Media bias, dismissive labels anger Cuban exiles. Like it is!

by Andres Oppenheimer

For starters, let me tell you where I'm coming from: I'm not Cuban, I disagree with Cuban exile hard-liners on most issues, and I think young Elian Gonzalez belongs to his father.

Having said that, I can't help but being incensed by the avalanche of one-sided reporting bordering on bigotry that I have seen directed against Cuban exiles in some of the most respected U.S. newspapers and television networks in recent days.

Words like ``banana republic'' and ``zealots'' showed up repeatedly in national news accounts of Miami's Cuban exiles in recent days, such as in New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's dismissive April 3 reference to the exiles' ``fanatical hatred of Fidel Castro.''

Ask almost any Cuban exile these days, and they will tell you the same thing: Their side of the story is consistently downplayed, or not reported at all, by the national and international media. They are frustrated, angry, not taken into account -- and have good reason to feel that way.

In recent days, Cuban exiles asked again and again: Where were the U.S. media that today seem so concerned about Elian when Castro's troops in 1994 sunk a tugboat with 63 people aboard who were trying to flee the island, killing at least 12 children? Where were the cries of indignation from famous newspaper columnists over the fate of Cuban children?

Indeed, an electronic Lexis-Nexis library search shows that The New York Times didn't even report the massacre when it happened.

LATE REPORTING

Only 12 days later, on July 24, 1994, after The Herald had published several stories and five days after President Clinton had denounced the ``brutal'' attack by the Castro troops, did the New York newspaper publish a few paragraphs of a Reuters news agency cable, on page 12. Would it have played the story the same way if the dead children had been Irish? the exiles ask.

And, they ask, how would you feel if Castro did not allow your parents or children to leave the island, and you lived every minute of your life dreaming about seeing them again, and suddenly you saw major U.S. news organizations accepting at face value Castro's claims to be a champion of children's rights?

Indeed, there are tens of thousands of Cuban exiles in the United States who have been separated from their parents and children, because of Castro's refusal to allow people under 18 or grown-ups who allegedly possess state secrets to leave the island.

And as mandated by article 38 of Cuba's Constitution, under which ``the state must promote the Communist education of the new generations,'' Cuban children become Communist Pioneers in elementary school, and are not allowed to choose their future careers unless they get good recommendations from their ``mass organizations,'' for activities that include spying on their own families and friends.

CASTRO INTERVIEWS

In several conversations these days about the U.S. media's failure to report the realities of Cuba, many exiles brought up the interviews with Castro by former CNN President Ted Turner, and by CBS' Dan Rather, in which normally hard-hitting news executives treated Castro as if they were talking to the Queen of England.

Indeed, a transcript of the June 25, 1990, CNN interview shows that Turner started the show saying, ``Hi, I'm Ted Turner, and I've spent two very interesting days here in Cuba traveling with President Fidel Castro, who has led this country since its revolution 31 years ago. That makes him the third most senior leader in the world today.''

During the hourlong interview, Turner somehow forgot to ask Castro why he would not allow a free election or a free press in Cuba.

Cuban exiles can't understand this deference to Castro. Why do you journalists refer to Castro as the ``Cuban leader'' or ``president,'' while referring to former Chilean strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet and others who have spent a fraction of Castro's time in power as ``dictators?'' Shouldn't they all be called ``dictators?'' they ask.

WEBSTER'S DEFINITION

Isn't it a fact that Cuba is a one-party, one-leader state, and that Webster's dictionary defines a dictator as ``a person exercising absolute power''? they ask. Or how would you feel if, as is happening right now, very few U.S. news organizations report the March 2 statement by Havana-based human rights leader Elizardo Sanchez, that over the past four months ``there was the largest number of acts of political repression in the last 10 years'' in Cuba, with some 592 activists arrested or harassed by the secret police? (To its credit, The Washington Post's editorial pages reported it March 8.)

I confess that I don't have easy answers. To be sure, getting back to the confrontation between Elian's Miami relatives and U.S. authorities, the U.S. media rightfully consider that defiance of the law by any group in America is a bigger story than something happening in a foreign country.

But unless we report the two sides of the Cuban exiles' story, and treat Castro's civil rights abuses the same as any other dictator's, we have no moral right to label anybody as zealots. We, in the media, are in part contributing to their intransigence by our double standards when reporting about Cuba.

END

Andres Oppenheimer

THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
The Miami Herald
April 6, 2000

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