The Media And Castro

The Media Reality Check has a roundup of various reports through the years from American reporters about Fidel Castro and his police state in Cuba. When it's all put together like this, it's enough to make you sick. The positively fawning coverage of a brutal dictator from one or two people could be understood as being misguided. But the number of major American media figures who filed glowing reports abut Castro and Cuba more closely resembles mass psychosis.

After decades of poverty and repression, the media’s enthusiasm remained. Then-NBC reporter Maria Shriver let Castro himself lead her on a tour of Havana. "The level of public services was remarkable: free education, medicine and heavily-subsidized housing," Shriver marveled on the February 28, 1988 Today. In the same broadcast, reporter Ed Rabel dismissed worries about Cuba’s "government intrusion" in citizen’s lives: "On a sunny day in a park in the old city of Havana, it is difficult to see anything sinister."

ABC’s Peter Jennings trumpeted "the revolution’s great success stories." On his April 3, 1989 World News Tonight, Jennings touted how "medical care was once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban, and it is free. Some of Cuba’s health care is world class….Health and education are the revolution’s great success stories."

Katie Couric was just as upbeat on NBC’s Today on Feb. 13, 1992: "Considered one of the most charismatic leaders of the 20th century….Castro traveled the country cultivating his image and his revolution delivered. Campaigns stamped out illiteracy and even today, Cuba has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world."

On the September 4, 1994 CBS Evening News, reporter Giselle Fernandez found Castro’s Cuba "a beacon of success for much of Latin America and the Third World. For decades, Cuba’s health care and education systems were touted as great achievements of the revolution….Some say the [U.S.] trade ban has never given Cuba a chance to see whether or not Castro’s socialism might work."

If you have a strong stomach, go read it all. It says a vast amount about our media.

None of it good.

UPDATE: See Flopping Aces for a good roundup.