24 Hours of News / Regina Coyula

It’s excellent news that we will soon have a 24-hour news channel. Positive at first sight, but for me, so disenchanted with the information policy of my country (as a consequence of the political policy), the existence of of 24 hours of uninterrupted news transmission is beyond my imagination.

We have the 2-hour morning news, one-hour midday news, the prime time of 30 minutes and a bulletin at midnight. Ah! And the Roundtable. That, not to mention the paper press and the radio stations, one of which was originally meant to be a 24 hour news station.

Despite so much supposed information, we are the most disinformed people in the world. Most of the time the transmission of “information” covers the achievements in urban agriculture, the anti-mosquito campaign, the doctors in Haiti, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and the imminent collapse of capitalism and the global campaign for the release of the “five heroes.”

Here in the blog I have said enough on the subject, because it’s exhausting to hear that we are the most educated people in the world, and with respect to the news they treat is as if we were feeble-minded. I watch “The Best of Telesur” which is aired here a day late and hell, they offer news, on this program I find — with the delay, the point of view — that there are a ton of things that happen in the world and they don’t exist in the numerous Cuban news outlets.

A work by Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera takes this on, originally published in the Catholic magazine Lay Space and then reproduced in numerous media about the theme of the press. Aside from the profession of faith that he makes to say what he says, I would subscribe to his point of view. It strikes me that although the country’s leadership has called on the press to play a more active role, the press hasn’t moved a single millimeter, including the directors of the organs that continue the same as always. Is it that in the press they also confirm those responsible for the mistake without renouncing or removing them?

November 18 2011