Broadcasts to Cuba questioned (Radio & TV Marti)

[Mika]

Source: Miami Herald

After decades on the air and the expense of half a billion dollars, it remains unclear whether any Cubans listen to or watch U.S.-funded radio and television broadcasts to the island, according to a new congressional report on Radio and TV Martí released Wednesday.

Last year, less than 1 percent of people surveyed said they had listened to Radio Martí in the past week, said the study by the Government Accountability Office, the investigating arm of Congress. But the same report said nearly half of new Cuban arrivals to the United States said they had listened to the broadcasts in the past six months. The telephone survey of at least 1,200 Cubans was conducted from March 2008 through January 2009.

Although the GAO report states that programming has improved and praised its management, it said broadcasts are often biased and fail to adhere to journalistic standards.

--

''We have independent reports from Cuba that people do listen to Radio Martí,'' said Landa, director of Coral Gables-based CubaNet (www.cubanet.org).

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/888708.html

---

Cubanet is funded by the NED and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (our tax dollars), the International Republican Institute, Mellon Scaife foundations, the CANF, Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch.

Of course Hugo Landa of Cubanet has "independent reports" from Cuba that they are effective. They are paying the "independent reporters". They are looking to sustain their money loop using wasting our money. Being paid by Cubanet to produce "independent" reports makes them very very wealthy (by Cuban standards).

Pedro Roig, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, questioned the listener surveys and says "''I reject the notion that we are biased" :eyes:


No mention that these broadcasts into Cuba are a violation of international treaty.

[Auggie]

1. This has been questioned for decades. It's time to pull the plug on Marti.

From link:

"The U.S. government spends $34 million a year on the Miami-based radio and television station with the aim of breaking Cuba's lock on information, but the frequencies that bring information to the closed society are constantly jammed by the Cuban government."

[Mika]

3. The US is violating international treaty doing this.

Plenty of sources here.

[melm00se]

24. I read thru a couple of the links

from your search and they all talk about violating international treaties but provide no details as to which ones.

which treaty/treaties?

[dipsydoodle]

2. Luis Posada

That just about says it all if that P.O.S. is involved.

"broadcasts are often biased and fail to adhere to journalistic standards" Maybe that's why the Cuban's don't bother to listen in

[DainBramaged]

4. Just another trough for the Repuke Socialists to feed at

[pokercat999]

5. It's time to free Cuba from American criminal intervention. nt

[Demeter]

6. And After That, South America, and Maybe Even Ourselves!

[Xipe Totec]

7. The real audience is in Florida

Keeps Cuban Americans riled up, pissed off, and voting Red.

[Judi Lynn]

8. These same clowns lie to US citizens by swearing there's a news blackout in Cuba, and the people

can't get any unbiased news if they don't take more than $30,000,000.00 of our hard-earned tax dollars each year, and run the station themselves, programming it all themselves, and handling all the staffing, and spending all the money themselves according to their own tastes. We bankroll them.

In the meantime, try to find out what the Cuban people do learn about the rest of the world. For instance, they get the Spanish language and English language programs on both radio and tv from Florida. A Canadian DU'er who goes to Cuba regularly, just the way Europeans and Latin Americans and Asians, Australians do, tells us, or would tell us, still, had she not been banned due to her serious disgust with prevalent right-wing blindness infecting too many US citizens, that if you take your Walkman with you you'll be able to pick up US radio walking in Havana.

Cubans who put antennas on their roofs get Miami, etc. tv stations. They wear US clothing styles. They have rap singers. They get radio and tv from Central America, and other Caribbean islands. They read all our newspapers and magazines.

Why the need for us to plow so much of our money into that pork in Miami, anyway? To make a few Cuban "exiles" wealthy? Clearly!

Do a search on Colorado former Congressman, David Skaggs, who dared to stand up against these radical reactionary freaks:

~snip~
Dealing from principle --- ex-Representative Skaggs

However, in 1993, former Representative David Skaggs (D-CO), in an attempt to trim unnecessary budgetary spending targeted for the Martis, was able to convince his House brethren to block funding for the two operations --- a measure which did not meet the same success in the Senate, where it was inevitably defeated. Skaggs paid a high price for his bold move, and came under withering fire from anti-Havana hardliners. Marti’s congressional supporters, led by none other than treasury plunderer Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart responded with a stark warning that revenge would be exacted on those who might threaten the continuation of the Marti operation, making an example of Skaggs by attempting to slash federal funding for projects in his home district. However, Skaggs refused to give up the fight, and he continued his campaign against the project, in particular its television component, until he retired in 1998. Skaggs admitted, "You know that if you kick the Cuba issue, you're going to have a bad day.” As a result of his personal experience, the Miami New Times reported in a November 12, 1998 article that Skaggs bitterly expressed outrage at the “corruption of United States policy that is inherent in our Cuba policy,” explaining, “by corruption I mean the untoward influence of a relatively small segment of the population in Florida and the money that small segment of the population brings to bear, and how it distorts the policy choices this government makes.”

