davidg. on Sun, 6 Apr 1997 14:19:13 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> The CNN Bureau Bureau Havan |
Don't be Deceived by the New Voice of America The CNN Bureau in Havana In recent media bulletins and satellite journals there have been numerous articles prizing Ted Turner's alleged heroism in defying the Helms/Burton law by installing the CNN Havana Bureau. Lets not be deceived. Since the Cuban government has been forced, not by political but by economic pressure, to accept a CNN bureau in Havana. CNN's task is to produce and transmit a continuous supply of unmitigated negative information from this impoverished Caribbean paradise. Bad news is good news on television. And providing bad news is CNN's main job from Havana. >From Ted Roosevelt's invasion of Colombia to snatch the Panama canal in 1903 to the assassination of Chilean president Salvador Allenede in 1973, the catalogue of American interventions in the region are both to numerous and to depressing to inventorise once again. But times change and so do strategies The propaganda machinery from the old (USIS) United States Information Service, that through The Voice of America, has bombarded the former eastern block as well as the so called "backyard" of the united states, Central and South America throughout the last half century is now supplemented by more effective and sophisticated ways of achieving their goals. The American government has learned through the last decade to how to utilize the apparently independent source of information, that is Ted Turner's cable news network. To take just one example, large-scale prostitution is one of the bad news stories continuously reported on CNN. With emotive images of young girls cruising the streets of Havana peddling their bodies for hard currency. But the reasons behind this phenomena are never mentioned let alone analyzed. The world has a short memory. Lets not forget that it is the clumsy policies that continues to this day to characterize American state department that has forced Cuba into this position. Make no mistake if the American government really wanted to prevent CNN's dispatches they surely have the means to do so. If the claws of the US administration can successfully discourage the investments European and Canadian corporations in Cuba through the Helms Burton law there is no reason why that shouldn't be equally effective at home. Raul Marroquin --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de