Castro’s victory: An assessment of New York Times coverage of the 1959 Cuban Revolution

Abstract

This research applies framing theory and basic quantitative content methods to analyze the New York Times coverage of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, in order to examine assertions that New York Times stories contributed to Fidel Castro’s victory. Specifically, the study analyzes datelines, bylines, types of sources and story framing in all the stories about Cuba published on the front page of the New York Times between January 1, 1957, and December 31, 1962. The findings of this research contest long-held claims that the New York Times stories, in particular those written by reporter Herbert L. Matthews, contributed to the success of the Cuban Revolution. Matthews’s three-part front-page scoop in 1957 introduced Castro and the bearded Cuban revolutionaries to the world, but his stories and subsequent New York Times coverage are unlikely to have been decisive in Castro’s overthrow of the Batista regime. This study argues instead that the New York Times coverage of the 1959 Cuban Revolution was written through an aspirational lens, much like the stories about other major political revolutions written by U.S. foreign correspondents, and that stories played an important inter-media agenda-setting role, as evident from the many news organizations that covered the revolution after Matthews’ scoop.