More:
http://cubajournal.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
(around 1/2 way down the page)

~~~~~~~~~~~~
~snip~
7/1/93 After having funds for Radio and TV Marti deleted in a closed mark-up session, the House Appropriations Committee restores funds for Radio Marti but not TV Marti (CAC, 6/22/93; CM, 6/25/93; MH, 6/25/93). Rep. Diaz-Balart succeeds in cutting $23 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in an effort to repay Rep. David Skaggs (D-CO) for cutting $17.5 million from Radio and TV Marti. Rep. Skaggs complains, "I was greatly disturbed and saddened that the normal business of this House was subject to these retributive tactics. This is an example of how difficult it is to pull the plug on a program, even one as ineffective as this one." Skaggs believes the programs are unnecessary because Cubans are able to view commercial broadcasts from Florida. (MH, 7/3/93) Another Cuban American Member of Congress, first-term Representative Robert Menendez (D-NJ), tells the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call that he intends to monitor projects in the districts of Members who are "obviously on a mission" to oppose the "peaceful diplomacy" programs of Radio and TV Marti: "It could be anyone...For every action, there's a reaction." (CAC, 7/23/92; RC, 7/5/93)

~snip~
7/2/93 Following the conflict between Rep. Skaggs, who cut TV and Radio Marti funding, and Rep. Diaz-Balart, who cut funding for Boulder-based federal programs, CANF sends out a press release announcing "Opposition to Cuba initiative costs Boulder rep pet project," sending Colorado papers to press with news of the Boulder-Miami feud. (MH, 10/13/93)

Excerpts found a little beyond 1/2 down the page at:
http://www.cuban-exile.com/doc_126-150/doc0146b.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Radio and TV Martí: Washington Guns after Castro at Any Cost
Radio and TV Martí: Miami’s Children of Scorn

• At a time when the domestic budget is being savaged by meat-cleaver cuts in its social programs, Congress’ FY 2006 appropriations include an outrageous $10 million plane for a failed Radio and TV Martí project
  
• Funding Radio and TV Martí reveals the unprecedented reach of the rightwing extremist segment of Miami’s Cuban community into the U.S. legislative process and the public purse
  
• Radio and TV Martí is almost entirely characterized by propagandistic low-quality programming, mismanagement, and a striking inability to reach the intended Cuban island audience
  
• Miami is able to almost alchemistically convert hundreds of thousands of dollars in private campaign contributions to Republican and even Democratic political campaigns, and in return has received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for their initiatives that do nothing else but fuel their ideological passions at the expense of the squandering of public funds that produce no public good

http://www.coha.org/2006/03/radio-and-tv-marti-washington-guns-after-castro-at-any-cost/

[Mika]

9. Plenty of clowns on DU who say the same thing.

No shortage of Cuba "experts*" here.

* - who have never set foot on the island
nor done even remedial research, but feel
the need to make sweeping, ill informed
declarations about Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

10. I'll never forget another Cuba "expert" when I attended the old CNN message boards.

She dropped a bomb on the place when she announced she personally knew the revolution kept a lot of prisoners in the soccer stadium where they tortured them, and killed a lot of them.

It took another poster in a blazing fury to tell her she was so full of it, it was a total lie, and she had tried to pass of a real situation in Chile under US-supported and planted dictator Augusto Pinochet at the Nacional Stadium in Santiago (one of ELEVEN CHILEAN TORTURE CENTERS (not including the three torture ships sailing in the water off the coast)) as something which happened in Cuba.

It was a deepening experience seeing someone call that ##### out on her pathetic, reckless, stupid lie.

Some days it seems there's an endless supply of them, wouldn't you say? Sheesh.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Oh yes, I remember the hysteria on Internet boards during the Elian Gonzalez incident

It wasn't on this board, but another one, and one of the particular hysterical people finally wrote, "If you send Elian back to Cuba, he'll die." And another person on the other side wrote back. "Why? Because your guys will kill him?"

I was unable to go on my church's annual good will trip to Cuba, but I've talked to some of the people who just came back, including a couple who have traveled all over Latin America. Their take was that yes, Cuba is a poor country, but that the average living standards are actually better than some of the other places they've visited in Latin America, and they were surprised to see no uniformed military patrolling the streets, evidently a common sight in some parts of the Western Hemisphere.

[Mika]

12. Cuban police walking their beat don't carry guns.

Cuba is a very peaceful and safe country.

Foreigners have to be very careful in some other parts of the Latin Americas of kidnapping for ransom, or death squads, police shakedowns, etc.. Not so in Cuba.

