ABC on Monday eagerly touted an "exclusive" interview with Elian Gonzalez. Jim Avila, appearing on Good Morning America and World News with his scoop, never mentioned that the now-21-year-old might have been brainwashed with Cuban communist propaganda. Instead, he parroted, "Elian still supports Fidel Castro, who has routinely visited him since his return, with his classmates, at his birthday and national events."
Avila, who traveled to Cuba for the interview, noted that "pictures of Castro line Elian's modest home." Recounting how the six-year-old was dragged out of his Miami family's home in 2000, the journalist translated, "He says, 'I'm willing to forgive [Florida relatives who sheltered him], as long as they acknowledge they made a mistake.'" Anchor David Muir hyped this as a "new message" for his family in the United States.
Back in 2000, Avila attacked Gonzalez's dead mother for trying to bring him to America:
"Why did she [Elian’s mother, a maid] do it? What was she escaping? By all accounts this quiet, serious young woman, who loved to dance the salsa, was living the good life, as good as it gets for a citizen in Cuba....An extended family destroyed by a mother’s decision to start a new life."
— Jim Avila from Havana on NBC Nightly News, April 8, 2000."The one thing that most, that I’ve learned about Cubans in the many times that I have visited here in the last few years, is that it is mostly a nationalistic country, not primarily a communist country."
— NBC News reporter Jim Avila [now with ABC News] on MSNBC’s simulcast of Imus in the Morning, April 26, 2000."The school system in Cuba teaches that communism is the way to succeed in life and it is the best system. Is that de-programming, or is that national heritage?"
— NBC News reporter Jim Avila [now with ABC News] from Cuba on CNBC’s Upfront Tonight, June 27, 2000.
Some other examples of journalists fawning over Castro's role in bringing Gonzalez back to Cuba:
"Without doubt he [Castro] is taking personal control of the case of the six-year-old, even to the point of calling child psychiatrists to ask about the effect of all this on the child’s mind. His chief concern: Could the boy readjust to life here?...He seemed old-fashioned, courtly — even paternal."
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on the December 15, 1999 Nightly News."Part of what the [Cuban school] children talked about was their fear of the United States and how they felt they didn’t want to come to the United States because it was a place where they kidnap children, a direct reference, of course, to Elian Gonzalez. The children also said that the United States was just a place where there was money and money wasn’t what was most important....This is a place where the children’s role models and their idols are not the baseball players or Madonna or pop stars. Their role models are engineers and teachers and librarians — which is who all the children we spoke to yesterday said they wanted to be."
— ABC’s Cynthia McFadden on December 31, 1999, reporting from Havana during ABC’s live 24-hour coverage of the New Year 2000.
"To be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami and I’m not going to condemn their lifestyle so gratuitously."
— Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, April 8, 2000."While Fidel Castro, and certainly justified on his record, is widely criticized for a lot of things, there is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba. And, I recognize this might be controversial, but there’s little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, ‘listen, we really want this child back here.’"
— Dan Rather, live on CBS the morning of the Elian raid, April 22, 2000.
For more examples, see a study by the Media Research Center.
A transcript of the May 18 World News segment is below:
6:43
DAVID MUIR: We turn now to an ABC News exclusive tonight. The little boy who made national headlines 15 years ago. Elian Gonzalez, crying as federal marshals stormed his home, caught in a symbol of strained relations between the U.S. and Cuba at the time. Now, 21 years old, and with a new message tonight for those marshals and for his family back here in America. He spoke exclusively to our Jim Avila.
JIM AVILA: In Cuba, he is known simply as "The child." They still call you el Nino. Si?
ELIAN GONZALEZ: Si.
AVILA: Elian Gonzalez, now 21 years old, and for the first time, describing that day 15 years ago, when federal marshals stormed into his Miami family's home to forcibly return him to his father and Cuba. [Translating.] "When I saw a person with a weapon, I got scared," he said. "I didn't understand what they wanted with me." But then, this marshal took him in her arms and whispers, "We are friend of your dad. We are going to take you with your dad." Then, he tells us, he was relieved. Elian, in our exclusive interview, his first as an adult, shot for ABC by a Cuban photographer who has worked with him before, says he wants to thank those marshals and come to America to do it.
ELIAN GONZALEZ: I say thank you for the love they give me.
AVILA: Elian still supports Fidel Castro, who has routinely visited him since his return, with his classmates, at his birthday and national events. Pictures of Castro line Elian's modest home. And he tells us he wants to mend fences with his Miami relatives, with one condition. He says, "I'm willing to forgive them, as long as they acknowledge they made a mistake." We reached out to Elian's family here in Miami. They refused comment on Elian's offer of reconciliation. But the fisherman who saved Elian told us today, he would love to see him again and he deserves an apology.
