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Fidel's Flatterers
The U.S. Media's Decades of
Cheering Castro's Communism
By Rich Noyes, MRC
Research Director
February 7, 2007
 While
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.
The most laudatory coverage of Castro and his communist revolution’s
"achievements" have come when an American news network decides to visit Cuba for
an in-depth examination. Invariably, the U.S. networks granted access to Cuba
have rewarded the communist government with promotional coverage of both Fidel
Castro and the supposed achievements of his revolution:
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■ In February 1988, just weeks after the State Department named communist Cuba
one of the worst human rights oppressors in the world, NBC’s Today
program sent its cameras to the island to investigate. NBC’s conciliatory
approach allowed Castro to spew lies about his drug connections and the
wonderful achievements of the Cuban revolution. Reporter Ed Rabel was typical:
"There is, in Cuba, government intrusion into everyone’s life, from the moment
he is born until the day he dies. The reasoning is that the government wants to
better the lives of its citizens and keep them from exploiting or hurting one
another....On a sunny day in a park in the old city of Havana it is difficult to
see anything that is sinister." (MediaWatch, March 1988) |
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■ In December 1988, CBS This Morning spent two days reporting from Cuba.
CBS all but ignored the totalitarian nature of the Cuban regime, only alluding
in passing to the human rights violations, the lack of civil liberties, and the
disastrous economic condition brought on by the communist system. Co-host
Kathleen Sullivan was enthusiastic about the benefits of Castro’s revolution:
"Half of the Cuban population is under the age of 25, mostly Spanish speaking,
and all have benefitted from Castro’s Cuba, where their health and their
education are priorities." In a second report, she touted Cuba’s socialized
medicine: "Of all the promises made by Fidel Castro in 1959,
perhaps the boldest was to provide quality health care free for every citizen.
Did he deliver? In many ways the answer is yes!" (MediaWatch, December
1988) |
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■ In April
1989, ABC anchor Peter Jennings went to Cuba and provided his own optimistic
report card on Cuban communism: "Castro has delivered the most to those who
had the least," declared Jennings on the April 3 World News Tonight,
"and for much of the Third World, Cuba is actually a model of development."
Jennings also fell for the state’s line on health care: "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. In heart disease, for
example, in brain surgery. Health and education are the revolution’s great
success stories." Jennings concluded by repeating the words of a Cuban
woman: "For me, he [Castro] is God. I love him very much." (MediaWatch, May 1989) |
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■ In February 1992, NBC’s Today returned to Cuba for a two-day visit,
and held up Castro’s communist approach as a model for the U.S. Co-host Joe
Garagiola began: "Among Cuba’s successes is its health care; it's progressive
and it's free." Correspondent Robert Bazell continued without dispute: "Cuba’s
health care system is world class. In a neo-natal intensive care unit; on a burn
ward; or in a clinic to treat epilepsy one can find equipment and procedures
equal to those in the U.S. and only a few other countries....The quality of care
remains high and it is free. Health, a guarantee of socialism, billboards
proclaim. The Castro government has always been obsessed with health, starting
with improving sanitation." (MediaWatch, March 1992)
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■ In March
1993, ABC’s Diane Sawyer traveled to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro for
Prime Time Live, but only once did she raise the issue of human rights
abuses and political prisoners. Upon the dictator’s denial, she dropped the
matter completely. The remainder of the interview had the coziness of a
People profile: "He grew up a first-rate baseball player and lawyer who
married once, divorced. But was mainly driven by his burning desire to crush
Cuba’s American-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. It began with a
daredevil attack on the military barracks. Jail. His exile. Then a
death-defying two-year fight in the mountains of the Sierra Maestre. He and
his small band of soldiers endured and won only because of Castro’s
invincible certainty of their destiny."
(MediaWatch, April 1993) |
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■ In
November 1993, CBS This Morning reporter Giselle Fernandez spent
three days in Cuba delivering what she admitted was a "pretty postcard" view
of the communist island: "Welcome to Fidel Castro’s playground, Cuba’s
Caribbean paradise few have seen, a Cuba the commandante is now
inviting the world to enjoy. It’s the promised land Cuba is hoping will
guarantee a promising future. In the last two years alone, Cuba and its
sultry island beaches has become a major vacation hot spot...While tourism
may be changing the landscape of Cuba’s Caribbean shores, Fidel Castro is
banking on it to save his workers’ paradise from becoming a paradise lost."
