By Flor de Paz

This Friday, August 26, Hugo Rius Blein, José Martí National Journalism Award winner for his life’s work, passed away. The interview that follows is just over five years old. From it emerged (and vice versa) a television capsule that we have placed at the end of the text. With it, the Union of Cuban Journalists remembers his life and his dedication to journalism.

 There is a photo in which Hugo Felipe Rius Blein is mounted on a camel, in front of the Great Sphinx of one of the pyramids of Giza, in Egypt. In 1953, exactly ten years before the moment he records the snapshot, he had contemplated them through a View-Master (3D slide viewer) that the wise men had “brought” to him. But the contraption came alone, without any of those cardboard discs and little windows through which the transparent images peeked out. To buy the first one, he scraped together 50 cents, coin by coin. And in a little store, located in San José between Galiano and Águila, in the heart of Havana at the time, he chose the “compact” of Egyptian landscapes. Prenuncio or luck? For Rius Blein, the initial assignment that they made him in Prensa Latina: to be a correspondent for the Agency in the mythical country of Northwest Africa.

“I wished for it, but it was life that took me there.” And if you go to Cairo, you have to go see the pyramids and ride a camel.

Hugo was born on August 23, 1940 in the Havana neighborhood of Luyanó, where he also became an adult. From his father, Ramón, a tobacco shop reader, of Catalan descent, he inherited a surname (it means rivers) with which he has little luck being spelled correctly. The legacy of her mother, Mercedes, a destemmer by trade who devoted herself to caring for her children at home, is a variation of the original Bleu. She was the granddaughter of a 19th century free-belly black woman who adopted the Blen (wrong) from her owners. And later, when Hugo, the second of a progeny of two, took out his birth registration for the first time, he knew that they had written him down as Blein, and he stayed with him. Ramón and Mercedes had offspring between the fourth and fifth decade of their lives, “they were very humble people and they gave me a lot of love.”

—Runs in my veins black blood, Chinese coolies[i] and Catalan. My maternal grandmother was a mixture of black and Chinese.

When he was able to read and write, it was the most important moment of Hugo’s childhood. “Because without being literate you don’t know the world, you don’t know life, you’re not going to grow up”. Later, he especially remembers his birthday days, because of his parents’ efforts to make him feel flattered, happy; and Christmas Eve and waiting for the new year, hours in which the family gathered around a table seized by attachment and simplicity.

From adolescence, he does not forget that he was the best record of the course in high school. This condition allowed him to win a scholarship and prepare to enter the Normal School for Teachers, at a time when he also managed to compartmentalize studies with the Márquez Sterling Professional School of Journalism. Later, at the age of 29, he graduated, and after a long period in teaching journalism, Full Professor and Master in Communication Sciences. Because he has always been a teacher and journalist.

His vocation for journalism? It comes from the job of Ramón, his father, who came home every day with a mountain of newspapers and a red and blue pencil to mark what he considered important to communicate to the cigar workers. Little Hugo accompanied him and lived this daily exercise intensely. Thus was born in him a feeling of appreciation for the paper, for the purpose of transmitting news.

—I perceived that newspapers were very important, like food and water.

An article in which he fought for Cuba to have a national merchant marine, in a mimeographed newspaper that he did in the Superior School was his first journalistic adventure; he was fourteen or fifteen years old. In the Normal, he created the student Horizonte, which only reached one or two runs. During his time at Márquez Sterling he also produced a small newspaper, until he collaborated with the real ones: Hoy, El Mundo, Revolución, Juventud Rebelde and Granma.

During the last years of the 50s, and as part of the masonic youth (Association of Young Hope of the Fraternity), Hugo was linked with some brothers, “which is what we called him then” incorporated into the Movement 26 of July. And so he performed some tasks in the field of propaganda; among them, sending proclamations to Batista’s military in which they were warned that the tyranny was not going to last long, that they take a social position in life. Also, he went to the houses of some members of the underground in the provinces who had had to flee, to inform their relatives about them and collect clothes and other items that they had left behind.

—The same way I brought food to the prisoners of the Prince’s Castle, of my own lodge, where the possible money was collected. They are the small tasks that I fulfilled in the fight against tyranny, small in my opinion, but with a lot of commitment.

