Cuban TV gives Obama’s visit less importance than a potato planting event
14ymedio, Havana, 21 March 2016 — The coverage provided by Cuban media and Telesur on US President Barack Obama’s arrival in Cuba on Sunday was absolutely disrespectful, not only to him and with regards to this historic event, but to the millions of families who were glued to their TVs waiting for the “special minute by minute broadcast” which was previously announced and which, as a kind of mockery, could be read only on the sliding tickers at the bottom of the screen.
After showing a few minutes of the landing of Air Force One and the greeting from Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, Telesur abruptly cut away for a special “analysis” delivered by the journalist from the Roundtable program, Arleen Rodriguez, along with two rancid anti-Americans, one Cuban and the other Canadian. The short segment then gave way to the program A Dwarf for A Prince, broadcasting children’s movies.
Meanwhile, Cuban National TV broadcast brief excerpts during the arrival, which were shown again in a brief report on primetime news, then talked about the usual things, as if Obama’s visit was one more potato planting event or something even less important.
Hundreds of the world media are reporting the event to millions of people in dozens of languages. Only we Cubans are left with an immense thirst for information.
Thanks to limited and expensive internet access, some of us were able to download pages from newspapers and blogs to learn more. Thousands of messages also came from abroad via the State telecommunications company’s Nauta email server, full of news.
The Cuban government doesn’t know what to do to limit the impact of the visit. I think never before has Raul been more eager for three days to pass quickly.
