No Wonder They Call It The 'Castro News Network'

Here is a copy of an email sent to CNN employees yesterday morning:

From: Flexner, Allison
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:46 AM
To: *CNN Superdesk (TBS)
Cc: Neill, Morgan; Darlington, Shasta
Subject: Castro guidance

Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:

* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.

* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.

Any questions, please call the international desk.

Allison

No mention of the show trials, the summary executions, the expropriation of private property, the jailing and torture of dissidents . . . but they have free education! (as if that is some marvelous achievement unique to communist countries). And they have 'universal health care' that you wouldn't wish on your dog.

The apparatchiks at CNN would no doubt have been perfectly content to completely whitewash the Castro record if they could have gotten away with it. His crimes are too obvious to ignore, however, and so CNN is forced to at least obliquely acknowledge that Castro oppresses human right and freedom of speech.

Bending Castro's woeful history to be 'balanced' and 'fair' is neither: it is nothing but another farce perpetuated by the leftwing media in the grand tradition of Walter Duranty.

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