Cuban Superstars

      

Not Just Baseball Players!!
{UPDATED, Friday, May 26th, 2017}

       The island of Cuba has often been credited with producing per capita the world's best baseball players, per capita the world's best ballet performers, per capita the world's most doctors, etc. Some visitors to the island or to venues like YouTube are now beginning to think that little embargoed Cuba might also, somehow, be producing the "best broadcast journalists in North America," as one veteran British broadcast journalist remarked after a recent observant visit to the island. The photo above was taken this week -- May 24th, 2017 -- during an interview on the set of a typical Cuban television news program. The young superstar broadcast journalist is Rosy Amaro Perez and she is interviewing Patrick Faber, the Deputy Prime Minister of Belize. Mr. Faber took the opportunity to thank the Cuban government and Cuban people for "sending doctors to save so many lives in my country." Cuban universities not only have excellent broadcast journalism professors but they stress practical, hands-on audio, video, and technical training. Thus, upon graduation, young broadcast journalists like Rosy Amaro Perez are already veterans.

Rosy Amaro Perez.

Rosy & her daughter; note the duplicate dresses.

        The most famous of Cuba's broadcast journalists is Cristina Escobar. An extraordinarily skilled anchor and interviewer, her fame has extended well beyond the island via a regional television news program in English as well as YouTube videos. Also, of course, Cristina Escobar is the only Cuban journalist that has asked questions at a White House news conference in Washington and there she made headlines with no less than six pertinent questions in English answered by President Barack Obama's Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Then before she left Washington, she was congratulated by U. S. broadcasters like NBC's Andrea Mitchell and she had multiple requests to speak before Washington-area groups and to be interviewed herself on U. S. television. In such forums she made more headlines with these two comments: "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba" and "Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington."

      This photo was taken when Cristina Escobar was interviewed in Mobile, Alabama on the Fox television station Channel 10. It is a long, insightful interview in English and you can dial it up using the title "TOP CUBAN ANCHOR TALKS US-CUBA RELATIONS" -- Fox 10, Mobile, Alabama. The Fox-10 anchor, Lenise Ligon, prefaced the interview by calling Cristina "Cuba's young superstar news anchor." She is indeed. While in Mobile, Cristina spoke to journalism classes at the University of South Alabama and at Spring Hill College.

      In addition to being Cuba's young superstar news anchor, Cristina Escobar herself is an excellent interview subject because of her outspokenness and her expertise on U.S.-Cuban history and topicality. She graduated from the University of Havana in 2011 and her thesis expertly and eerily predicted how President Barack Obama's refreshingly brave and decent overtures to Cuba would affect the island now and then effect U.S.-Cuban relations beyond Obama's two presidential terms. Now when she says things like..."Cuba's fate is up to Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington," she means it. And when she says things like..."Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba," she means that too. That latter quote is certainly debatable but it comes from an informed and astute Cuban source -- the island's superstar broadcast journalist who also happens to have a keen knowledge of U.S.-Cuban history, which includes the 1976 car-bombing of Miami's top Cuban-American broadcast journalist, Emilio Milian, after he criticized terrorism against innocent Cubans.

In Cuba Cristina Escobar has a new set and a new channel.

Cubans trust her.

And Americans respect her.

Speaking of broadcast journalism:

       Incredibly, as of this last week in May of 2017, Rachel Maddow has emerged as the face of broadcast journalism in America. The Big Three network news operations -- NBC, CBS, and ABC -- get by far the most viewers on their 6:30 PM half-hour broadcasts but the three cable "news" operators -- Fox, CNN and MSNBC -- control prime-time hours from 8:oo PM till 11:00 PM each night. For the past two decades, Fox had dominated cable news with a right-wing tilt engineered by its founder Roger Ailes and its superstar anchor Bill O'Reilly. But recently both Ailes, who died this month, and O'Reilly have been fired by Fox because of sex scandals or sexual allegations. Since then Fox has dropped to third in the cable ratings that normally, for two decades, had Fox with far more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. Maddow, who was making $7 million-a-year even when her ratings were minuscule, suddenly has the top-rated, prime-time cable "news" hour. This week, as published by USA Today, the top seven cable programs have all been pro basketball broadcasts with ratings ranging from 7.0 million to 3.2 million. But the other three broadcasts in the Top Ten are all Rachel Maddow broadcasts ranging from 2.9 million to 3.1 million. However, in the USA of today the cable "news" coverage is totally misnamed and it should be be labeled for what it is, which is purely propaganda dispensed by high-priced anchors and their pundits. Fox dispenses right-wing propaganda but it is no longer as extreme as the left-wing propaganda dispensed by MSNBC, CNN, the NY Times and the Washington Post.