In three days of live reports, Fernandez devoted exactly one sentence to
Castro’s human rights abuses. (MediaWatch,
December 1993) |
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■ ABC’s Peter Jennings traveled to Havana to report on Cuba’s May Day
celebration in 1996. "There was a boisterous enthusiasm that went on for several
hours," Jennings intoned on World News Tonight. "We were invited to the
reviewing stand to hear President Castro in person praise Cubans for standing up
to American pressure. This is the man who nine U.S. Presidents have tried
unsuccessfully to influence. The President [Castro] said the Helms-Burton was
brutal and inhumane....‘I must watch my people now,’ he said, and turned back to
the parade." (CyberAlert, May 2, 1996)
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■ In July
1996, CBS’s Dan Rather traveled to Cuba for a CBS Reports prime time
documentary, The Last Revolutionary. Rather and Castro hiked together
in the mountains where Castro plotted to overthrow the Cuban government. "We
walked the paths he’d walked before," Rather announced. "This is the Cuban
Revolution’s holy land. From these mountains, Castro’s guerrilla army took a
dream and gave it life, made it known in every village, made it real in
every home across Cuba." Rather gushed about Cuban schools: "The educational
system is a jewel in the society his revolution has built....It’s a source
of great pride for the President, as is Cuba’s literacy rate — virtually 100
percent." But he also confronted Castro about his wretched record of
oppression: "There are people in my country who say to me, ‘Dan Rather,
you’re being fooled,’ that when the history of Fidel Castro is written it
will be like Stalin was in the Soviet Union." Castro said there was "zero
possibility" of history rendering such a judgment. |
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■ In June 2001, Cuba granted NBC’s Andrea Mitchell an exclusive follow-up on
Elian Gonzalez one year after the Clinton administration sent the young boy back
to the Communist-controlled island. Reporting for the NBC Nightly News
and Today, Mitchell mentioned none of the drawbacks to life in the
socialist dictatorship, instead, painting Elian’s hometown in quaint Rockwellian
colors: "Cardenas, a small fishing village two hours from Havana, where people
still get around by horse and carriage." Granted a three-hour interview with
Castro for Today, Mitchell allowed the dictator to brag about how his
resting pulse rate is like that of a professional athlete: "Approaching his 75th
birthday this August, the world’s longest surviving leader also believes he is
politically strong, partly as a result of that struggle over a seven-year-old
boy." (Media Reality Check, June 28, 2001)
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■ In May 2002, CNN sent correspondent Kate Snow to anchor an hour-long prime
time Live From Havana, timed to the visit of ex-President Jimmy Carter.
Snow fretted about the "hard line" policies and views of President Bush and
exiled Cubans in Miami while hoping Carter’s visit might "moderate" the
Cuban-Americans. She also touted the "successes" of life under Fidel Castro,
admiring how, "according to a United Nations study, Cuba’s regular schools rank
at the top in Latin America" and how "every Cuban has a primary care physician"
who gets "to know their
patients and even make house calls." She conceded that "Cuba may not have
the nicest facilities or equipment," but she noted in praising the socialist
ideals, "everyone has access and the concept of paying is completely
foreign." (CyberAlert, May 14, 2002) |
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■ In October 2002, ABC’s Barbara Walters traveled to Cuba for an exclusive
interview with Castro. She fawned, "For Castro, freedom starts with education.
And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest
nations on Earth. The literacy rate is 96 percent." The quote "won" Walters
first prize in the "Media Hero Award" category of the MRC’s
Best Notable
Quotables of 2002: The Fifteenth Annual Award for the Year’s Worst Reporting. |
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In 1997, CNN became the first U.S.-based news organization with a full-time
news bureau in Cuba in nearly 30 years. CNN’s mission was to transmit the
reality of Castro’s dictatorship to American audiences. But instead of
enlightening the public about the regime’s repression, the network mainly
provided Castro and his subordinates with a megaphone to defend their
dictatorship and denigrate their democratic opponents.
