We met fleetingly at the most critical moment of the pandemic. Through social networks, I learned that he was looking for some construction material to solve a relatively urgent problem at home. I had it, and I could facilitate it for him. It was the surplus of a donation that, in turn, I had received weeks before. This is how solidarity worked in such hard times.
I began to follow him virtually, and I learned that he is a graduate of Social Communication from the University of Havana and has a master’s degree in Social Development; that he has taught classes at his university, and collaborated with various media outlets; that he does research on cultural and creative industries, among other topics; that his articles have appeared in scientific journals such as Alcance, Perfiles de la Cultura Cubana and URBS: Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales.
Today he agrees to talk with me about the draft of the Social Communication Law that will be debated soon in the National Assembly of People’s Power; a topic of great interest, both for Communication and Journalism professionals, and for the general public.
There had been talk of the need for a media law. The bill goes much further, as it also integrates matters relating to advertising, sponsorship, economic management of the media and research in the communication sphere. What importance do you attach to the promulgation of the Law? What are the strengths of the document that will be discussed, and what are its most visible shortcomings?
The law will be the first attempt to establish a legal framework for communication processes that were regulated in a disconnected way or even functioned based on organizational decisions without the protection of any legal instrument. In this sense, it is an important advance since it reduces some margins of ambiguity in decision-making on the state media system.
Among the positive aspects, it outlines the rights of communication professionals and provides more tools for those who wish to overcome the obstacles that bureaucracy usually places on the media’s own function of becoming agents rather than accountability. In addition, it poses to the media the obligation to comply with ethical guidelines that have been violated on occasions, such as respect for the presumption of innocence of an accused. In addition, it requires them to answer for bad journalistic treatment that affects the privacy or integrity of a person.
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In the field of organizational communication, it is commendable that the legal instrument proposes as an obligation for organizations to respond to the media and make their work transparent for the public.
Another great advance is the recognition of forms of financing beyond the state budget, such as “advertising, sponsorship, donations and national and international cooperation.” Hopefully, it will have a direct impact on an improvement in the conditions of our media, a fairer payment to its professionals and, in general, higher quality content.
Regarding the deficiencies, the fundamental one is located among the main pending discussions of the Cuban communication system: the lack of explicit delimitation between state, public and partisan media, which makes it difficult for citizens to make demands on each one.
On the other hand, although the rights of communication professionals are outlined, as I said, it is not clear which are the instances to which they can appeal in case they are violated. Furthermore, these rights are insufficient. For example, it is said at the beginning that the media and their professionals perform their functions in an environment of creative freedom, but the right to have their work not censored without an objective reason or linked to ethics or journalistic quality standards is not reflected.
In a country where there is a long tradition of arbitrary censorship, it is a serious mistake not to specify which content can be objectionable and which is not, and how to challenge censorship when it is not justifiable and is determined by fear, ignorance, or the convenience of an official. Professionals and citizens remain unprotected to deal with it effectively.
The issue of censorship is directly connected to the responsibility of media directors. Article 35 states that “the director of each fundamental means of social communication is the maximum responsible for compliance with the editorial policy”; but if that director is not functional, what guarantees do his professionals or the public have to object to him? How is it guaranteed that his decisions respond to the interests of citizens? With a lack of indicators and procedures that allow complaints, the legislation does not offer mechanisms to prevent an authoritarian leadership of media directors.
There are those who say that in socialism, since the media is owned by the State, there is no journalism, but dissemination or propaganda. What do you think? What is the difference between state press and public press? How could one move from one category to another?
The bill does not speak directly of the State as the owner of the fundamental media, but that its ownership is “socialist of all the people or of the political, mass and social organizations,” which would be closer to assuming them as public media.
Cuban communication expert Salvador Salazar clarifies the difference between state and public media: “The former are subordinated to the government, to an executive apparatus. The latter are the patrimony of the Republic, they obey the interests of society as a whole.” I would add the category of “partisan media,” which respond to the interests of a political party and its members.
This debate is directly linked to the form of financing of the media and the organizations to which they belong. If a medium is subordinated to an organization financed solely with the money of its affiliates — through fees —, it must respond to them. If the medium or organization receives public financing, then they must respond to the interests of the citizenry — even if it is not affiliated —, because they are the ones who sustain them.
