Posted on 02/19/2003 5:19:20 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Cuban Americans keep asking: “Why don’t Americans understand the plight of the Cubans? Why do they accept Fidel Castro?” Herein lie the answers.
The media’s goal is supposed to be disseminating information. And we are all supposed to be concerned about what is best for the country, so we can accept a little slant toward information in that direction. But we tend to lose sight of the fact that the real, working goal of the media is not any of that. It’s to make money.
OK, perhaps that’s a weakness of our capitalist system, where the monetary successes of individuals and groups take the lead. (I would quickly add that the weaknesses of the alternative systems far outweigh this one.)
And an important characteristic of our system is that the media are self-policed in the area of slanting the information being disseminated, since content and attitude are, for the most part, left up to the individuals or the organization. The current leanings seem clear to many, though the major public forum in which to raise the issue, the media, is understandably reluctant to publicly admit to a slant.
And once a slant is established, the tendency is for the slant to increase because of survival instincts (to attract those with the same slant as both sources and employees). Thus the employees tend to be like-minded. Most know, but most don’t say it out loud, that the media have been infiltrated by the left.
And, of course, if you are left-minded yourself, you won’t notice a slant in your direction – you will just find yourself liking and agreeing with what you hear.
This leads directly to the major problem, where things can get dangerous. Beyond its accepted goal of disseminating information, the media can also become a tool to change public opinion when someone tries to affect an outcome or affect peoples’ beliefs by way of choosing what information will be disseminated.
And it’s easy to slide down that hill when the road already has a slant.
Not to frighten, but this is such a fundamental process of communism that you find it in every single communist government that has ever existed. Not a single exception. You need tools like that when the advantages of your system of government are good only for you, and the elite you have to have surrounding and protecting yourself, but bad for everyone else.
You certainly don’t want everybody to know about that, so you take over the main source of information for everybody and carefully plan every bit of information that is presented.
But it works quite well even in free societies. For example, most Americans form their opinions about what is going on outside their immediate lives through information that comes their way about what is going on around the world. They tend to seek out information about topics they have a particular interest in.
For other topics, the information tends to come to them seemingly at random, primarily from the media – TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc. Thus, individuals’ beliefs are significantly affected by information from the media.
In a free society, however (or should I say “fortunately”), this slant can’t lean too far from the mainstream or the mainstream will turn its back and ratings will go down. Note that the money goal is not all bad.
Recently, after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech providing details about the goings-on in Iraq, the media did polls to gauge the citizens’ reaction. When a high percentage was found to support the Bush administration’s stance, the media realized they had to change their slant from challenging the administration’s view to instead challenging its challengers, which you could see on the Sunday morning talk shows of Feb. 9, 2003.
And the media reacted by also providing previously un-disseminated information about Iraq. Did you see Tom Brokaw on the David Letterman show on Feb. 6, 2003, talking about his trips to Iraq? He revealed serious details I’d never heard before that were in support of the Bush administration. And he didn’t even have a book to promote.
So, on to answer the question about Castro. The media like him because he is a novelty. He is unique in the world. He is working on (against) his 10th U.S. president. But that’s not enough. The fact that he has gotten away with killing so many thousands of people increases his value to the media because it increases his novelty to the danger level.
Seeing Barbara Walters tooling around in a jeep with someone who has caused the deaths of some 115,000 people is too exciting to resist. Ratings go up, so advertising rates go up.
They have to be careful how much truth about him they portray, however, because too much bad stuff is a turn-off for many viewers. It’s a delicate balance. And anyway, too much truth about him and he will cut off their source of information and interviews. He has done that many times, but the media won’t tell you about that.
In my first article of 2003, “Castro Gets the Coverage, Not His Victims,” I mentioned the latest installment in a series of superficial and misleading reports from NBC’s “good girl” Andrea Mitchell. (I say “good girl” because she was awarded with an interview for portraying Castro the way he likes to be portrayed.) I saw a segment of it on Dec. 31, 2002, on the “Today” show.