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■ For a May 2002 Special Report, MRC analysts examined five years of
CNN’s Cuban coverage. They found CNN aired six times more soundbites from
communist leaders than from non-communist groups such as the Catholic Church and
peaceful dissidents. Only about three percent of CNN’s Cuba coverage focused on
Cuban dissidents, and less than one percent dealt with the harassment and
intimidation of independent journalists in Cuba. Fidel Castro himself was
treated more as a celebrity than a tyrant, with stories about his 73rd birthday
party and an in-depth look at his office furnishings in a segment called "Cool
Digs." |
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■ In January 1998 on CNN’s The World Today, Havana bureau chief Lucia
Newman even managed to put a positive spin on Castro’s rigged one-party
elections: "Cuban President Fidel Castro cast his vote in Sunday’s national and
provincial assembly elections with enthusiasm. No dubious campaign spending
here, no mud slinging, and even less doubt about the outcome in elections where
there is no competition. That is because there are as many candidates as seats
to be filled, all of them by supporters of the Communist government — a system
President Castro boasts is the most democratic and cleanest in the world." |
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■ Newman also put a positive shine on Cuba’s policy of sending young teenagers
to work as forced farm labor. In a May 26, 2000 report, CNN quoted just four
sources — two 13-year-old girls, a camp official, and a father — all of whom
praised the practice. Newman declared the program instills "respect" for "hard
work" and that while students "say at first they were homesick," they soon boast
that they "are having a great time" and learning "the importance of
camaraderie." But as the screen showed a boy with his arm around a girl, Newman
warned that "some parents are concerned their children may be learning more
about the birds and the bees than about agriculture." (Special Report,
"Megaphone for a Dictator," May 9, 2002) |
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In late 1999 and 2000, the media became fixated on the story of Elian
Gonzalez, a six-year old boy rescued from the ocean after his mother and nine
others died trying to flee Castro’s dictatorship. The episode highlighted the
media’s longstanding approach to Cuba, as reporters took the stark contrast
between American liberty and Cuban tyranny and muddled it to the point where
life in Cuba was presented as no different, or even better, than life in the
United States.
An MRC Special Report, "Back to the ‘Peaceable’ Paradise: Media
Soldiers for the Seizure of Elian," documented the media’s tilted approach,
including reports that praised the actions and achievements of Fidel Castro’s
Cuba and claimed it was better for children than America. (Special Report,
May 23, 2000).
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On the April NBC Nightly News, for example, reporter Jim Avila touted
the "Cuban good life" Elian could have under Castro: "If and when Elian returns,
he will become a four-foot tall deity in a country that officially does not
believe in God....Elian’s future here likely to be the Cuban good life, lived by
Communist Party elite with perks like five free gallons of gasoline a month for
the family, a Cuban tradition called ‘La Jaba,’ the bag, which includes extra
rice, beans, cooking oil and sundries like deodorant, shampoo, razors and
shaving cream, about $15 a month worth of basics. Plus, invitations reserved for
the party elite to cultural events, sports, discos and restaurants, access to
the best medicine, expensive drugs like heart cures not available to everyone in
Cuba."
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Some more highlights of the media’s pronouncements about Castro’s dedication
to the children of Cuba and the quality of life under his regime, with links to
additional information as reported in the MRC’s daily CyberAlert e-mail
newsletter:
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"Without doubt he [Castro] is taking personal control of the case of the
six-year-old, even to the point of calling child psychiatrists to ask about the
effect of all this on the child’s mind. His chief concern: Could the boy
readjust to life here?...He seemed old-fashioned, courtly — even paternal."
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on the December 15, 1999 Nightly News. For
more, see the December 16, 1999
CyberAlert.
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"Part of what the [Cuban school] children talked about was their fear of the
United States and how they felt they didn’t want to come to the United States
because it was a place where they kidnap children, a direct reference, of
course, to Elian Gonzalez. The children also said that the United States was
just a place where there was money and money wasn’t what was most
important....This is a place where the children’s role models and their idols
are not the baseball players or Madonna or pop stars. Their role models are
engineers and teachers and
librarians — which is who all the children we spoke to yesterday said they
wanted to be." |
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— ABC’s Cynthia McFadden on December 31, 1999, reporting from Havana during
ABC’s live 24-hour coverage of the New Year 2000. For more, see the January 3,
2000
CyberAlert.
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■ "Why did she [Elian’s mother, a maid] do it? What was she escaping? By all
accounts this quiet, serious young woman, who loved to dance the salsa, was
living the good life, as good as it gets for a citizen in Cuba....An extended
family destroyed by a mother’s decision to start a new life."
— Jim Avila from Havana on NBC Nightly News, April 8, 2000. For more,
see the April 10
CyberAlert. |
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■ "To be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor
child in Miami and I’m not going to condemn their lifestyle so gratuitously."
— Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, April 8,
2000. For more, including how Clift stood by her remark when challenged by FNC’s
Bill O’Reilly, see the May 3, 2000
CyberAlert. |
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■ "Elian might expect a nurturing life in Cuba, sheltered from the crime and
social breakdown that would be part of his upbringing in Miami....The education
and health-care systems, both built since the revolution, are among the best in
the Americas, despite chronic shortages of supplies....The boy will nestle again
in a more peaceable society that treasures its children."
