NBC Nightly News is still worried about the evils of capitalism destroying the pristine communist utopia of Cuba.
“Do you feel you’ve gotten here before it changes?” NBC correspondent Kerry Sanders asked an excited American tourist, camera in hand. “I hope so,” she replied, cheerily.
On NBC's Today earlier on May 2, Sanders had called being on the cruise to Cuba "sort of a pinch-me moment," adding "I can't believe that this is finally happening." He also commiserated with a fellow cruise passneger about getting to Cuba "before Burger King shows up."
This continues a trend of the media fretting about American influence ruining Cuba, including when rival news network CBS warned that U.S. business could “endanger” Cuba’s “unique charm.”
On May 2, all three broadcast networks on hyped the “historic” voyage of a Carnival cruise ship to Cuba, but NBC had the most extensive and most fawning coverage. Nightly News anchor Lester Holt hailed the cruise as “the latest sign of the thawing relationships between countries, after nearly four decades of mistrust.”
While he did refer to it as “communist Cuba,” Sanders’s report was nothing but glowing. “We’re making history!” one woman from the cruise told Sanders. Another man responded “I’m crying like a baby, this is the greatest thing in the world!” Not surprisingly, all the people interviewed on the cruise ship were in favor of the cruise.
Sanders did note a protest by Cuban-Americans against the cruise, but only in passing. “When the ship left Miami, a small protest. Some Cuban-Americans don’t agree with the shift in policy.” No mention as to why these Cuban-Americans would possibly disagree with such a policy change.
This is the same network that featured Andrea Mitchell lecturing a detained Cuban dissident on President Obama’s meeting with Raul Castro back in March, and praised President Obama and Castro attending a baseball game as "just two fans sharing a pastime."
CBS Evening News only ran a quick news brief on the cruise to Cuba, but anchor Scott Pelley did continue the oft-repeated hype of classic Cuban cars. “The first cruise ship to sail directly from the United States to Cuba in nearly 40 years arrived in Havana today. It was greeted by dozens of Cubans, some of them driving vintage cars that hit the road before U.S. relations with the communist nation were frozen in 1961.”