…

He is almost 78 years old and has dedicated his life to journalism. He remembers his beginnings, in 1962, at the Agencia Prensa Latina (PL), with a sustained gaze and reflective cadence. “Then it was still a journalist project, because he was only 22.” And so, based on decades of professional experience, he usually explains to his students of the optional subject International Journalism, that even at thirty years old one is barely a promise and at forty is when one knows if one really is a journalist.

—Without ruling out precocity. But if precocity does not assume a fundamental value: humility, they can be lost along the way.

That is why he describes his work as PL’s correspondent in Egypt as premature, barely a year after joining the Agency; although he is proud of having put all his will and knowledge into this task to do the job to the best of his ability.

Egypt was a privilege for me. It gave me great opportunities, like covering the founding of what is now the African Union, then the Organization of African Unity. His first conference was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“I was able to make it to the royal palace and meet and greet then-legendary Emperor Haile Selassie; the real character of The Emperor, by Ryszard Kapuscinski. I was at the entrance of the palace where Selassie used to have a live lion chained to a tree. Even Rius Blein coincided in Ethiopia with the Polish journalist and witnessed some of the scenes that he narrates in his work. “And now I am passionate about Kapuscinski’s books.”

It is around three in the afternoon on February 4, 2018. The set of the interview is Hugo’s real work space in her apartment on Calle Línea, in which the audiovisual director has barely made any changes before to film. An art deco style bureau, in front of a huge wood and glass bookcase, identifies the place set with plants, framed photos and diplomas, writing devices, small figures carved in precious African woods and other bookcases and tables, one of them for the computer and dissimilar devices associated with the digital age.

Rius Blein speaks slowly and in a low voice, without moving his hands too much. He is not disturbed by the cameras that focus on him. He does not miss the rhythm of the speech. He doesn’t smile. He maintains the tone of someone who owns a great fortune: the quarries of human culture to which he has been able to access, immersed as he was always in the routines of the worlds he knew to try to catch them in his learning; or also in the sources of reading. “Just like Ulysses on his trip to Ithaca. He arrived without material wealth, but he has the wealth of experiences. They are footprints that stay with you forever.

During the interview, Hugo thanks his wife, María del Carmen Marín, with whom he has two children, for everything he has achieved in his profession; for the tranquility with which he has been able to do it, for the love and patience that he has had for her. “This work often implies a share of neglect and renunciation of family enjoyment, in pursuit of an informative task. We have been together in all correspondents; she has been involved in the work and she has also known those other worlds.”

…

In Algeria, its destination after Egypt, the PL correspondent was located in an old house with Moorish architecture, which had been the headquarters of the OAS (the terrorist group that tried to prevent that country’s independence), thanks to the help of the first president Ahmed Ben Bella. There, one night, Che appeared with the Cuban ambassador, who was Commander Serguera. And this is another of Hugo’s stories.

—I was a second journalist, learning from Gabriel Molina Franchossi, an important figure in Cuban journalism. Photography obsessed me at that time, to the point that I would spend hours in a room-studio developing, in addition to doing my work as a correspondent. As a photographer I was the only one who covered that second visit of Che to the North African nation. The images I took were also the only ones published by Algerian newspapers. So, that night Molina decided to show them to Che. He checked them very carefully, and suddenly asked:

“Who made them?”

I answered, and he told me:

—Better dedicate yourself to studying economics.

That hit me like a bucket of cold water, but he immediately clarified:

—It’s just that I’m very fat; It’s not the photographer’s fault.

Some time later I discovered that in the background of his comment was the disagreement with his physique, facing the guerrilla projects that he was already nesting.

As part of that conversation, Che also told Rius about the time he used to take photos in Mexico’s Zócalo. “People passed by and he photographed them. In addition, he sold little virgins of Guadalupe. And I, in my innocence of age, told him that he lost if he threw away the photo and then they didn’t want to buy it. And he replied mischievously:

— And you think I’m stupid? First I pretended to throw away the photo, and if they picked up the piece of paper I told them, wait, I’m going to take a better one for you, and that’s when I really threw it away.