— Brook Larmer and John Leland in Newsweek, April 17, 2000. For more,
see the April 12, 2000
CyberAlert.
■ "While Fidel Castro, and certainly justified on his record, is widely
criticized for a lot of things, there is no question that Castro feels a very
deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba. And, I
recognize this might be controversial, but there’s little doubt in my mind that
Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, ‘listen, we really want this child back
here.’"
— Dan Rather, live on CBS the morning of the Elian raid, April 22, 2000. For
more, see the April 23,200
CyberAlert. |
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■ "The one thing that most, that I’ve learned about Cubans in the many times
that I have visited here in the last few years, is that it is mostly a
nationalistic country, not primarily a communist country."
— NBC News reporter Jim Avila [now with ABC News] on MSNBC’s simulcast of
Imus in the Morning, April 26, 2000. For more, see the April 27
CyberAlert.
■ "The school system in Cuba teaches that communism is the way to succeed in
life and it is the best system. Is that de-programming, or is that national
heritage?"
— NBC News reporter Jim Avila [now with ABC News] from Cuba on CNBC’s
Upfront Tonight, June 27, 2000. For more, see the June 29, 2000
CyberAlert.
■ "Elian will almost certainly rejoin the Pioneers as almost all Cuban children
do. It’s very much like the Cub Scouts, camping trips and all, but with a
socialist flavor and a revolutionary spin. But besides politics, what will he
learn? Cubans boast about their universal free education...."
— Keith Morrison from Cuba, previewing Elian’s new life, June 28, 2000
Dateline NBC. For more, see the June 30, 2000
CyberAlert.
Despite decades of poverty and repression,
reporters frequently found ways to praise Castro’s communist regime, often
parroting the Havana government’s own claims about high literacy rates and
improved health care, as if such achievements would balance out the fact that
Cuba is a police state. Reporters also often exhibited a giddy excitement about
the dictator himself, thrilled by Castro’s personal charisma while often blind
to the suffering Castro and his revolution inflicted on those who disagreed with
his tyranny.
Here are a few of the more gushing quotes, some of which point to longer
write-ups in our MediaWatch and CyberAlert newsletters, while
others have appeared in the MRC’s bi-weekly Notable Quotables
newsletter.
■ "They are the healthiest and most educated young people in Cuba’s history.
For that, many of them say they have Castro and his socialist revolution to
thank....If they long for the sweeping changes occurring in Eastern Europe, they
are not saying so publicly....To the extent he can, Castro has been rewarding
young people. For example, on their return home [from Angola], the 300,000
Cubans sent to Africa were first in line for housing, jobs, and education. Such
benevolence breeds dedication, some young people say."
— NBC reporter Ed Rabel, April 1, 1990 Nightly News. |
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■ For two years, PBS refused to air Nobody Listened, a documentary
account of the harsh treatment of Cuba’s political prisoners. In August 1990,
PBS finally capitulated but "balanced" the damning expose of Castro’s prisons
with the explicitly pro-communist film, The Uncompromising Revolution by
Saul Landau, Senior Fellow at the radical Institute for Policy Studies. Landau
followed Castro around the countryside, describing how the "force of nature"
gave Cuba "action-packed decades of experiments in collective survival and
socialist living." Landau tingled his way through the hour like an overaged
groupie: "Fidel touched this young machine adjuster and the man enjoyed a mild
ecstasy. I know the feeling." To PBS, "balance" meant giving a pro-Castro
propagandist equal time with the dictator’s victims. (MediaWatch,
September 1990)
■ "If nothing else, the Cuban revolution has eliminated abject need. The cost
may be generalized poverty and zero political pluralism, but, even with
shortages, there is no starvation here. Education and medical care are assured
for all. And, unlike in most of Latin America, you don't see naked or even
shoeless children in the streets. When Castro speaks of the need to defend the
gains of revolution, he means a level of social welfare rare in the
underdeveloped world."
— Washington Post Assistant Foreign Editor Don Podesta, April 28, 1991
"Outlook" article.
