Journalism on Demand

Cuba: Journalism on Demand / Iván García

Iván García, 27 August 2016 — I still remember that two-day trip to
Pinar del Río. I stayed in a Communist Party hotel at the side of the
old central highway. I visited the province's outstanding factories,
cooperatives and work centers.

Then in Havana, I wrote three or four sugar-coated articles about the
excellent management of the Peoples' Power and the "enthusiasm" of the
workers' collective at the Conchita factory after winning a banner of
socialist excellence.

No one told me how to do journalism. I experienced it for four decades.
I was studying primary education and during school recesses, at the
request of my grandmother, my mother [Tania Quintero, now living in
Switzerland], a former official journalist, took me with her when she
had to do reports in the cities of the interior.

In that epoch – and now, according to what they tell me – journalists
covered the subjects indicated by the Department of Revolutionary
Orientation, which weekly dictated the guidelines to the communication
media.

Most official journalists are scribes rather than reporters. They write
on demand.

With the arrival of new information technologies and the transition from
a personalistic and totalitarian society to an authoritarian country of
incipient military capitalism, dozens of State journalists now publish
with their names or pseudonyms in alternative digital media, generating
a reprimand from their bosses.

It's precisely in blogs and on independent sites that these
correspondents can express their talent, tell their stories and pour out
opinions that they never would publish in the dull, propagandistic
Government press.

The most notorious case is Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood
Journalism), spearheaded by Elaine Díaz, ex-professor of the University
of Havana Faculty of Communication and probably the best journalist in
Cuba. After dropping the official ballast, Díaz published excellent
research on communities and citizens that never appeared in the Party media.

Doing independent journalism in Cuba brings risks. You won't get a
pension when you retire; you will suffer harassment from State Security,
and the Taliban hard-liners will try to assassinate your reputation with
every type of crude accusation. But those who manage to do it are free
persons.

In my case, I choose the topics and how I'm going to present them. The
only censorship is that imposed by reason or by the sword of Damocles
represented by the Gag Law, which obliges you to revise the content with
a magnifying glass so you don't get tangled in a crime of defamation or
accused of denigrating the President of the Republic.

Certainly, the chief editors with whom I collaborate make
recommendations. Up to now, they haven't censored the content nor the
style of drafting. Only on two occasions did they not publish one of my
articles (a right that newspapers or websites have). Then I uploaded
them to my two blogs.

That an independent journalist doesn't write on demand means that inside
the Island several opposition organizations and dissident leaders try to
use you at their convenience.

It seems legitimate to me that a dissident project aspires to having the
best media impact possible. That's not what I'm referring to. It's the
deplorable obsession of certain dissidents who want to manage the work
of a journalist.

They use different strategies. One is to invite you to meetings where
they paint a superficial picture of their organization and their
chimeric plans. The story is like that of the Government, but in
reverse. They exaggerate the number of members and present a battery of
proposals that are forgotten after a few months.

If you ask uncomfortable questions, they simply take you off the list of
their meetings and press conferences. If you're too critical of the
dissidence, they prepare a reprimand.

They never tell you that they disagree with you. They start the
discussion by pointing out that you're wrong. If voices are raised,
accusations begin: that you're an undercover agent of State Security, a
traitor to the cause, or you're providing arguments to the "enemy" (the
Regime) that later will be used to discredit the opposition.

Another strategy, in mode among certain opposition groups, is that in
addition to "renting" a journalist, they enroll him in their cause. A
huge mistake. Keeping a distance is the first rule of journalism.

If you are for democracy, that doesn't mean you should march with the
Ladies in White through Miramar. When that happens, the journalist
misjudges the profession.

Sometimes the debates caused by a journalistic article are civilized.
Other times they set up a "repudiation meeting" for you.

The Sunday of March 20, hours before Obama landed in Havana, I was with
the Ladies in White in Gandhi Park, to write an article about the
aggressions against the group of women on the part of the repressive bodies.

There I had to put up with the insolence of Ailer González, a member of
Estado de Sats, asking me what I was doing there and refuting my
assessments. I answered her briefly and told her that she didn't have to
read me.

This type of journalism by genuflection, habitual in Cuba, sometimes
tries to pass itself off as freelance.

Everyone is free to have an opinion and reproduce it. Sometimes our
commentaries or stories provoke controversy and irritate the local or
exile dissidence. But at least I don't write to please anyone.

If a handful of ungagged journalists have been able to defy an
olive-green autocracy for 20 years, I don't believe that the pride and
intolerance of some dissidents should inhibit us.

Authentic journalism is always in search of the truth. Whatever it costs.

Photo: Elaine Díaz and Abraham Jiménez, directors of the digital media
Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Journalism) and El Estornudo (The
Sneeze). Taken from Brotes de periodismo cubano (Outbreaks of Cuban
Journalism), an article by Pablo de Llano, El País (The Country, a daily
newspaper in Spain), March 22, 2016.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Source: Cuba: Journalism on Demand / Iván García – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-journalism-on-demand-ivn-garca/