On Western Bias Against Cuba

The media merry-go-round following the death of Fidel Castro has now come to a halt, and so, six months after his death, it is perhaps a good time to reflect on the Western portrayal of one of the longest serving political leaders in history. Naturally, bearing in mind the history of the imperialist US attitude towards Cuba, and the nationalisation of US property by the Castro government shortly after the revolution, the hostility between the two is perhaps understandable. Yet what surprised me greatly was the response of the UK media following Castro's death. In Britain, the overwhelmingly negative views of a few Miami emigres, who celebrated his passing, was given massive prominence, while the millions of mourners who had lost their leader were overlooked.I came to do research in Cuba for the first time in 2014 and knew little about the island until that point. On that journey, I was struck by story after story from Cubans about how they saw Fidel as a father figure - brave, heroic, larger than life and mostly beloved. So it was shocking for me to hear Fidel repeatedly described as a brutal dictator in the UK media following his death. This is not to say that all Cubans were uncritical of Fidel, far from it, but for a leader who had been in power for that long, the regard which most Cubans felt for him was remarkable.Following Castro's death, the news channel BBC 24 invited me in to talk about my experience of doing research in Cuba and what I had learned about Fidel. I was taken aback to find myself bombarded with anti-Castro questions from the interviewer, based not on any evidence, but on misinformation that had been uncritically repeated so often that it had begun to be taken as fact. It seemed to me that little interest was displayed in obtaining a genuine understanding of the Cuban experience.The fact that the BBC, of all media outlets, was happy, even keen, to repeat such one-sided and inaccurate material was revelatory. Clearly, I was not alone in being dismayed as my interview was recorded and went viral with more than three million views on YouTube. The media watchdog organisation, Media Lens, deconstructed the interview to highlight the extent of the BBC's bias and, as a consequence, I received hundreds of emails, comments, cards and letters from Cubans, or from those who had visited Cuba, and even a human rights lawyer thanking me for trying to present a more balanced perspective.1Yet it is not only the mass media who demonstrate anti-Cuba bias. It was after my second visit to Cuba in 2015, that I began to appreciate the difficulties in telling any kind of balanced story about the island. The aim of the research trip was to talk to top managers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector to discuss the secret of Cuba's success, for example, as having produced the first lung cancer vaccine. I was told that their success reflected their strategy which was based on the speech given by Fidel Castro in 1960 known as the Declaration of Havana, when he declared that the needs of the Cuban people, their health, education, security in old age, etc. …