■ In April 1991, Ted Turner’s TBS station ran a two-hour homage, Portrait of
Castro’s Cuba. Narrator James Earl Jones read a gushing, pro-Castro script:
"Incessantly involved in affairs around the globe, this island nation has won
the respect, sometimes grudgingly, of countries twenty times its size. Castro’s
Cuba stands tall in the ranks of nations....Today is a passionate display of
national pride. These men [Cuban soldiers returning from Angola] are symbols of
all that Castro’s Cuba has aspired to be: A nation to be reckoned with. A major
player on the world stage. Defiant, spirited, free." To show how the Cuban
people feel about Fidel, the program quoted an armed militia member: "We want
Fidel, he is our father, he is the father of our people. The Revolution is our
mother and we feel proud." (MediaWatch, May 1991)
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■ Covering the 1991 Pan Am Games in Cuba, ABC’s sports commentators showed why
they belonged in the locker room and out of politics. In a July 27, 1991
special, Fidel Castro, One on One, ABC’s Brent Musburger gave Cuban
communism a positive review: "There are many Cubans who find their lives much
better here than before the Revolution. Medical care is free. Education is also
state-funded. Cuba’s 97 percent literacy rate is among the highest in the
world." And in his interview with Castro himself, ABC’s Jim McKay flattered
Fidel: "You have brought a new system of government, obviously, to Cuba but
the Cuban people do think of you, I think, as their father. One day you’re going to
retire. Or one day, all of us die. Won’t there be a great vacuum there, won’t
there be something that will be difficult to fill? Can they do it on their own?"
(MediaWatch, August 1991) |
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■ "The Roads Are Potholed and the Luxuries Few, Yet Many People Say They’re
Better Off"
— New York Times headline, August 18, 1991.
■ "The government points out rightly that Cuba’s standard of living is better
than in many other countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. There are no
filthy children scrambling over garbage heaps to compete with vultures for
scraps of food, as in El Salvador. There are no death squads preying upon the
weakest and poorest, as in Guatemala. There is none of the festering disease and
crushing poverty that is on display in any village in Haiti or Honduras or
Nicaragua. The violent crime, random killing, and manic drug trade that are
Colombia’s scourge, and Jamaica’s, are practically unknown in Cuba."
— Washington Post reporter Lee Hockstader, September 12, 1991.
■ "The island may have been a thorn in Washington’s side, but it was 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 trade ban has never given Cuba a chance to see
whether or not Castro’s socialism might work."
— Correspondent Giselle Fernandez, September 4, 1994 CBS Evening News.
■ "Like these young dancers, Carlos [Acosta] benefited from Cuba’s communist
system because it not only recognizes physical talent, it nurtures it, whether
it’s baseball, boxing, or ballet."
— CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Christiane Amanpour [also with CNN] on
a star of London’s Royal Ballet, May 21, 2000.
■ "There’s a good chance that Fidel Castro, who marks his 78th birthday today,
could keep going for another 40 years, the Cuban leader’s personal physician
says....Cuban officials say the same revolutionary zeal that has driven nearly
five decades of socialism can overcome the ravages of time....At least 40
different Cuban research groups are said to be at work unlocking the secrets of
aging. The research ranges from studying special diets to basic research on
genetics."
— Reporter Eric Sabo in an August 13, 2004 USA Today story headlined,
"Cuba pursues a 120-year-old future."
■ "With 66,567 doctors, Cuba boasts a ratio of 1 doctor per 170 citizens,
compared with 1 doctor per 188 residents in the United States, according to the
World Health Organization. The emphasis on preventive, personalized care has
yielded life expectancy rates almost identical to those in the United States,
and infant mortality rates even lower than its northern neighbor’s, WHO data
show. Advocates of the Cuban system point out that all Cubans are entitled to
free healthcare and medicine, while more than 44 million American residents —
nearly one of six people — have no health insurance."
— Boston Globe reporter Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in an August 25, 2005
front-page article.
■ "When outsiders think of Cuba, it’s often the lack of political freedoms and
economic power that comes to mind. Cubans who have chosen to stay on the island,
however, are quick to point out the positives: safe streets, a rich and
accessible cultural life, a leisurely lifestyle to enjoy with family and
friends....For all its flaws, life in Castro’s Cuba has its comforts, and
unknown alternatives are not automatically more attractive....Many foreigners
consider it propaganda when Castro’s government enumerates its accomplishments,
but many Cubans take pride in their free education system, high literacy rates
and top-notch doctors. Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States,
in contrast, seems selfish, superficial, and — despite its riches — ultimately
unsatisfying."
— Associated Press writer Vanessa Arrington in an August 4, 2006 dispatch,
"Some Cubans enjoy comforts of communism."
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While
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.