“Molina and I had worried about making a small library on Africa in a corner of that house in Addis Ababa; Che discovered it and went crazy with the books we had. And of course he ransacked the shelf for us.”

…

In the scaffolding of his stories, Rius Blein places the time and space of his existence, substantiated by events of universal value that he has witnessed, and by the diversity of human ways of living appreciated in much of the planet, but especially on the African continent.

The First Congress of the ANC and the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa, is one of the events that he places among his significant emotions. “It was the first time that he went to the apartheid country and, furthermore, at the time that the ANC was no longer clandestine, he already had a formal citizenship card, because he always had a real one. And seeing that giant of history that was Nelson Mandela emerge up close, in a South Africa without apartheid, is a lesson in what it means to believe in a cause regardless of the sacrifice, the hardships. If you believe in it, you can achieve the sacred goal.”

From Ethiopia, he admires the kindness, affection and loyalty of that people with the Cubans. “At first I was crushed by the misery I found; but later, I got to know the nature of the Ethiopians, the respect they have for hierarchies, not only formal but also intellectual and human”. And that was the country where he most enjoyed professional accomplishments.

In addition to the founding of the African Union, Ethiopia, one of the oldest countries in the world, experienced the revolution led by Mengistu, Fidel’s visit, significant solidarity conferences and, finally, the arrival of the rebels when Mengistu fled and the country entered a situation of great violence and danger.

—Before that moment, there was an attempted coup and I was able to be the first to break the news. When my colleagues decided to say it, their communications had already been closed. I knew what happened through a boy who sold candy and chewing gum, whom I always bought to help him. We were near the Ministry of Defense and I asked him in Amharic: what’s going on? He, in his poor English, told me that they had killed the Minister of Defense. And indeed, they had killed him. That is why all sources must be respected.

Also in Ethiopia, he witnessed the extraordinary work of Cuban doctors, the presence of fighters from the island on the border and his contribution to defending the integrity of the country against the aggression of Somalia.

—That’s when they arrest Cardoso Villavicencio and take him to Somalia.

And in 1988, when the combatant’s long solitary captivity was broken, Hugo Rius was one of the first two Cuban reporters to receive him at the foot of the steps of an airplane upon his arrival at the Ethiopian Dire Dawa airport.

But Rius’s bond with Ethiopia is so deep that even he had the misfortune of closing the PL office in Addis Ababa, when the Agency went into crisis in the 1990s, due to the economic problems Cuba suffered. So he moved to Zimbabwe.

—It hurt me so much that, years later, when there was talk of reopening offices in several countries, I said: if they ask for a correspondent for Ethiopia, I’ll leave with what I’m wearing. At that time I was in the UN (2000-2005), and the people there did not believe me. But the idea of ​​going back to the country in the Horn of Africa was more valuable to me than staying at the United Nations, without letting me stop thinking that it was also important.

At the UN, he had to cover dramatic and significant events such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Cuba’s resounding victories in the votes against the United States blockade, and he also had to move in the host city within the restricted 25 miles, under the very hostile government of Bush Jr.

…

To exercise journalism, Rius has had the good fortune to be in various media. For Prensa Latina, he was a correspondent in Egypt, in Algeria; in Ethiopia, for the horn of Africa; in Zimbabwe, for Southern Africa, and at the UN and in Vietnam. He is now the editor of the PL English website.

“The Agency has given me the charm of immediacy. A spell that gravitates towards achieving, in a short time, the precise text; dense and brief at the same time. And those are also his challenges.

PL, where he has been for two stages (1962-65 and 1988 to date), opened doors to realities such as wars, conflicts, coups, calamities. By the way, he recalls an anecdote from the 19th century, by Henry Morton Stanley (a journalist for British and American publications), which he captured in his book The Search for Dr. Livingstone: Journey to the Middle of Africa. This great explorer had been lost for two years and was finally found by Stanley north of Lake Tanganyika. The man went with his arsenal of questions, and before he could ask the first, Livingstone told him: ‘Tell me, journalist, what’s going on in the world?’

—Well, that’s what a journalist on international affairs or from an agency like PL does. That is to say, he builds the “Imago world”, he says what happens, because the world is no longer wide and alien, now it is narrow and his own, thanks to the development of new communications technologies.