In my article I talked about Andrea featuring, an affable Castro, looking all “presidential” in a suit, talking and joking around. “The usual, always-beneficial-to-Castro ‘reports’ about the declared (never substantiated) wonders of Castroland. Showing the usual, tired (though freshly painted!) sites, lots of smiling, adoring faces the tyrant wants for Andrea and the American people to see and NBC graciously provides the opportunity.”
This kind of report, while convenient for the media and for Castro, causes revulsion for a Cuban American – because it makes light of the fact that he caused the destruction of our country, families and lives. That’s all.
Take a look at the comment of Elena M. Borkland, a very talented visual artist and editor, who wrote to me after MSNBC showed the entire one-hour interview on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2003. Elena said, “My stomach turned as I watched the first few minutes of Andrea Mitchell's interview – my husband had to turn it off before I became – literally – physically ill.”
Then she wrote to MSNBC, “After watching less than one minute of Andrea Mitchell's groveling in front of the western hemisphere's cruelest despot, I was forced to turn the TV off – the effect was more emetic than two cups of Syrup of Ipecac.
“Have you no regard for Castro's thousands of victims? So-called reporters such as Ms. Mitchell continue to help him try to deceive us with his illusions of social justice, free education and health care, but the world is less and less deceived as it sees the actual Cuban reality: Dr. Castro lives like an emperor on the island while his captive subjects are forced to live in the House of Pain. Castro's monstrous hypocrisy should be exposed by honest journalists rather than being catered to.”
I am sure that Mrs. Borkland’s comments will be discounted as usual by the pro-Castro bias so generalized in the U.S. media. It is “politically correct” to offend Cuban Americans.
Mrs. Borkland was one of the 14,048 children who were sent, by their parents, unaccompanied, to the U.S. between 1960 and 1962 to avoid being sent to the Soviet Union for indoctrination or being indoctrinated in the schools in Cuba, all of which had been taken over by the communist government. Her parents sent Elena at 13 to the U.S. in 1961 with her two sisters, Beatriz, 15, and Silvia, 11.
This exodus, known as Operation Peter Pan, was the largest exodus of unaccompanied children in the Western Hemisphere. And is still largely unknown to the American public thanks to the U.S. media.
The parents in Cuba made that unimaginable sacrifice so that their children would be free in America. In his 1972 book “Diario de una Traicion: Cuba 1961” [Diary of a Betrayal: Cuba 1961], Leovigildo Ruiz says on page 27, “On January 21, 1961, Fidel Castro announced in Cuba that 1000 pre-teen children of humble workers had been sent by airplanes to the Soviet Union to finish their elementary and high school.”
So, Cuban parents did the right thing by sending their children abroad before losing their right to be parents. And Elena M. Borkland is one of the children raised and educated in the U.S. and appreciates what freedom is all about and understands that what Andrea Mitchell was reporting was inaccurate and a disservice to the American people and to Castro’s millions of victims on both sides of the Florida Straits.
In the recently released book “Embracing America: A Cuban Exile Comes of Age” by Margaret L. Paris, on sale at Barnes & Noble, is the story of Elena M. Borkland. Elena’s mother, Dr. Olga C. De la Maza was a poet who died in 2002. Before her death, Elena edited and translated her poems in a bilingual book titled “Todo el mar Para mis Sueños/All the Sea for my Dreams,” which was published in 2001.
I doubt we will hear much about these books, because as usual, the U.S. media and academia ignore anything revealing about the Castro regime because it doesn’t fit comfortably with their slant. They are very careful not to offend the tyrant of Cuba, but have no misgivings about offending his victims.
The American people have to wake up to this reality of the mainstream media in America. Their main goals are profit and the imposition of their political left-leaning agenda that contradicts what the Founding Fathers dreamed and sacrificed for America.
It is an alarming reality. That is why we have to find alternative sources of news: The mainstream media cannot be relied upon for balanced reporting.
"The United Nations is a rectal threshold through which ill-mannered guests egress, but never go home."
"Any guest that treats you as discourteously in your own home . . .
deserves to get . . . his *** kicked (( link )) - - -
all the way back to the Third World - and possibly to the Fourth."
*** . . . my addition !
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