      During the  recent watershed presidential sweepstakes, Rachel Maddow and the rest of the extreme left-wing "news" media -- both electronic an print -- were extremely biased in favor of the Democrat, Hillary Clinton. But Donald Trump shocked the world by winning the election because he was perceived as a total non-politician and enough U. S. voters had tired of entrenched and established politicos considered to be bought-and-paid-for. The left-wing media surely helped elect Trump. So, after the alarming victory of Trump over Clinton, the left-wing news media has, to describe it best, been engaged in a media coup to overthrow the current President of the United States, Donald Trump. {Note: I am not a Trump supporter but I do respect the Office of President as well as America's electoral process}.

      Newshounds like me once depended on USA cable networks at least for Breaking News but now we must go to the British BBC, the Canadian equivalent to the BBC or Online to quench such thirsts. Whether it is regular "news" or breaking "news," Fox eschews important news to promote conservative causes while MSNBC and CNN are only concerned with joining the New York Times and the Washington Post coup designed to overthrow the Trump presidency. And so, as depicted above, Rachel Maddow's Breaking News is only...I repeat ONLY...concerned with advancing her latest coup-related material regarding the overthrow of President Trump. If you deny that, I invite you to watch Maddow tonight, tomorrow night or any night until Trump is gone. In other words, the 2.9 million people now watching Maddow nightly ARE NOT tuning in for news, but only for anti-Trump propaganda -- to the detriment of both America and Democracy.

      Left-wing extremism from Maddow and all the anchors on MSNBC and CNN merely spawns right-wing extremism elsewhere that might find the USA spiraling toward the evolution of a revolution or even a second USA Civil War. Uh, "Did Rachel Maddow tweet that Donald Trump needs to be 'taken out'?" Us, YES I think she did...and the Tweet listed below indeed proves she did.

  A Rachel Maddow tweet on Jan. 23, 2017, 11:50 A. M.

       At the moment, left-wingers like Rachel Maddow are using Trump's "Russian Connection" as the focal point to fuel their undisguised coup to overthrow or "take out" Trump. But, for sure, if that fizzles out, other focal points are waiting in the wings. It is a vast, left-wing conspiracy-coup against Donald Trump.

          Night after night, Rachel Maddow, as a leading coup-monger, frantically exudes anti-Trump rants and, incredibly, THAT'S ALL SHE DOES WITH NOT EVEN A PRETENSE OF PRESENTING NEWS. While Maddow and her ilk incessantly promote anti-Trump vitriol, they stress that he will "hurt" or destroy America, Democracy and EVEN THE WORLD. I don't know about the world, but as a Democracy-loving American I believe a propaganda-obsessed, dogmatically postulating U. S. media -- and the left-wing vs. right-wing Civil War it might produce -- is a FAR BIGGER threat to America and ITS PRECIOUS DEMOCRACY than Donald Trump.

      And that surely reminds me of what Cristina Escobar -- Cuba's very thoughtful and highly respected superstar broadcast journalist -- surmised out loud on one of her notable visits to the USA: "Journalists in Cuba have more freedom to tell the truth about the U. S. than U. S. journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba." Whether Americans agree with that rather profound quotation or not, I believe it perhaps is time they at least ponder it. By the same token, I assume that Cristina Escobar, for example, is more apt to tell the truth about Donald Trump than "U. S. journalists" like Rachel Maddow are. AND REMEMBER that nearby, repeatedly targeted and a vulnerable little Cuba is as interested in the U. S. presidency as America is.

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