Playing Ostrich

Today, on the 4th anniversary of Cuba’s Black Spring, I expected to be able to post several articles from the American press commemorating the unjust and arbitrary incarceration of 20 of their brother journalist in Cuba by Castro’s totalitarian repression machine.

Not that I have any illusions that the American press gives a fig about the plight of journalists in Cuba, they’re more concerned about their infatuation with socialism and command economies.

But being a self absorbed and self centered bunch, I believed that they would have some coverage of the solemn anniversary just so they could remind us how brave , indispensable and important they like to believe journalists are.

But as of 10:00 this morning, all I found was an AP article, from yesterday afternoon, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And this after doing a few news searches using different keywords and names. A similar article was posted in “The Nuevo Herald” in Spanish.

The American press has decided to stick their head in the sand, to be kind, play ostrich and ignore the anniversary.

In South Florida were there are over 800,000 Cuban-Americans, the three major English newspapers have decided not to mention the milestone.(at least in their online editions) Not even print the AP piece.

The Sun Sentinel, whose parent company, The Tribune Co., just had their ace journalist Gray Marx, in Cuba expelled for telling a truth or two, closed it’s Cuban Notebook this week saying it would return on April 1st.

This is what was not worth carrying in the local papers of Cubandom:

Gathering at dawn for a 12-hour protest, the women erected metal bars under a staircase and stood in the fake prison cell one at a time in half-hour shifts. They sipped coffee and chatted quietly while going without food. On the opposite wall, they hung a Cuban flag scrawled with the names of their jailed loved ones.

They did this even after being warned not to:

She said Communist Party officials and others have visited leading activists in recent days, attempting to dissuade them from holding public acts to mark the anniversary of the crackdown."They told us the country was living through difficult moments and that we shouldn't upset public order because the people could attack us," she said.

That’s courage. Most people would have just closed their notebook and stuck their head in the sand.