Lydia, agree with your friends assessment of the average living standard, but when one takes into account the long term impact of access to health care and being able to have their children get a good education in safe schools is something hard to measure during a short term visit. Not having these things creates great stress and negative impact (as we Americans know well, or are getting to know, especially now). These are the things that so many across the impoverished Latin Americas and Caribbean are desperately seeking, and why the Castros, Chavez, and Morales types of politics are gaining ground. The Cubans have led by example that an impoverished country, under great duress, can do great things - provided that the people are willing to get involved and are ready to do some heavy lifting - as the Cuban people did, and have the social infrastructure to show for it.


:hi:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Back during the Reagan interventions in Central America,

the college where I was teaching sponsored a talk by a Catholic priest who ran a refugee camp for Central Americans in Mexico.

He told about the atrocities that the residents of his camp had suffered, saying that the right-wing governments were the best recruiters the guerrillas could hope for.

Someone asked why the revolutionary movements had erupted so recently (1970s-80s) when life had always been hard for ordinary people.

The priest's explanation was that the most revolutionary phenomenon to occur in Central America was the spread of the cheap battery-powered radios. Before that, the people knew that they were miserable and oppressed, but they thought that everyone lived like that and that it was just the way of the world. Suddenly, the radios gave them news of the outside world.

As everyone knows who has ever experimented with the AM dial late at night, Cuban broadcasts reach most of North America. They're even easier to catch in countries that border on the Caribbean, and there's no language barrier. That's how the peasants in Central America learned that other people in the world had education and health care.

A right-wing colleague in the audience asked, "But at what price? Didn't they realize that they would be sacrificing their freedom?"

The priest responded that he had once thought that way, too, but when he had expressed that opinion to the refugees, they had just laughed at him. "We certainly don't have freedom now! Not with the death squads running around the country!"

Anyway, I'm glad that more Latin American countries are standing up to the U.S. corporate interests and asserting their rights to manage their own countries to benefit their own people.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Sure, they would have naturally been surprised, since the popular propaganda for years

has claimed cops are everywhere, Cuba is a "police state," etc., etc.

Of course, they also claim Americans aren't allowed to talk to "real Cubans," neatly assuming we've never heard that you can rent a car, an RV, a bike and spend all the time you like going all OVER the island once you show up there.

The lies which have been spread about the island could fill a huge book, no doubt. The liars who have spread this nonsense are going to lose any credibility they ever hoped they had once the ordinary US public starts coming and going to that country, and discovers we've ALL BEEN DUPED for decades.

I'll bet we're going to hear from you one day that you finally made it there along with your church group! Really hope so, Lydia Leftcoast. That would be outstanding.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

23. The people in my church's groups spend all their time with

church members, including homestays and joint work projects, such as repairing church property damaged during hurricanes. If that isn't contact with "real Cubans," I don't know what is.

[Judi Lynn]

25. And to think as late as 2000, a lot of Americans believed there weren't any churches in Cuba!

It's so typical of the vast disinformation program we've been living with all this time.

Face to face relationships like the ones you've mentioned are a WONDERFUL way, the BEST way for people to clear out the cobwebs of propaganda from their understanding of their real world. They can pick up so much from simply getting a sense of the people themselves living in Cuba. There's so much which CAN'T be concealed, or pretended in situations like that.

It's completely different from what we were trained to think, believe, accept.

[ensho]

13. kill all payments to TV Marti - if they want to TV Cuba they can pay

for it themselves.

that whole Miami Cubans against Castro group is one big scam

[honoluludaniel]

14. This is such a waste of taxpayer money that it's not even funny

I've been to Cuba several times in the last couple of years and have yet to see or hear a single transmission of Radio or TV Martí, except for one day when i had to enter the US Interests Section. None of my family members watch, none of my friends watch, no one watches the damn thing. I wish i could just laugh this off as a waste of time but the fact that millions are being spent on this just flat out pisses me off in today's economy. Obama needs to end this charade along with all the other ridiculous sanctions against Cuba, and sooner rather than later. It's not like he depended on the Díaz-Balart goons and Ros-Lehtinen for his victory in Florida.

[JayMusgrove]

16. How about our US government and private funds spend 1/4 of that on PBS

to try to educate a few more million American citizens as to the real truth about our government, and stop the propaganda to people in Cuba, who, by and large, are not our enemies.

[Judi Lynn]

17. The article links to a statement by Democratic Rep. William Delahunt:

February 4, 2009

DELAHUNT ON CUBA BROADCAST REPORT: "NOTHING EVER CHANGES"

Inquiry Details Mismanagement, Poor Standards & Questionable Spending

