After Friday Sentencing, Flashback: Newspapers Painted Spies for Cuba
On Friday, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers, who spied for Cuba, were sentenced to prison terms (life for him, six years for her) by the federal court in DC, an action which Washington Post reporter Spencer Hsu described as “a grim ending to the Myerses' idealistic embrace of the Cuban revolution.” Flashback to a June of 2009 NewsBusters post from when the couple was charged 13 months ago,…
Cox Reporter Rips Right-Wing Luminaries for 'Rumor' About Offshore Dri
Rush has spent a considerable portion of today's broadcast ripping into this article by Christine Stapleton of Cox Newspapers, and rightly so, for the first three of the four opening paragraphs that follow: Despite the warnings of Dick Cheney, George Will, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, the Russians are not drilling for oil off Cuba. Neither are the Chinese. In fact, no one — not even Cuba — is…
AP Reports on Cuban Regime's Latest Propaganda Exploitation of Elian
As is its custom from time to time, the Castro regime trotted out former refugee Elian Gonzalez for PR purposes yesterday. This time the cause of celebration was the 10th anniversary of the young man's return to the Communist regime on June 28, 2000.Associated Press reporter Will Wiessert covered the story, which I found published at AOLNews.com with the headline, "A Decade Later, Elian Gonzalez…
CBS Review of Russell Crowe Film: 'Robin Hood Meets Che Guevara
On CBS's Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Phillips described the latest adaptation of the Robin Hood legend by director Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe: "And so here is an evil King John, squeezing his subjects for more taxes....And here is Robin. Not as a thief, but as a revolutionary figure trying to limit the King's power. Robin Hood meets Che Guevara." [Audio available here] …
Pentagon Rescinds Franklin Graham’s Invitation, Al Sharpton is Welco
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of…
Seattle Times Publishes Erroneous Editorial on Cuba Trade Facts
Oops!It seems that the Seattle Times couldn't be bothered to do even a bit of simple research. If they had, they might have spared themselves from publishing an editorial that got the facts about American trade with Cuba completely wrong:SEN. Maria Cantwell calls our attention to a law, signed by President Obama, allowing Cuba to buy U.S. farm produce and pay after the goods are shipped. The law…
Cuban Generation Y Blogger Mocks Che T-shirt Wearers
Attention all you folks who think of yourselves as counterculture types who demonstrate your rebelliousness by wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. The author of the most popular blog from Cuba, Yoani Sanchez who not only talks the talk but walks the walk, thinks you are absurd. The Generation Y blogger was the subject of a Miami Herald story on Saturday. We will get to her marvelous quote on the…
CBSNews.com's Birthday Gift to Fidel: A Story Devoid of Castro Critics
"As Castro Turns 83, Cuba Caught Between Past, Future," announces an August 13 headline for the CBSNews.com World Watch blog. The 10-paragraph entry by Havana-based news producer Portia Siegelbaum amounted to an electronic birthday card for the Communist dictator. No Castro critics, domestic or foreign, were cited in the story, although Siegelbaum made sure to note how a "U.S.-based religious…
CNN Uses Pro-Communist American to Tout Cuban Health Care
There’s something deeply wrong with journalism that scrutinizes and criticizes the institutions of free and successful nations, but produces puff pieces on the supposed achievements of totalitarian dictatorships. On Thursday, CNN aired a piece of Communist Party propaganda about how Cuba could serve as “a model for health care reform” in the United States, complete with an authoritative sound…
Dr. Nancy 'Jealous' Of Health Insurance Coverage In . . . Rwanda
Conservatives are used to hearing liberals gloat about how the island paradise that is Cuba provides free health care to its fortunate denizens. Apparently there's now yet another country that we have to look up to: Rwanda.On her MSNBC show this afternoon, Dr. Nancy Snyderman proclaimed herself "jealous" of Rwanda, which reportedly provides health insurance coverage to 90% of its citizens.…
Times and Post Paint Spies for Cuba as Endearing Elderly Couple
“She fell for his worldly sophistication” while he “admired her work helping ordinary people,” gushed a front page Friday New York Times story on Gwendolyn and Kendall Myers, both charged with spying for communist Cuba for nearly 30 years. Deciding “to give the second half of their lives new meaning,” the couple found themselves “disillusioned with the pace of change in Washington” so they once…
Did NewsBusters Help Cause Cuban Government to Back Down on Internet P
On May 11, your humble correspondent posted a story here about the lack of commentary on Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez's Generation Y threads at the Huffington Post. I pointed out that the Huffington Post folks basically yawned over a story reported by Yoani about how the Cuban government had a prohibition against Cubans accessing the Internet from hotels, which is about the only place where people…
CNN's Jim Acosta: Just Say Yes to Travel and Trade With Communist Cuba
Correspondent Jim Acosta, “carrying the CNN flag” on the island of Cuba, filed several reports for the American Morning program during the first week of May which slanted favorably towards an end to the trade embargo with the communist country. His May 1 report on the policy that allows Cuban-Americans to travel to their homeland featured no critics of the Castro regime, nor did it mention the…
ABC Defends Obama's 'New World View,' Touts Supposed Successes
In the midst of conservative criticism that President Barack Obama, at the summit in Trinidad over the weekend joked around with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and was uncritical of a 50-minute anti-American screed from Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, ABC decided to defend Obama's foreign policy mettle -- with his only failure coming where he has followed Bush's policy. Martha Raddatz began by trying to…
