Censorship maven fails in Cuba
By Glenn Garvin
Chalk up another victory for the greeting-card cartel: Valentine's Day
now goes on for weeks, months, even decades - at least when it comes to
the American left and the Castro brothers.
The latest love letter to Havana comes from Peter Phillips, a
sociologist at California's Sonoma State University, where he runs an
outfit called Project Censored. It is the conceit of Project Censored
that mainstream news media in the United States and other liberal
democracies ruthlessly suppress real news in order to protect the
world's corporate ruling order.
I've always been underwhelmed by this thesis. For one thing, in 40 years
in journalism, I have never heard a city editor scream, "I'm killing
this story because it undermines the Rockefeller family's ambitions for
world domination!" And for another, the examples of stories that Project
Censored considers to have been suppressed seem, well, daft. I mean, is
it news to you that we recently fought a war in Iraq and a lot of people
got killed?
But recently, Project Censored got a chance to make its case for a free,
independent press in a place where the message is sorely needed: Cuba.
Phillips went to Havana for a conference of authors and journalists
hosted by Fidel Castro, the most relentlessly tyrannical censor in the
Western Hemisphere.
It's been more than 50 years since a critical word about the government
has been uttered on Cuban television or radio or written in a Cuban
newspaper. Even foreign correspondents whose stories can't be read on
the island quickly learn there's no such thing as bad news in Cuba.
Agence France-Press reporter Denis Rousseau was forced out of the
country for slandering socialist chickens. (Honest. His story about an
egg shortage was headlined "Cuban chickens don't obey the government's
Five-Year Plan.") Spanish TV reporter Sebastian Martinez Ferrate was
jailed after he interviewed 15 teenage hookers for a documentary on
Cuba's growing child-prostitution problem. He was released in January
after two years of negotiations by the Spanish government.
So Phillips had a great opportunity to speak out forthrightly on the
subject of censorship. And he did. Against us. "The lies and propaganda
of the corporate/capitalist media were important themes for the day,"
Phillips wrote. "One participant remarked how the global corporate media
seeks to create a monoculture of the mind inside the capitalist countries."
He did have something to say about Castro. "I was honored to participate
in the discussions held with the Commandante," Phillips bravely opined.
"His energy is inspiring and his command of history and contemporary
issues is phenomenal."
Of the Cuban law that decrees a year in prison for insulting a public
official (make that three if he's a president), Phillips had nothing to
say. Likewise for the laws criminalizing dissemination of "unauthorized
news" or "enemy propaganda." If we had the latter in the United States,
Phillips would surely have been prancing around a cell in Fort
Leavenworth rather than a stage in Havana, owing to his regular tirades
on how the 9/11 attacks were a U.S. government plot.
The reason Phillips had nothing to say about Cuban censorship is that
there isn't any, as he discovered during a 2008 tour. As he made the
rounds of government radio stations, being interviewed about the
depredations of the New York Times, Phillips asked the Cuban hosts - on
the air - whether they faced government censorship. "All said that they
have complete freedom to write or broadcast any stories they choose," he
reported.
Leaving aside the wee possibility that the hosts might have been
reluctant to denounce Castro on the air while the secret police were
listening, I suggest that next time Phillips wants to talk to a feisty
Cuban reporter, he go to where they mostly hang out: jail.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 21 were
imprisoned at the time of Phillips' 2008 visit. Cuba's egg cartons may
be mostly empty, but the jails never are.
Glenn Garvin is a columnist for the Miami Herald. E-mail him at
ggarvin@miamiherald.com.
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