MIAMI, Sept. 26 — Soon after Fidel Castro announced his mysterious illness in July, the Bush administration stepped up its anti-Castro television broadcasts to Cuba with a new $10 million system.
For the last two months, a twin-engine plane has beamed the signal of the American broadcast, called TV Martí, toward the island from over the Straits of Florida for four hours a day, six days a week, up from four hours of transmission from an Air Force plane on Saturdays. Because the plane flies at 20,000 feet, administration officials say, the Cuban government cannot jam the signal as easily as in the past, when a blimp tethered 10,000 feet over the Florida Keys did the transmitting.
But in interviews in the past two weeks, many Cubans said they still saw just snowy interference where the TV Martí broadcasts should be. About a dozen people in Havana said they still had never glimpsed the station even after the expanded airborne broadcasts began, raising questions about the usefulness of the $10 million expenditure.
Some said they would not watch the station even if they could, because they assumed that it would be biased.
“In my opinion, that is wasted money,” said a 35-year-old homemaker in Havana who, like all those interviewed, asked that her name not be used. “It’s propaganda.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/27marti.html?ref=washington
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