Neither the State nor a party should manage the media behind the backs of the citizenry. In an ideal space, public management of the media would be much more democratic than private management. When the media respond to private capital, they are not obliged to serve the public — which does not exclude that they may be committed to it. Professor Julio García Luis warned about this.
The main problem has arisen from the predominance of an authoritarian management by government employees — which transcends the directors of the media themselves. If the necessary mechanisms are not guaranteed for the citizens to control them, if the limits of government employees are not clear, propaganda acts as the perfect shield to not be held accountable. This is what has happened in experiences of the so-called “real socialism” of the 20th century, and I believe that it has prevailed in Cuba as well.
In a recent publication on Facebook, you refer to the need to forge “mechanisms so that citizens can control the media that they pay with their contribution to the state budget and participate in their editorial management.” I confess that I have no idea how this could be implemented. Do you have a concrete proposal?
A concrete proposal would imply a more in-depth analysis, which cannot be done by a single person, but by an inter/trans-disciplinary team. Nor do I consider myself a specialist on the subject, just a citizen and communication professional who gave his opinion on a legal mechanism that affects him. That being said, I will dare to make a couple of speculations from my readings.
The popular control of citizens over public media has never been fully achieved in any country, and it is the argument commonly wielded by neoliberal theories that defend the presumed uselessness of said media, and their vulnerability to being corrupted by the power of the State. However, some experiences have managed to guide certain guarantees, put into practice with greater or lesser effectiveness, depending on multiple factors and sociopolitical contexts.
For example, the Spanish Law on Audiovisual Communication contemplates the operation of an Advisory Committee, made up of various members of civil society, which periodically issues reports with recommendations for the media agenda of public television and radio stations. It is something that could well be implemented in Cuba based on the multiple union and mass organizations that we have.
In Mexico, they have the Federal Telecommunications and Broadcasting Law. Its structure called Ombudsman for Audiences is assumed as a “space for dialogue between citizens and the media, with the aim of motivating citizen participation in the programming offered through the media managed and operated by the Public Broadcasting System of the Mexican State” and publicly designates a defender with the responsibility of guaranteeing the rights of audiences. This organization, in addition to receiving and responding to complaints and suggestions from the population, issues periodic reports — which are published — with diagnoses about the quality of the programming, and, consequently, makes recommendations.
For its part, the draft Cuban legal instrument in its article 20 grants the responsibility to the “fundamental media” to “follow up and respond to the complaints and requests of the population about the work of their organization.” Article 101 states that “the Institute of Information and Social Communication carries out control actions to the organs and agencies of the State, the business system and other economic and social actors.” Let us hope that in the body of complementary regulations, there is some transparent and effective mechanism so that this control of communication is a popular control that responds to the interests of the citizens.
It is not about copying; each country has its peculiarities. But there is a lack of a transparent and effective structure that allows certain guarantees that prevent the blocking by government employees the function of the public media to render account. It is also necessary to guide operationally — that is, with concrete results, such as the obligation to make a report — transparency mechanisms in the management of the media that are assumed to be “the property of all the people.”
You have referred to the case of Alma Mater, a publication that was clearly on the rise in the preference of readers, having tuned in to social problems that are rarely alluded to in official discourse. Its director was fired by the same people who should ensure “transparent communication.” What comments do these events provoke in you?
This is a very clear example of the contradictions and absences of our media model. In the case of Alma Mater, two fundamental elements stood out. The first is the possibility that a political organization that we assume receives public financing for the management of the media under its responsibility, has the power to appoint and remove its directors without a consultation process with the audience, and in this case, not even with the editorial board. The second is the absence of effective mechanisms for media professionals and citizens to challenge that decision. In Alma Mater, such impossibility of rectifying caused the resignation of the majority of the team that made up the magazine.
The most serious damage is that it set the precedent that it was impossible for a media outlet dependent on the State to question the government employee in a sustained manner, since the latter could, without consultation, remove the figure that was guaranteeing the exercise of accountability. How many media executives have been fired for allowing bad journalism? How does a political organization make decisions, behind the back of the citizenry, in media financed with the public budget? They were questions that I asked myself at that time and that remain unanswered.
