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File photo of baseball fans reading a sports newspaper in Havana in 2002. CRISTOBAL HERRERA AP
The recent dismissal of two young Cuban journalists and a call to expel a foreign correspondent from the island are fueling a debate about censorship and freedom of expression in Cuba, as the state’s media monopoly for the first time faces competition from independent digital outlets.
When news broke on the death of the Miami Marlins’ Cuban-born star pitcher José Fernández, for example, several independent media outlets prominently displayed reports on the boating accident. The official media, however, remained largely silent — its typical treatment of sports figures it brands as “deserters.”
The scant coverage by the official news media — Cubadebate and at least one radio sportscaster reported the death — was all the more conspicuous precisely because of the recent expansion of access to the internet, which allows Cubans to read and view foreign news reports and independent media based in Cuba.
In fact, a recent report by the Committee to Protect Journalists said the island’s independent press is emerging despite a constitutional requirement that media be controlled by the one-party communist state.
Opinion writers, bloggers, filmmakers and others communicators have been creating new digital spaces for free expression and entrepreneurial journalism, even as they are still hindered by the threat of arbitrary detention and limited internet access, the report stated.
While it is true that the government has tolerated but not legally recognized independent media, that tolerance may be coming to an end.
Last month, José Ramírez Pantoja, a journalist with Radio Holguín, was fired after he posted on his personal blog the remarks of a deputy director of the Granma newspaper about possible street protests if the island’s economic troubles continue. Earlier this month, Maykel González Vivero, an LGBT activist, was fired from Radio Sagua for collaborating with the independent web sites OnCuba and Diario de Cuba.
And in August, Aixa Hevia, deputy director of the labor union that represents Cuban journalists, also called for the expulsion of Fernando Ravsberg, a Uruguayan journalist and former BBC correspondent who has posted several columns about the media’s problems on his blog, Cartas desde Cuba.
“I don’t believe it’s something personal. For years, the hardliners have been trying to halt the development of this new journalism that is just starting, even within the official media,” Ravsberg wrote in Spanish. “They blocked La Joven Cuba, accuse OnCuba and Progreso Semanal of ‘doing the enemy’s work’ and lash out at the blogs of local and foreign journalists, forcing them out of Cuban platforms, dismissing them from their jobs or asking that they be expelled from the country.”
FOR YEARS, THE HARDLINERS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO HALT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS NEW JOURNALISM THAT IS JUST STARTING, EVEN WITHIN THE OFFICIAL MEDIA.
Fernando Ravsberg, Cartas desde Cuba
Cuba’s mass media is a state monopoly controlled by the Ideology Department of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. La Joven Cuba is an independent blog by university students in the city of Matanzas. OnCuba is a Havana-based magazine that says it seeks “to foster communication between Cuba and the U.S.” Progreso Semanal is a Miami-based web page that posts many reports supporting the Cuban government.
Many journalists have long criticized the Communist Party’s censorship and demanded a new media law that does not question the island’s political model but allows them some independence and decision powers. Their demands have fallen on deaf ears.
But the population’s slowly growing access to the internet has opened the door to more blogs and digital media with a broad range of editorial stands and income from outside the Cuban government — from foreign fellowships and governments or private donors. One of the new media outlets, Periodismo de Barrio, recently published an editorial questioning the value of journalism controlled by the Communist Party.
IT’S NOT POSSIBLE TO SERVE, AT THE SAME TIME, THE INTERESTS OF SOCIETY AND THE INTERESTS OF THE PARTY THAT RULES THE STATE, BECAUSE THE INTERESTS OF BOTH SIDES DO NOT ALWAYS AGREE.
Periodismo de Barrio editorial
“It’s not possible to serve, at the same time, the interests of society and the interests of the Party that rules the state, because the interests of both sides do not always agree,” the editorial argued. “The news media and the Party do not have, and cannot have, a relationship of equals. The Party expects submission from the press.”
The conflict pitting the Communist Party, along with the more hardline sectors of the state media, against the independent digital media appears to go beyond ideology, because some of the attacks have targeted media relatively close to the government, such as La Joven Cubaand Progreso Semanal.
GENERATIONAL STRUGGLE
“In a sense, this is not a debate between ideologies but between old-school … and the new and easily alienated generation of digital natives who see social media both as a birthright and a necessary tool for life in the 21st century,” said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor who specializes on Cuban issues.
To further complicate the picture, many of the journalists working in official media have personal blogs or collaborate with the independent digital media in order to supplement their meager state salaries and enjoy more editorial freedoms. The Communist Party has been pushing many of them to stop working for others because of “a conflict of interests.” But the freelance work seems unlikely to stop any time soon.
“How many times, in how many conferences and meetings, have our colleagues warned about the need to reverse the very limited salaries of journalists?” several young journalists in the Santa Clara newspaper Vanguardia wrote in a June letter to the journalists’ union. “But salary increases, as well as the Media Law and the reorganization of the communications media, have taken too long.”
The journalists argued that they were not trying “to hurt the Revolution” but rather to build “a diverse Cuba.” They also complained that they were being closely monitored by State Security agents and added that “it should be taken as an advantage, and not as a risk, that it is we — young journalists forged in Cuban universities — who are collaborating with those (independent) media.”
The letter points to a generational conflict.
It is mostly young Cubans who are developing the new independent media and who are pushing for mass access to the internet and social networks. They are also the principal victims of the hardliners’ attacks.
“The debates about technology are always generational, to some degree,” Henken said.
Besides firing and harassing the young journalists, the government appears to be reaching for two other strategies to stop the spread of independent journalists on the island.
One is to link them to supposedly subversive digital campaigns by the U.S. government. Granma, the official voice of the Communist Party, recently attacked independent journalists in columns signed by hardline blogger Iroel Sánchez and Raúl Antonio Capote, a State Security agent who spied on independent reporters and others.
CUBAN INSTITUTIONS HAVE A LEGITIMATE RIGHT TO ADOPT THE NECESSARY MEASURES WHEN FACING A TENDENTIOUS JOURNALISM …
Iroel Sánchez, Cuban blogger
“Cuban institutions have a legitimate right to adopt the necessary measures when facing a tendentious journalism, marked by superficiality, a lack of context and inaccuracy, that assists the media war and those who aspire to dismantle socialism in our country,” Sánchez wrote.
Capote’s column alleged that journalists “who can one day write in the revolutionary media, in Granma, in Juventud Rebelde and others, and the next day in the enemy media” were mercenaries and “messengers for the restoration of capitalism.”
The second strategy might be to make it clear that the existence of private media in Cuba is strictly illegal. That’s what Rosa Myriam Elizalde, deputy director of CubaDebate, has suggested twice in recent months.
“But you can’t hide the sun with a finger. In the long term, access (to internet) will spread and the Cuban media will diversify,” Henken said, although he nevertheless believes that the government will retain control of the content and infrastructure of the mass media.
The journalists in Periodismo de Barrio say that the real challenge is even bigger, and that the Cuban news media must change hand-in-hand with political changes.
“It’s not just the news media that must recover its credibility in Cuba. All our institutions need to recover their credibility. But the Party, the government and the state will not achieve that by themselves or only with the help of those who obey them, which is another form of isolation,” stated the publication’s editorial.
“If we aspire to a more just nation, an economic opening is not enough. The opening must be social, political, cultural, for information and for the media,” it added. “And we cannot wait for it to simply fall out of the sky. Cuban society must continue, little by little, to win its independence.”
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