AP's Images Group Promotes 'Iconic' Castro, Ché Photos Commemorating Fidel's 85th Birthday

Communist Cuba's Castro brothers may be asking themselves why they need to engage in any propaganda on their own when they have Associated Press's Images Division promoting photos of Dear Leader Fidel Castro as "iconic" and the brutal Ché Guevera as a "revolutionary hero."

What follows is the text of an email NewsBusters and BizzyBlog commenter/correspondent Gary received from AP Images on Monday. It's so over the top that you almost wonder if it's a gag. This link proves that it's not. Here goes (complimentary words and descriptive flattery bolded by me):

Subj: Fidel Castro Turns 85 - Get our Iconic Images & Videos

Legendary Cuban revolutionary and longtime leader Fidel Castro turns 85 on Aug. 13, his first birthday without an official title. Despite handing over power to his brother in 2006, and being in poor health, Fidel still remains influential and a source of inspiration for many people throughout the world. There is plenty of speculation on the future of Cuban leadership since Raul Castro is also now an octogenarian.

AP is pleased to offer a wealth of powerful, unforgettable images chronicling the enigmatic Castro over the last five decades, and the AP archives offer hundreds of hours of video clips on Castro’s life and political journey, including footage that has not been seen in over 40 years. This timely content is available for use in newspapers, magazines, websites, films and other publications.

Plus, don't miss our collection of exclusive, iconic black and white photos of Castro from our image partner Prensa Latina, based in Havana, Cuba. Prensa Latina News Agency, formed six months after the Cuban revolution to report on what was happening in Cuba, now has a worldwide presence and transmits each day in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian, Russian and Turkish.

Note that the AP didn't even describe its "image partner" Prensa Latina as what it really is, namely "the official state news agency of Cuba, founded in March 1959 shortly after the Cuban Revolution." The guess here is that the AP would have more of a problem cooperating with anything or anybody associated with Fox News than it does in cooperating with the island nation's equivalent of the old Soviet Union's Tass.

AP's "Editorial Showcase" of over 70 photos is here; many more photos can be found when looking at the pages for each individual picture. The entire Castro collection numbers over 6,000. Included in the "showcase" are roughly twenty pictures of Ché Guevera. Each and every one describes him as a "revolutionary hero." This "hero" is directly responsible for the documented deaths of 180 innocent people; as noted at the link, "All were carried out without due process of law," meaning that they were never proven guilty of anything.

Other luminaries pictured with Castro in the "iconic showcase" collection include Jesse Jackson (with another ten or so on the left at the individual link).

Items strangely absent from AP's pictorial collection include the following:

• Cuba's unsanitary hospitals, including sights such as those found here.
• The nation's collapsing infrastructure or its crumbling buildings.
• Residents using their ration books to obtain the most basic of necessities, which as of 2003 enabled them to obtain "2.5 kilograms of rice, 1 kilogram of frozen fish, 1/2 kilogram of beans, 14 eggs and sundry other basics at subsidized prices" -- per month.
• The island's gulags, where thousands of dissidents are imprisoned, starved, and tortured, and where many have died.

In February 2007, the Media Research Center's Rich Noyes released a special report on the establishment press's coverage of Castro entitled "Fidel's Flatterers: The U.S. Media's Decades of Cheering Castro's Communism." It chronicled 20 years of MRC's excellent work documenting "the liberal media’s infatuation with Fidel Castro and Cuba’s communism."

The Associated Press's gushing, disgraceful promotion of a ruthless dictator whose regime has slain thousands, impoverished millions, and attempted to replicate its misery around the globe could represent a whole new "Fidel's Flatterers" chapter all by itself.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.