Official daily demands greater openness in Cuba

Official daily demands greater openness in Cuba
Published July 08, 2011
EFE

Havana – The official newspaper of Cuba's ruling Communist Party
complained Friday that the "innumerable and illogical obstacles" that
bureaucrats use to stop journalists from gaining access to information
on the island makes their job an "agonizing cross to bear."

In an article entitled "The Right to Information," Granma admits the
existence of "state secrets that obviously require a different
treatment," but regrets what a chore it is to get information on other
matters "of understandable interest to the public," such as those
related to the economy.

The paper criticizes the "lack of understanding on the part of many
administrative officials, who seem oblivious to the rights of citizens
and to the irritation it causes them when the reasons for a phenomenon
or a measure are not explained in a timely way."

For Granma it is "incredible and even irritating that to interview a
student at his school, the authorization of a deputy minister is
required as something totally indispensable" or that the official
Communist Party daily has to get ministerial permission to take photos
of a public event.

"What state secret can be so involved in a story about plans to recycle
tires that it takes days of bureaucratic red tape to be allowed to do
it?" says another complaint.

The article recalls President Raul Castro's words that "all information
should be put on the table along with the reasons for each decision" and
that "the excess of secrecy should be suppressed."

In his main report at April's 6th party Congress, Raul Castro criticized
the fact that most of the time Cuban media - all under state control -
are not given "opportune access to information," with even specialists
in specific fields excluded, which leads to journalism that is "boring,
improvised and superficial."

In that speech the president urged media to forget its habits of
"triumphalism, shrillness and conventionality" and said that the
island's press should play a decisive role in the "objective, constant
and critical" reporting on the plan of economic reforms being undertaken
in the country.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/money/2011/07/08/official-daily-demands-greater-openness-in-cuba/