U.S. Media Insults U. S. Democracy!!
Two headlines this first full weekend in December of 2018 reveals, I think, today's most dire weakness in the U. S. democracy: An intimidated, incompetent, propaganda-obsessed, right-wing/left-wing News Media. Two distinct headlines related to Cuba today -- Sat., Dec. 8th -- illustrate that fact. The London Daily News headline screams: "Prince Charles Will Become the First Member of the Royal Family to Visit Cuba." That's important considering the fact that Prince Charles will be the next King of England. So, it's legitimate news.
But in the United States of America this weekend the major headline related to Cuba is from the Breitbart News Network, which blared this unmitigated lie: "Survivors: Cuba Has Detained Half A Million Dissidents, Still Starving Prisoners To Death." Typical of Cuban headlines in the U.S., Breitbart readers, listeners or viewers are almost daily propagandized to believe that in Revolutionary Cuba people are routinely and massively imprisoned, murdered, and starved to death while in the preceding Batista-Mafia rule on the island all Cubans were treated as tenderly as Mother Teresa would have treated them.
Prince Charles is legitimate Cuban news.
Also interesting and important are the opinions of Prince Charles regarding whether the late Fidel Castro's Revolutionary triumph in 1959 improved the island in relations to the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia rule that existed from 1952 till 1959. A legitimate debate.
And that takes us back to today's typical Cuban headline from the massive, well-funded Breitbart News network. Anyone who reads Cuban-related Breitbart articles is being taken down a lying, propagandized trail that most intelligent people try to avoid, which suggests that Breitbart is something that should not have a foothold in the world's strongest democracy. Breitbart is nothing more and nothing less than an extreme right-wing propaganda machine, but like many other so-called "news" outlets in the USA these days, it is massively funded and therefore far-reaching. Hedge Fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca are known to be huge Breitbart backers. The Wikipedia bio of Rebecca Mercer, for example, features this exact line: "Mercer and her father played a major role in the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election." In other words, extreme right-wing "news" rags can have monumental influences regarding America's most cherished democratic fibers -- such as elections. And that's a shame...and also one that Thomas Jefferson warned against in 1776 when he opined that an honest and free media was more important than the newly independent United States government itself. Breitbart is the Poster Boy that proves Mr. Jefferson was right, and every Breitbart mention of Cuba, for example, is a propagandized lie, I believe. For American citizens to allow the likes of Breitbart to emerge prominently onto the American landscape simply because of support from tons of dollars from a billionaire shames America and Democracy, in my opinion. Therefore, I think Americans should consider whether or not that no longer having a trusted media constitutes America's most glaring weakness. The island of Cuba, which has in fact exposed much about extreme right-wing shenanigans in America, has exposed the propagandizing media too...at least making it a topic well worth discussing by democracy-loving Americans.
Thomas Jefferson wrote America's Declaration of Independence and he wrote the quotation above. Both of those Democracy Jewels, I believe, are proof that Mr. Jefferson would detest today's propaganda-obsessed U. S. media, especially well-funded/right-wing rags like Breitbart.
And speaking of the media and quotations, Cuba's Cristina Escobar is probably the most talented television news journalist in the Western Hemisphere, anchoring both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking television shows. She also has uttered, on both Cuban and American soil, two famous quotations: {1} "Cuban journalists have more freedom to tell the truth about the United States than United States journalists have to tell the truth about Cuba;" and {2} "Cubans on the island, not Cubans in Miami and Washington, should decide the fate of Cuba."
The sheer fact that a brilliant, well-educated, bilingual Cuban television news anchor, Cristina Escobar, can render two such definitive facts regarding Cuba-U.S. media and Cuba-U.S. relations should, I think, cause genuine reflections among America's democracy lovers. Cristina is well respected by veteran U. S. journalists such as NBC-TV's Andrea Mitchell and veteran politician Barack Obama. During the Obama presidency, Cristina made history by being the first Cuban to ask questions...she ended up asking six pertinent ones...at an official White House news conference. As a democracy-lover, do I believe Cristina Escobar's two quotations depicted above are accurate? Yes, I do. {YouTube videos feature both Cristina quotes}.
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