Miguel Diaz- Canel , member of the Politburo and first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers in Cuba , has referred repeatedly to the importance of renewing the discourse of the Cuban press .
During the closing of the IX Congress of the Upec he said: “I think the main thing, what really is going to feed that passion that we all have to improve our press, make it useful, make it virtuous, and is the ability we have to talk. I believe in dialogue , I believe in the controversy , I believe in everything we can discuss from a position of improvement, respect , understanding around these issues , and I think the main role UPEC has to play, along with the Party and the media , is that we are constantly feeding from the dialogue, controversy , meetings among all of us for from the input from everyone, from the experiences of each and from dissatisfaction of each we keep building that press model to which we all aspire and actually carries the Cuban press to the role it must play at the present time “
Recently, the official website of the Association of Cuban Journalists, published an interview Lilibet Enriquez Infante made to Miguel Diaz- Canel .
OnCuba reproduces the full interview:
What should the characteristics of a model of Cuban press be?
I am no expert … But I think the Cuban press, first, has to be very responsible, by the conditions in the country and how the reality of Cuba in the international press is addressed. We cannot fail to see that we are a country in defense, under siege, where anything that is not news in the world is news for the world if it happens in Cuba.
It must be a responsible, courageous press, which achieves an appropriate balance between the media agenda and public agenda; that relies on research, interactive (I mean there is a reader-audience relationship that each outlet has to do in a different way), you have moments of discussion with the audience to see their dissatisfactions on each media, for that nourishes them. It must be a participatory media and, of course, a revolutionary press.
When it has passed almost a year of that event of journalists, what have been the main changes in the Cuban press that you have noticed?
I think that the Congress contributed a lot, because there the problems of the Cuban press were discussed objectively, and that gave a platform to work on the basis of change and improvement that our press demand today.
The first demand we have to solve is that there is dissatisfaction with the press sources, sources with the press and the people with the sources and the press. This leads to work in three directions. One, the source needs to recognize the necessity to inform the public objectively and, therefore, the so-called secrecy is abolished as practice. A second direction is that the press can address all the issues from the sources, objectivity, for which research is needed as well as depth. And a third is that the press direction matches the media agenda to the public agenda, so that people can see the diverse reality in our country reflected in the mass media, and therefore identify with the media, for it to be credible.
After the Congress, I think the role of UPEC has strengthened by the workflow of its current leadership. To start, summoned the creative workshops, which have been highly critical discussion spaces inside of each medium, which already raised things that can be done to transform the press. Moreover, we, from the party, also have been evaluating what should be the real relationship with the press. We provide everything that has to do with the media attention from the Party, but giving more responsibility to the mass media.
It has been prepared and submitted to the implementation commission a strategy for social communication, that at the end, I think is the most serious of the problems we have: lack of a communications culture that we have to build together and that covers the media work. For that reason we conducted a debate in each of the agencies of the Central Government, and stating that it was an element of continuity to the UPEC Congress, right now we have found a greater receptivity in these organisms. Therefore, since they all start to have a structure, begin to develop communication strategies, better and worse, and begin to be more open to the press. Therefore the secrecy starts decreasing. And these same debates we have now started in the provincial governments. All that is opening a space for permanent dialogue for UPEC and the Party with the mass media.
These debates have as content the diagnosis of problems that have arisen, including the contribution of the Congress, and within the proposed policies are answers to all of these issues: the quality, the infrastructure, the economic and financial ones.
There is a group of designers working together to improve the current design of the Granma newspaper, and then do the same with Juventud Rebelde. We are also starting to open a group of spaces in different media with a more objective critic. For example, Cuba says, a space of values in the Buenos Dias program and on the Roundtable, which also begins to address more national issues; provincial media have many spaces I would say more than the national ones, where there is a better balance the objective reality of each area; a greater response of organisms to the criteria given population in some sections of the media begins to exist
I think another interesting element that developed during the Congress and has continued raising interest in studying the book of Julio García Luis; I think a basic book for the reconstruction and improvement of the Cuban press under current conditions.
We have also revived the training of journalists in post graduate courses through the UPEC. And it starts to be a greater relationship between the School of Communication at the University of Havana, which is the leader of the curriculum, with journalism schools in the provinces and the media, to open paths and exploit research can contribute to the media, made during many years in a career in journalism and are not applied in refining the press. But the latter only comes into existence.
