Worst in Media No. 4 – Reuters, other media front for Cuban regime
December 28, 2021
Accuracy in Media is counting down the worst media blunders of 2021. Come back tomorrow to see No. 3 on our list.
When protests erupted in the “utopian socialist nation” of Cuba last summer, the reaction of the mainstream media was as predictable as it was sad.
Instead of focusing on the failures of the socialist regime in the island nation, much of the U.S. press clamored for president Joe Biden to lift the Trump-imposed sanctions on the communists, with a New York Times bureau chief actually saying that the protests were a result of U.S. actions.
Vox went so far as to call the U.S. a “beast” to Cuban citizens.
“Faced with the undeniable success of the Trump era policy that tightened sanctions on the Cuban communist government,” AIM reported, “liberals and progressives are falling back to their default option on Cuba: Blame the United States for failures of the Cuban dictatorship to fulfill what a New York Times editor hopefully called the ‘utopian socialist nation its founders imagined.’”
Yes, founders like murderers Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
Then Reuters reported that the Cuban protests were dangerous because of the potential to spread Covid during the outdoor marches, according to “officials.”
“Protests in Cuba will increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission because of an already high level of cases and the more contagious Delta variant, health officials said on Wednesday,” Reuters reported.
The Reuters report stands in contrast to what the wire service reported during the 2020 BLM protests in the U.S.
“Public health experts say there has yet to be conclusive evidence of large-scale spread from these events,” Reuters said about U.S. protests.
And there you have it: Covid is spread at Cuban protests, but not at American protests.
AIM.org’s Adam Guillette asked in an Action Alert:
Last year, Reuters said BLM protests didn’t spread COVID because they were held outside. This week Reuters claimed Cuban protests WOULD likely spread COVID. Hypocrites! Why is @reuters providing cover for an evil regime? The same can be said for the rest of the media as well.
The July 2021 protests in Cuba were a perfect opportunity to embrace change in Cuba, but instead, the U.S. press tried to give aid and comfort to a repressive regime on which lies entirely the blame for U.S. sanctions to begin with.
Human Rights Watch subsequently has “documented at least 130 cases in which [Cuban] security forces violated due process, beat, sexually abused or forced into solitary confinement citizens participating in rallies,” according to NBC News.
For some in the press, that’s probably the fault of the U.S. as well.
Want more of the Worst in Media? See No. 5 here.