions were dying from manmade famines instigated by Stalin to collectivize agriculture, Duranty wrote fairy tales on bountiful harvests in the Soviet motherland. For his “reportage,” Duranty was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer committee has consistently refused to revoke the prize and The Times still hangs Duranty’s portrait in its gallery of Pulitzer Prize winners. Matthews never won a Pulitzer Prize, though he certainly thought all his life that he deserved one for what he himself called “the greatest scoop of the century.” He did receive recognition of sorts this year when a marble plaque was unveiled in his honor in the Sierra Maestra mountains, on the very spot where he was duped by Castro for the first time.
If it’s any consolation to you, Herbert Matthews died an exile, too. He spent his last years in Australia because he feared that his chickens would finally come home to roost, so to speak.
The second can’t miss clip is of Lucia Newman, formerly of CNN and now of Al Jazeera…
I thought Al Jazeera was the Arabic-language division of CNN? Or maybe CNN is the English-language division Al Jazeera. Sorry about my confusion, it’s been a long day. 🙂
Let’s not forget, CNN is the network that was complicit with Saddam’s crimes, all so they can brag that they were the only major western news network with a Baghdad bureau. Maybe we should just call them the “Castro News Network.”