Through Bohemia (1972-87), Hugo Rius experiences a deep feeling of closeness. “It was the medium that trained me to write my books[ii], by having the possibility of recreating what happened, because it is a publication that is not limited to punctual, immediate information. So, you can play with literature a bit, make a bit of literature. There, I matured, grew up and felt very fulfilled professionally. I was also a writer specializing in Africa and the Middle East, chief information officer and deputy director”

As a special correspondent for the magazine, he covered the ECLAC conference in Guatemala and the UN General Assembly in 1977; Fidel’s visit to Ethiopia and Cozumel, and the first steps in the process of change in the country on the eastern end of Africa, in 1978. He toured Yemen, Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola and Benin, where he reported on Cuban internationalist work on different fronts. In Angola, he traveled with joint FAPLA and FAR troops to the Quibala-Eboe, Ambriz-Ambrizete fronts until the fall of Santo Antonio do Zaire, with the forces of the Cuban commander Zayas and the similar Angolan Antonio Dos Santos (N ´Give it). He was also in Benguela and Huambo. Based in Luanda, he accompanied President Neto to Santo Tomas and Principe as a journalist. And he toured Afghanistan at a time of clashes between a progressive government and the CIA-armed Taliban.

…

Vietnam was for Rius a pending issue. Because in 1965 he had a lapse in his journalistic work, he worked at the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples as a French language guide, and later he was director of Afroasia there.

— I was part of the organization of the Tricontinental Conference in 1966, and then we were very concerned with Vietnam, with the entire solidarity movement that was generated. I wanted to go to Vietnam, what Cuban doesn’t want to go?

But the invitation came to him at a time when he was in Poland. The then President Jaruzelski had given him an interview, and he was unable to go to Vietnam. Until in 2011 he had the opportunity to visit the country he imagined: that of the Vietnamese walking through the streets with their sticks and a load of fruit, a very impoverished country.

—It was very surprising to see how in such a short time it had become a nation of medium consumption, according to the UN classification. That is, they raised the industry and take advantage of technology.

“They have solved the fundamental problems: food, clothing, transportation, and around the difficulties with housing, they have looked for alternatives, due to the little space they have left to develop. So, at every turn, I experienced a mixture of blue envy and shame. Because I think: Caramba, we were helping this people that was made of land and when they finally defeated the North Americans in ’75 there was a poverty level of fifty-nine percent, they had to import rice to eat, they had nothing . However, today they donate the rice to us, and the coffee also comes from there!”

…

Hugo Rius Blein, in 1970, gave Salvador Allende the first telephone interview for Cuban radio. After much insistence, the newly elected president answered the call.

— He spoke to me about what his victory meant on the third occasion that he was running, about the need to make changes in Chile. And it was obvious that he was very besieged by the press and by many people.

Rius’s journalistic career was then in a germinal phase and it was the most intense stage of his work on radio and television (1967-1972), when he also wrote scripts for the audiovisuals of the Teatro Testimonio program, which dramatized Latin American conflicts. At the same time, he made comments on Radio Rebelde, without disdaining that, during the 10 million harvest, he was a reporter and director of Radio Reloj, nor that he was an international commentator for NTV and the current affairs roundtables at the time.

From his current journalistic activity, La Coletilla highlights his contribution to Cubadebate. Rosa Miriam Elizalde involved him, and “it has been a pleasure to write various articles for that space, since “it is the most conceptually and practically advanced Cuban media.” However, he does not omit his exercise as an opinion columnist in Juventud Rebelde, and more recently in Granma.

Now, Hugo Rius Blein has many completed works and not a few in the pipeline; he has the respect of his colleagues and his students (especially when they call him Kapuscinski behind his back); he has life to live; He has children; has grandchildren; he has María del Carmen, he has journalism!

— Journalism?: Capturing the essences of life. Because without looking for the essence of what you are reporting, without transmitting a breath of guidance or at least a mobilizing breath of other people’s thinking, you cannot speak of journalism. Journalism is to contribute to the mobilization of other people’s intelligence, of human cognition.

Yirmara is not going to like this chronicle, but I have to write it. I have forced myself to do it. Naive me, who believes that a text can be at the height of a journalist like her.