We are doing a weekly analysis of the national media on major issues of quality of that comes out every week in the media, from studies of the Information Center for the press (CIP ) and the Centre for Social Research of the ICRT , and in a very open atmosphere . We note the quality of the news, the headlines and the talk compared to Cuba in the international press with the talk in the national media, to evaluate what are information gaps we have. So this is also working on quality.
What are the main issues that are not present in Cuban media?
There are a set of issues: monitoring the implementation of the guidelines could have more presence in the media, policies and measures to be implemented; throughout the fight to achieve more decency and less social indiscipline, strict defense of the Revolution to attacks in social networks, the art and literary criticism, because practically we do is a description and not a review of the major cultural events. I think around that are the main issues.
Recently there was an information gap on the North Korean ship, but that it was a sensitive issue that we should have approached in the way we did, posting the press release from the Foreign Ministry.
What are the main dissatisfactions you feel?
Regardless of all this, I see dissatisfactions. I think we have made progress in eliminating traces of secretive and now we have more self-censorship. Prior to the Congress, when I started to work with the press, I had a vision that was more problematic in the Party’s attention to the press that in other respects. Today I’m realizing, and UPEC has recognized that there is a huge professionalism problem in the media and of training of the leadership means for management. One must know how to manage the press, so we have oriented to begin to include in the syllabus courses that have to do with media management and also for postgraduate courses. Because, for example, there are issues that have been opened and the press has not been able to reflect them with proper systematic. There’s the main dissatisfaction.
Also they have lost work routines , standard procedures that rule the work of the press, that when not used cause breaks in the production process and are reflected in the failure. Is not being given or participation that journalists should have to analyze and feel part of the development of each of their outlets. For example, today there are few outlets having real editorial boards and editorial boards where there is involvement of the people in a thoughtful discussion on the problems of the press. That is much needed, because the media have to get everyone involved in the decision, in design, in the editorial line profiles, so they can defend that, otherwise they will report just what they get paid for and that’s it. That dynamic is still missing.
Does the Cuban press need more criticism or more information?
I think it needs both. I am very strict on the concept of information; my expression of information is mathematics: information is what is uncertain. For example, the news of the act by February 24 has no information, since every February 24 there are ceremonies and that there is a very trite resource in the press, which would have information on that date? Explaining what happened on February 24 for Cubans. Another example, saying the Teatro Martí opened that day is limited information, now, if we say everything that happened in that theater then we would be giving information.
So I think that the Cuban media need information and criticism. The criticism must be objective; therefore we cannot measure a newspaper that has this many critics and this many non-critical jobs. I think every work should have a balance of positive and negative of the issued concerned, so also the perspective, that is, the time it is in and if we have capability to face it or not. I think this way all the press would be balanced because it would treat each issue with that balance. Not everything is completely bad or good. I think it does much harm to the country that a media outlet reflects everything good knowing all the contradictions we have in the country, as it reflects everything worse, when we also have virtues and accomplishments.
In the discussions at previous congresses people spoke of the lack of credibility of the Cuban press. However, in the IX Congress I said that there is “no lack of credibility on the part of the population of our press (…), what happens is that the same society is also in development, calls us for more legitimacy, requires that at each stage press has played the role so that also accompanies this new moment we are living in. “
I think so. We are in an internal debate to perfect, but not to deny. Denial would be dialectic, but we cannot deny the contribution of the press to the revolution, the accompaniment it has given it. And we must also recognize the circumstances in which the media has moved; the ideological, social and economic circumstances. Our press has also gaps in the material part, product of the situation.
In our press there are no lies. In international presses, there are lies, speculation, and manipulation. Our press is sincere, but sometimes does not tell the whole truth. I think sometimes limits in some subjects, the truth, because they don’t go deeper. But our press is true, so that gives it credibility. It leaves dissatisfaction, because sometimes it has informational gaps and sometimes it doesn’t address problematic issues with all comprehensively, therefore there is not all the spectrum that could be in an issue. If all these issues are perfected that credibility can increase.
Time is gold for Diaz-Canel, given his responsibilities, and therefore other questions had to wait. He accepts answering, however, one of them: Why do you think the young journalists have sought alternatives to traditional media, the new spaces of the digital environment, basically?
“There are several considerations. First the view that boys can have of the media outlets, and the other is that non-traditional media, to the revolutionary character of the boys and new technologies are more attractive than these, and there is also the relationship of the boys when they reach the media, “Diaz-Canel synthesized.
Photo taken from La Gazzeta DF
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