Bad News

Bad News / Yoani Sánchez
Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sánchez

There are many jokes in Cuba alluding to the stereotypical information
provided by the official press. Jokes about the tendency to narrate only
the positive that happens in the national territory and to show the rest
of the world through a succession of tragedies and negativity. One of
the best known of these jokes is repeated when the prime time news
begins and some families hang an empty bag under the television. "At
least is can be filled up this way from the tons of meat, fruit and
foods that show up only in the news reports," say the cheeky housewives
burdened by the shortages. Beside the sarcasm, there are linguists who
have noted the use of verbs such as "grow, sow, build, develop" in the
headlines referring to our own country, while they prefer to use words
such as "die, bomb, prosecute, punish and destroy" for articles about
the rest of the world.

Despite the fact that in recent years they've tried to offer a
journalism closer to reality, triumphalism continues to set the standard
for what appears in the mass media. A recent example is the outbreak of
cholera that appeared in early June in the eastern provinces. The first
evidence that something was happening was a text from an independent
journalist. On the official digital sites this news was branded "another
hoax from the imperialists." Only to have to recognize weeks later that
there is, indeed, an outbreak of vibrio cholerae in the City of
Manzanillo. As people disbelieve so much of what the newspapers say,
they even read this note in Granma with suspicion. To the figures of 3
dead and 53 infected, popular rumor started to increase the numbers. And
all this speculation is because we have learned to read the news upside
down and between the lines, and to distrust almost everything said on TV.

3 July 2012

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