Posted on 10/12/2007 3:25:56 AM PDT by paudio
Despite spending $600 million to get its propaganda message to the people of Cuba, the U.S. has failed to find an effective way to counter the Communist country's technical blockage of TV Marti and Radio Marti, according to NBC's Mark Potter. Although the channel is now carried by the DirecTV satellite service and is beamed over the island from aircraft flying north of the Cuban coast, Potter noted in a report on MSNBC.com, a report to Congress indicated that fewer than one percent of Cuban households watched TV Marti during the past year. (Satellite dishes are forbidden in Cuba.) Penn State professor of communications John Nichols told NBC, "They're getting zero bang for their buck. It's counterproductive to U.S. foreign-policy interests. It's embarrassing ourselves to the rest of the world, and we're in violation of international law." He added that the station often focuses on Cuban-exile politics in South Florida and that its real purpose is "to curry favor with a very important U.S. domestic political constituency." Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake agreed. "It's a mess. ... Republicans have used it lately, but Democrats have used this issue as well to mine for voters." But Alberto Mascaro, head of the government office that oversees TV Marti, insisted, "We are giving a service to people who don't have the freedom and democracy that we all enjoy."
Are we using spectrum allocated to Cuban broadcasters? Just wondering.
It’s never a good sign when a regime, like Tehran, outlaws satellite dishes.
Technical blockage? They make is sound as if Cuba has some ultra-jamming technique going on here when in reality they simply don't allow radios and TVs that can pick up these broad casts.
This is liberal BS from NBC News which should have been investigating the SCHIP coming out of Washington that would give families earning over 80-thousand a year our tax dollars.
And when RM first came on the air, the Cubans jammed AM radio stations as far away as TX and AZ. Radio waves don’t stop at the border.
China still employs jammers on SWBC bands regularly.
I don't deny that Cuba most likely jams some signals, but they are hardly the technological wonders the article made them out to be, plus we have ways of unjamming signals if we wished to employ them. I know about radio waves, please don't presume to tell other people about things they might already know, and the next time read the comment a little better before you reply to one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.