If someone talks about Yirmara Torres, immediately there will be someone who says “teacher”, “news chief”, “president of the Union of Cuban Journalists in Matanzas”, “reporter to all”. To this we must add that Yirmara is a journalist at the foot of danger, and she showed it to us —in case anyone doubted it— in the coverage of the worst fire in the history of Cuba, which occurred at the Matanzas supertanker base.

She served as president of the provincial Upec, worrying about the journalists who suffered burns when she blew up the first tank and the fire wanted to devour the first thing in front of it. She visited them, called them. She had coffee with them.

And, because humility also lies in not wanting perks when she holds a position, she Yirmara put the transportation of the Upec de Matanzas based on the coverage of the fire. I will always repeat, wherever I stop, that Cubadebate owes the coverage we did to Yirmara Torres.

I don’t know how she manages it, but in addition to providing us with her house for a few hours of sleep for almost a week, and in addition to taking care of her work as president of Upec, Yirmara did not fail to report the incident even one single day

On Monday, August 8, at three in the morning, one of the explosions caught us at her command post, very close to the area of ​​the fire. It was the first time I felt fear, the heat hit you in the face and my hands were shaking. Yirmara noticed. She was serene. There is nothing more rewarding than in moments like that, someone telling you that everything is going to be alright. That was Yirmara.

Yirmara was also the one who came with teary eyes to give me the best news she received that day. In a voice message from her, a young firefighter told her: “Honey, I’m the boy you interviewed, I’m alive.” If there is one thing a journalist cannot lack, it is sensitivity, and Yirmara has more than enough, just as she had the courage to approach danger and keep an entire country informed.

There is one thing we all agree on. Yirmara doesn’t like to talk about herself, she prefers —and it’s nice that she does— to highlight the work of others. For this reason, I am sure, Yirmara will not like this chronicle.

(By: Andy Jorge Blanco/ Cubadebate)

In images of the arbitrary arrest, anyone can see how the police dragged him into a van, despite the protests of colleagues.

Is this not a clear violation of the free exercise of journalism and why does Reporters Without Borders (RSF) remain silent about this violation of free press rights?

A fallacious report by this organization recently ranked Cuba no.171 in terms of the existence of conditions for the exercise of press freedom, placing the island in last place in Latin America and the Caribbean.

RSF is a Paris-based organization and an unconditional supporter of the U.S. government, which has for years been characterized by its obsessive opposition to the Cuban Revolution, Bolivarian Venezuela, and Sandinista Nicaragua.

In 2005, the group participated in the campaign promoted by the George W. Bush administration to prevent tourists from traveling to Cuba. It should not be forgotten that the Bush Plan included a budget of five million dollars for NGOs to “carry out activities to dissuade tourists from travelling to Cuba.” Part of this ” booty” went into the coffers of the RSF.

For years, these “reporters” have devoted themselves to financing pseudo-journalists who work in the service of U.S. interests.

Their manifest bias in favor of Washington’s interests in Iraq, Libya, Haiti, Iran, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile is more than clear: year after year, in their fallacious reports, they condemn countries considered “enemies” of the U.S. or simply those who do not follow the dictates of the White House to the letter.

Where do these gentlemen, supposed defenders of freedom of the press and freedom of expression, acquire the substantial funding the organization has at its disposal?

Mr. Robert Ménard, one of the organization’s founders, a few years ago openly admitted having funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Ménard was very clear: “We do indeed receive money from the NED. And that poses no a problem for us.” [1]

RSF has never hidden its relationship to the world’s powerful. “One day we had a financial issue. I called the industrialist Francois Pinault to help us…. He immediately responded to my request. And that’s all that matters,” because “The law of gravity exists, dear friends. And also the law of money,” Menard stated callously. [2]

Reporters Without Borders is funded by the Dassault Group, by Hewlett Packard and the Overbrook Foundation, founded by Frank Altschul, which promotes Radio Free Europe; by Lagardère Publishing, the Hachette Foundation, the Open Society Institute and by the French daily Libération, and pockets substantial resources from the world’s largest media conglomerates.