I remember the statements of the president of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), who looked at the decision of the Union of Young Communists with “sadness”, but as a civil society organization that does not have a binding role in decision-making, he could not do anything else. This absence of a binding nature was also evidenced in the debates with journalists, after July 11, 2021: everything was cathartic.
An ombudsman for the audience and media professionals, with a mandate and legal force to guarantee freedom of the press, could have played a much more active role and served as a counterpart to the bureaucracy’s natural tendency to protect itself.
The draft Social Communication Law does not legitimize alternative media; on the contrary, it proscribes them, since they do not have a subordination to the state apparatus. Will the so-called independent press cease to exist?
I prefer to use the term “non-state press” or “not linked to the State” to refer to a very complex and diverse media ecosystem. Defining what is alternative press and independent press would require much broader debates and conceptualizations. I do believe it is fair to elucidate that in this variety coexist alternative and other authoritarian efforts, and agendas that preserve the independence and others subordinated to the impositions, express or not, of those who finance them.
Returning to the bill, Article 28 says that “The other means of social communication with presence in the media field (that is, the non-fundamental ones) belong to organs and agencies of the State, political, mass and social organizations, forms of association, the business system and other legally recognized economic and social actors.” The following article states that their owners have the obligation to register them in the “national registries authorized for such purposes.”
If we understand an SME as a legally recognized economic actor, this article would be allowing a private business to have a “non-fundamental” means of communication, as long as it is authorized by the registry. There the question would be: What distinguishes a fundamental medium from a non-fundamental one?
Article 27.1 says that the fundamental ones are those that have a “strategic nature in the construction of consensus and in the participatory management of the economic, social and cultural development of the nation.” Since this conceptualization lacks measurable indicators, I suppose it is left to the interpretation of whoever is going to apply the law.
On the other hand, there is a group of media outlets that do not belong to an SME or any legally recognized organization in Cuba, which have operated in a framework of “legality.” The bill also has no obvious way out for them. It has been one of the main demands of a community of people — which I have called “the club of the very heavy handed” — that demand greater condemnation of these forms of symbolic production.
Faced with the reality of the 21st century, the legal instrument preferred not to intervene in the matter. A heavy-handed exit, which would imply jail for the professionals who decide to collaborate with these media, would further aggravate the contradictions between the State and an area of civil society; and it would damage the image of the government before international organizations. Nor would it guarantee that these media would cease to exist.
As long as citizens do not find the contents of their interest in the media “owned by all the people,” they will look for them elsewhere. In the Internet age, there are thousands of options to make a medium sustainable from a distance, and among the emigrant community, there is a sufficient pool of professionals for this. Every time the Cuban State has opted for a heavy hand, far from destroying these spaces, it has lost the opportunity to negotiate and mediate in their agendas and has radicalized them, pushing them into a confrontational position.
The solution would be to gradually strengthen the media linked to the State and to really work with a public media approach, in addition to accessing various sources of financing that allow them to consolidate their forms of production and pay a fair salary to their professionals.
Meanwhile, start legalizing, with regulations, those others that do not have agendas marked by interference and/or misinformation. For this to happen, the law should enable a structural transformation in the press model, and for the media to assume their function of holding the bureaucratic apparatus accountable.
It is naive that this will happen without contradictions or resistance. Competing against the multiple possibilities of the media that are outside the Cuban state is extremely complex, especially when you have an enemy 90 miles away willing to support, without skimping on resources, anything that implies destabilization. This has constituted the perfect justification for the bureaucratic apparatus to hide behind this real danger to avoid being accountable to the public or to do so only when and as it deems appropriate.
The Cuban press model shows signs of exhaustion, but a structural transformation would imply for government employees to be doubly questioned, both by the public media and by the rest. Why would they give up their privileges, just like that? They have the perfect justification for not doing it and so far they have subsisted. The change will only happen when they find themselves in the dilemma of socializing a part so as not to lose the whole. In the meantime, the bill insufficiently covers some areas (I think it’s the only thing possible under current conditions). Hopefully, they will be used sufficiently or become the first step to build the long-awaited and postponed country “with all and for the good of all.”
Author
Alex Fleites
