Agent provocateur
4th December 2003, 21:19
Newscast to Nowhere: U.S. Taxpayers Pay for a Cuban Broadcast That No One Sees
It’s the newscast to nowhere, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. According to Jeffrey Kofman of ABC News, “Fifty-five reporters, editors and producers – all U.S. government employees – work seven days a week in a television newsroom in Miami. Each day they earnestly assemble, record and broadcast 4½ hours of news and information programming in Spanish. And no one sees it.”
The intended audience is the people of Cuba, but since transmissions began in 1990 the only thing they have successfully promoted is scorn in both countries, because from the beginning the Cuban government has been able to block the TV Martí signal.
It costs U.S. taxpayers almost $10 million a year – more than $100 million since TV Martí began – to keep broadcasting anti-Castro invective to nowhere.
In his piece, Kofman wrote that ABC NEWS Havana producer Mara Valdés checked to see if people on the streets of the Cuban capital had ever heard of the U.S.-based newscast that is produced just for them.
“No,” said one man as he shook his head, “because I haven't seen it on TV.”
“Never,” added a woman, “because it can't be seen.”
“TV Martí has just never been seen in Cuba,” said Representative Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., one of a chorus of congressmen who think TV Martí's funding should have been cut long ago. Flake, no fan of the Cuban president, says that the station is “a jobs program. Frankly, I think it's a political payoff.”
According to Flake, TV Martí is zealously protected by Florida’s three Cuban-American congressional representatives who reward their hard-line supporters with jobs.
My comment: TV Martí’s and its sister operation Radio Martí’s newest director is Pedro Roig, a real estate lawyer with no broadcasting experience and whose sole credential is his standing as a member of the extreme right Cuban community in Miami.
Roig wants to explore alternative methods of transmission possibly from a satellite (a brilliant idea worthy of a real estate lawyer, given the fact that few Cubans have satellite dishes) or from a U.S. government broadcast plane that would make daily flights near Cuban airspace. (Recently, on May 20, a US Air Force EC-130 plane transmitted radio and TV signals to the island with the same results as the regular methods.)
Satellite and plane transmissions would violate radio and television communications standards set by the International Telecommunications Union, of which both the U.S. and Cuba are members. The standards forbid the transmission of TV signals beyond the broadcaster’s national boundaries.
Roig has said he doesn't know what his alternative methods would cost. By the way, his salary for the post is $132,000 a year. That he does know.
And while he and others explore options the news goes on… To nowhere.
Throughout the Americas, U.S. increasingly isolated over Cuba
When Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to Latin America's leaders earlier last week to help hasten the end of Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba, his message fell largely on deaf ears.
Mr. Powell used an address to the annual meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Santiago, Chile, to remind members that “the people of Cuba increasingly look to the OAS for help in defending their fundamental freedoms.”
But during the closing statements, even as regional leaders vowed to fight poverty, corruption, and respect for human rights, Cuba never came up.
According to Patrick Michael Rucker in an article for the US daily The Christian Science Monitor, “Feeling neglected by the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001, leaders of the hemisphere are now asserting their independence over Cuba in what some analysts say could be a signal of waning U.S. influence in the Americas. (…) Despite Powell's appeal the organization failed to pass a measure condemning Castro’s government.”
In private, several nations were critical of what they characterized as Mr. Powell’s excessive and narrow focus on Cuba at the expense of other issues.
“There is a readiness among member states to talk about Cuba, but in a balanced way, and not only about human rights,” a senior OAS official said in a meeting with reporters in Santiago. “Many states, some of Latin America and all of the Caribbean,” he said, also “want to talk about the isolation of Cuba, the embargo, and all of that.”
“That is the problem,” the official added. The Bush administration, he said, “has a very strong position, so there really is some difficulty in dealing with the issue of Cuba only in relation to human rights.”
In his article Rucker writes that “Some experts see the divergence between the U.S. and much of South America as a sign of emerging divisions over the future of a U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas” (FTAA) – a plan to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement to all other countries in the region, excluding Cuba.
According to Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, “An emerging entente among Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela is raising the fundamental questions about whether neoliberal economic policy is even right for the region,” says Mr. Birns. “In many ways, Castro has been asking those same questions. Many respect him for that, as they respect him for standing up to Uncle Sam for more than 40 years.”
My comment: The reasons for that respect are precisely those that the U.S. won’t tolerate: a small country blockaded, attacked and slandered by the greatest power in history has become the champion of poor countries and a thorn on Uncle Sam’s side. Even denouncing them during international meetings and forums regarding issues that other countries agree with Cuba on, but do not dare to say publicly. If Mr. Powell went to Chile looking for what the U.S. has promoted in the European Union, he has failed. The OAS meeting is proof of that.