RSF benefits from the money the U.S. government allocates every year to subvert the internal order in Cuba, through NED, USAID, Freedom House, the Center for a Free Cuba, the Cuban-American National Foundation, the Czech NGO People in Need, and other organizations that among the collection of institutions that serve to screen U.S. government and CIA attacks on the Cuban Revolution.

In a report dated January 15, 2004, the group exonerated the U.S. military from any responsibility for the murder of Spanish journalist José Couso and his Ukrainian colleague Taras Protsyuk at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. These “reporters” offered apologies for the invasion of Iraq on August 16, 2007 during the radio program “Contre-expertise,” and Robert Ménard, then the organization’s secretary general, legitimized the use of torture.

During the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in April of 2002, they openly supported the plotters, as well as the coups against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Zelaya in Honduras, and Evo Morales in Bolivia.

The French daily Libération itself, the organization’s sponsor, noted that Reporters Without Borders does not say a word about the abuses of the Western media: “From now on, press freedom will either be exotic or won’t exist. Many reproach the group for its ferocity against Cuba and Venezuela, and indulgence toward the United States, which is not false.” [3]

Reporters Without Borders has an owner and has no borders when it comes to receiving money from the transnationals, the oligopolies, the rich of this world.

How can anyone be independent, as they proclaim, who subordinates their work and auctions off its morals and ethics to the dictates of the powerful? RSF is an organic part of the empire’s global apparatus, providing pretexts to justify aggression and demonize the enemies of capitalist hegemonic power.

In Context

-Between 1998 and 1999, the USAID Cuba Program devoted more than six million dollars to internal subversion in our country.

-In 2001 alone, there were more than 200 personal deliveries of funds to “activists” and “independent journalists,” estimated to be more than 100,000 dollars.

-Between fiscal years 2001 and 2006, the USAID allocated 61 million dollars to Cuba for some 142 projects.

-The Cuba Program was allocated more than 120 million USD between 2007 and 2013.

-The programs with the “Freedom of Information” label sponsored, between 2014 and 2017, some 39 projects, with an amount of more than six million dollars. NED contributed another two million.

-In 2018, NED gave Cubanet News Inc. $220,000 to promote “Freedom of Information,” $60,000 to Hypermedia Publishing Inc, $72,000 to the Institute of Communication and Development, and $65,000 to “integrate” Cuba with regional media networks (targeting young journalists).

-USAID and NED subversive programs against Cuba in the last fiscal year 2018-2019, include an estimated 70-plus projects promoted inside and outside the country, with an allocation of more than 14 million USD.

(Sources: Razones de Cuba, Cubainformación, writings by Salim Lamrani & Jean-Guy Allard)

Today, in 2019, the corporate media is more powerful and the resources available to mount campaigns against Cuba greater, but the purpose of the United States is the same: destroy the Revolution.

During the luminous January of 1959, following the triumph of the Revolution, Cuba’s nascent government was fulfilling one its moral commitments: bringing to justice the terrorists, criminals, and torturers of the Batista dictatorship who had caused the people so much pain and mourning, amidst a ferocious media campaign to discredit the trials, orchestrated by the United States, where many of these murderers had already taken refuge.

Fidel immediately perceived Washington’s objective, thinly veiled behind the lies and manipulation.

First, on January 13, 15, and 16, in public appearances, he recalled how the U.S. press and government had ignored the crimes of the Batista dictatorship and, after the revolutionary victory, denounced measures taken against Batista’s henchmen.

The people, who not only asked for but demanded justice, gathered in front of the Presidential Palace, a million strong. Thus, Operation Truth was launched, with some 380 foreign journalists on hand, plus many diplomats, and other guests.

Fidel addressed the crowd, and asked, “Those who agree that justice should be administered, those who agree that the minions be shot, raise your hands (Unanimously, hands are raised). Gentlemen, representatives of the diplomatic corps, journalists from across the continent, the jury of a million Cubans, of all beliefs and social classes, has voted.”The world recognized this vote as the grand jury of the people, saying yes to revolutionary justice. It was January 21, 1959 and the Revolution had the people’s support.Fidel added: “I do not answer to any Congressman in the United States or any foreign government. I am accountable to the people, first of all, to my people.”He was referring to a group of U.S. Congressmen who opposed – with what right? – the prosecution of Batista’s war criminals and requested that the State Department intervene in the matter.This was the pretext for launching economic sanctions, first the suspension of the sugar quota, then the commercial blockade, and the possibility of sending troops considered.