WASHINGTON, DC – Today Congressman Bill Delahunt made public a report (available here) prepared by the Government Accountability Office on United States broadcasts to Cuba. These programs, by the Miami-based Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB)’s Radio and Television Martí stations, are intended to provide the Cuban people with access to objective, uncensored information, but have been plagued with charges of bias, corruption, and poor administration.

“This report is emblematic of a larger pattern of a lack of transparency and questionable practices,” said Delahunt, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight Subcommittee, “since it follows other, similarly troubling accounts about US programs regarding Cuba. When you connect the dots, a disturbing picture emerges – one in which American taxpayer dollars are spent with little accountability, uncertain effectiveness, or a coherent strategy. Despite these warnings, it seems that nothing ever changes. Well, now it will.”

In 2006, the GAO – the investigative arm of Congress – reported mismanagement, poor oversight, and wasteful spending (including on cashmere sweaters and Sony Playstations) in an $83 million US government program to promote democracy in Cuba. Since then, the former chief of staff of the Center for a Free Cuba, one of the program’s largest grantees, has pled guilty to stealing almost $600,000, and the GAO has described continuing issues with other grantees.

In 2008, the GAO determined that proper business practices were not followed in awarding contracts to Radio Mambí and TV Azteca – two private, Miami-based stations – to broadcast Radio and TV Martí, and that there was little transparency in OCB’s hiring of “talent” contractors, opening the door to potential corruption or favoritism.

Delahunt noted that the contract with Mambí – a politically-connected station whose signal is reportedly blocked by the Cuban government, raising questions as to why it got the contract in the first place – was allowed to lapse, supposedly for budgetary reasons, just as the GAO’s investigation began. And the latest report says TV Azteca included commercials for Miami businesses in its TV Martí broadcasts, including one for a phone sex line.

The report Delahunt released today details ongoing management issues, including allegations of poor communication, low morale, and fraud and abuse. Such accusations are not surprising, since in 2007, a TV Martí executive was sentenced to 27 months for taking $100,000 in kickbacks. Although the current OCB Director – appointed by former President George W. Bush – was praised as “inspiring” by a 2007 State Department Inspector General review, the IG whose office made that claim later resigned amid allegations of cover-ups and political interference in investigations. In contrast to the IG report, the GAO says the Director – who hired his nephew as the OCB’s Chief of Staff – is viewed by some employees as a “micromanager” with “excessive involvement in the editorial content of OCB programming.”

The GAO report also describes persistent problems with adherence to journalistic standards of balance and objectivity. It notes that internal reviews identified “the use of offensive and incendiary language in broadcasts” and “the presentation of individual views as news…and the use of inappropriate guests whose viewpoints represented a narrow segment of opinion.”

Finally – and most troubling to US taxpayers, said Delahunt – the report determines that, while it is impossible to determine the audience for, or effectiveness of, the broadcasts in Cuba, what available research exists suggests that its impact is miniscule at best. “Americans have spent over $500 million on this effort, but only 2 percent of Cubans responding to OCB’s telephone surveys say they’ve tuned into these broadcasts,” he said. “This raises real questions whether this is the best use of these funds.”

The report concludes, “With a new President and Congress, the United States has a fresh opportunity to reassess the purpose and effectiveness of U.S. radio and television broadcasting to Cuba.” Delahunt said that he intended to do exactly that, particularly since US-Cuba policy is under discussion as Raúl Castro takes over as Cuba’s President from his brother Fidel. “Given the economic crisis in America and the ongoing changes in Cuba,” Delahunt said, “we must ensure that every single taxpayer penny committed to these programs is used effectively.”

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ma10_delahunt/cuba2409.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's time to put aside this insane misuse of U.S. taxpayers' money. We should not be used so frivolously by a radical, violent group of American terrorists for their political agenda, and their advantage. This should have been retired long, LONG ago before we were ripped off for their benefit.

[Mika]

18. A jobs program?

That's what Ileana Ros and Lincon Diaz will sell it as "in these times". Its not pork. It is now Freedom Plus+ Jobs™. Doubleplusgood sister.

[Judi Lynn]

21. Freedom Plus+ Jobs™. Wow! Sounds cool! It's a step up from having to fill those

baggies with human excrement which they used to throw at Cuban musicians and singers, like Los Van Van when they came to Miami to do concerts, procuring the requisite supply of D-cell batteries to hurl at them, and anything else more or less portable, and doing research on additional graphic curses and sexual insults they could shriek at the Cubans who DID want to go in to hear them.

More refined, in a way.....

[struggle4progress]

19. It sounds like a responsible budget cut

[No Elephants]

20. $34 million a year for decades and the broadcasts have been jammed all that

time? Honest to goodness, who is going to help the American taxpayer?


Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?