SCSU profs gather news in Cuba

Maria Garriga

New Haven Register Staff

July 31, 2007

NEW HAVEN — A pair of professors at Southern Connecticut State University traveled to Cuba recently, seeking clues to the future of press freedoms in Venezuela.

The U.S. government officially bans Americans from going to Cuba under most circumstances, but Leon Yacher, a geography professor, and Joseph Manzella, chairman of the anthropology department, have licenses from the federal Department of Treasury to do research in Cuba.

"We are looking for the influence of the Cuban model on the Venezuelan media," said Manzella, author of "The Struggle to Revitalize America’s Newspapers."

They had last visited the island in 1993.

Cuba, a nation of 11.3 million, has been under the rule of Fidel Castro and his brother Raul since 1959, when the two led a revolution that ousted Fulgencio Batista, a U.S.-backed dictator. The Castro brothers subsequently imposed a socialist regime and assumed total control of the nation’s press.

The professors said they were fascinated by the Cubans’ extensive knowledge of current events in the United States.

Cuba’s international version of Granma, its leading newspaper, loaded its front page recently with stories that referred to or focused on the United States. The top story had Raul Castro declaring his willingness for dialogue with the United States, which was followed by a story analyzing potential nominees for the U.S. presidential primaries in 2008.

The Cubans also expressed concern about the anti-immigration backlash in the United States and a great admiration for Al Gore. Gore’s 2006 documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," was broadcast several times during their trip, they said.

The two also were able to interview Cuban media officials, including a four-hour interview with a senior editor at Communist Party-controlled Granma.

While the United States’ broadcasts do make it to Cuba, the Cuban media filter the news reports to reflect what the government wants people to see, Manzella said.

Both said they were struck by the accuracy of the Cuban media, which often broadcast excerpts from American media reports. "Think of the Cuban media as a well-informed version of Fox News," Manzella said.

"They don’t lie. They just don’t tell you the other side of the story," Yacher said.

Cuba is ranked as one of the most repressive countries in the world toward press freedom by several journalism organizations. The island nation could be the blueprint used by Hugo Chavez as he continues to consolidate power in Venezuela, they said.

While most media attention focused on the Venezuelan government’s recent refusal to renew the broadcast license of a television station critical of the Chavez administration, few noted that several newspapers had already been closed down by the government in Venezuela’s rural provinces.

"Chavez has publicly called Castro his father. The Venezuelans have no idea in five years that you will have a Venezuelan model of Cuba," Yacher said.

Yacher spent more than three weeks in Cuba, Manzella five days. They plan to include their research in a book about international press freedom with the tentative title, "Eyes on the World," which compare conditions in Indonesia, South Africa, Venezuela and Kyrgyzstan (an Asian nation wedged between Kazakhstan and China.)