January 22, in Havana’s Hotel Rivera, Fidel held what he called the world’s largest press conference, Operation Truth, regarding the public trials of Batista’s henchmen. An unrelenting media campaign against Cuba was unleashed by the Associated Press, United Press, Inter-American Press Society, and several Congress members.

Nonetheless, as an article by Juan Marrero noted, upon returning to their countries, many of the journalists who came to Cuba to cover the trials were not allowed to publish their reports, and some became friends of Cuba, although this position would cost them their jobs.

(Granma)

It’s bad enough to be so reckless with such dangerous rhetoric. But when this is all accomplished through the shoddiest of “reporting” – mindlessly repeating what anonymous intelligence officials tell journalists to say without a whiff of evidence – then it’s clear that the same journalistic pathologies that led to front-page reports of Saddam’s nuclear stockpile and alliance with Osama bin Laden continue to shape corporate journalism today, particularly at NBC and MSNBC.

(Source:theintercept.com)

During a workshop on Communication and Media at the 24th Meeting of the Forum of Sao Paulo, the Latin American news agency also convened an important meeting of journalists and international media in Havana on January 21 and 22.

Jorge Luna, director of Social Communication at Prensa Latina, stressed that it is a meeting to cover the major professional problems that threaten current and future generations of journalists.

Dangers of Latin American journalism, alternative media and globalization and the use of new technologies are some of the issues that will be addressed by the specialists, he said.

These debates will take place in the framework of the commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the founding of Prensa Latina, an agency that emerged after the realization of ‘Operacion Verdad’ (Truth Operation), which brought together, in 1959, 400 journalists to know the reality of Cuba, targeted by hostile campaigns from international agencies.

The workshop was attended by dozens of specialists from the region, who agreed on the need to coordinate the communication actions of the popular forces against the media campaigns of governments and right-wing media.

(Prensa Latina)

The director of the International Institute of Journalism Jose Marti, Ariel Terrero, led the debate with the presentation of the paper ‘The Press Model Cuba Dreams With.’

Terrero pointed out the need for socialism to build a more truthful, attractive and higher-quality press than in capitalism, in line with the information needs of human beings.

In this regard, he urged the media and its professionals to commit themselves to a model capable of timely reporting to the people and defending the national identity and culture, independence, sovereignty and dignity of Cuba.

Several delegates to the congress, installed yesterday at the Havana Convention Center, intervened to highlight the importance of reflecting the reality of the country and its people in a critical and constructive manner.

They also addressed the need for access to sources that guarantee the disclosure of information relevant to society.

In this regard, they called for a greater presence in the media of officials linked to sensitive sectors and issues of high social interest.

Other participants in the forum, which brings together more than 260 delegates from across the country, called for the promotion of a deep, ethical and professional journalism, framed in the process of updating Cuban socialism.

The 10th Congress of the UPEC -an organization that brings together almost 4,000 workers in the sector- culminates this Saturday after two days of debates, focused on the recently approved Communication Policy of the State and Government.

The Communication Policy has among its principles the ratification of the social ownership of the media and the public nature of the broadcasting and telecommunications services.

In the same way, it insists on the right of people to information, communication and knowledge, and prioritizes access to information and communication technologies.

(Prensa Latina)

Other issues that will be under discussion are the use of social media and ways to handle the continued defamation campaign against Cuba and false news reporting.

Participants in this event will work in five committees: UPEC functioning, Ethics and communication, Media aggression against Cuba, Innovation and new technologies, and Content management.

According to the program, the UPEC National Committee will be presented, and after the initial debates, the Statutes and the Code of Ethics will be put to vote.

Delegates will also elect the Union’s president and approve the plan of action for the next five years.

The Congress will be dedicated to the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro; the 55th anniversary of UPEC (founded on July 15, 1963); and Antonio Molto, late president of the Union who passed away in August 2017.

(Prensa Latina)