It’s the newscast to nowhere, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. According to Jeffrey Kofman of ABC News, “Fifty-five reporters, editors and producers – all U.S. government employees – work seven days a week in a television newsroom in Miami. Each day they earnestly assemble, record and broadcast 4½ hours of news and information programming in Spanish. And no one sees it.”
The intended audience is the people of Cuba, but since transmissions began in 1990 the only thing they have successfully promoted is scorn in both countries, because from the beginning the Cuban government has been able to block the TV Martí signal.
It costs U.S. taxpayers almost $10 million a year – more than $100 million since TV Martí began – to keep broadcasting anti-Castro invective to nowhere.
In his piece, Kofman wrote that ABC NEWS Havana producer Mara Valdés checked to see if people on the streets of the Cuban capital had ever heard of the U.S.-based newscast that is produced just for them.
“No,” said one man as he shook his head, “because I haven't seen it on TV.”
“Never,” added a woman, “because it can't be seen.”
“TV Martí has just never been seen in Cuba,” said Representative Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., one of a chorus of congressmen who think TV Martí's funding should have been cut long ago. Flake, no fan of the Cuban president, says that the station is “a jobs program. Frankly, I think it's a political payoff.”
According to Flake, TV Martí is zealously protected by Florida’s three Cuban-American congressional representatives who reward their hard-line supporters with jobs.
My comment: TV Martí’s and its sister operation Radio Martí’s newest director is Pedro Roig, a real estate lawyer with no broadcasting experience and whose sole credential is his standing as a member of the extreme right Cuban community in Miami.
Roig wants to explore alternative methods of transmission possibly from a satellite (a brilliant idea worthy of a real estate lawyer, given the fact that few Cubans have satellite dishes) or from a U.S. government broadcast plane that would make daily flights near Cuban airspace. (Recently, on May 20, a US Air Force EC-130 plane transmitted radio and TV signals to the island with the same results as the regular methods.)
Satellite and plane transmissions would violate radio and television communications standards set by the International Telecommunications Union, of which both the U.S. and Cuba are members. The standards forbid the transmission of TV signals beyond the broadcaster’s national boundaries.
Roig has said he doesn't know what his alternative methods would cost. By the way, his salary for the post is $132,000 a year. That he does know.
And while he and others explore options the news goes on… To nowhere.
Throughout the Americas, U.S. increasingly isolated over Cuba
When Secretary of State Colin Powell appealed to Latin America's leaders earlier last week to help hasten the end of Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba, his message fell largely on deaf ears.
Mr. Powell used an address to the annual meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Santiago, Chile, to remind members that “the people of Cuba increasingly look to the OAS for help in defending their fundamental freedoms.”
But during the closing statements, even as regional leaders vowed to fight poverty, corruption, and respect for human rights, Cuba never came up.
According to Patrick Michael Rucker in an article for the US daily The Christian Science Monitor, “Feeling neglected by the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001, leaders of the hemisphere are now asserting their independence over Cuba in what some analysts say could be a signal of waning U.S. influence in the Americas. (…) Despite Powell's appeal the organization failed to pass a measure condemning Castro’s government.”
In private, several nations were critical of what they characterized as Mr. Powell’s excessive and narrow focus on Cuba at the expense of other issues.
“There is a readiness among member states to talk about Cuba, but in a balanced way, and not only about human rights,” a senior OAS official said in a meeting with reporters in Santiago. “Many states, some of Latin America and all of the Caribbean,” he said, also “want to talk about the isolation of Cuba, the embargo, and all of that.”
“That is the problem,” the official added. The Bush administration, he said, “has a very strong position, so there really is some difficulty in dealing with the issue of Cuba only in relation to human rights.”
In his article Rucker writes that “Some experts see the divergence between the U.S. and much of South America as a sign of emerging divisions over the future of a U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas” (FTAA) – a plan to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement to all other countries in the region, excluding Cuba.
According to Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, “An emerging entente among Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela is raising the fundamental questions about whether neoliberal economic policy is even right for the region,” says Mr. Birns. “In many ways, Castro has been asking those same questions. Many respect him for that, as they respect him for standing up to Uncle Sam for more than 40 years.”
My comment: The reasons for that respect are precisely those that the U.S. won’t tolerate: a small country blockaded, attacked and slandered by the greatest power in history has become the champion of poor countries and a thorn on Uncle Sam’s side. Even denouncing them during international meetings and forums regarding issues that other countries agree with Cuba on, but do not dare to say publicly. If Mr. Powell went to Chile looking for what the U.S. has promoted in the European Union, he has failed. The OAS meeting is proof of that.