U.S. SPENDS $600M ON CUBAN TV STATION -- DOWN THE DRAIN?
Thursday, October 11 2007
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Despite spending $600 million to get its propaganda message to the people of Cuba, the U.S. has failed to find an effective way to counter the Communist country's technical blockage of TV Marti and Radio Marti, according to NBC's Mark Potter. Although the channel is now carried by the DirecTV satellite service and is beamed over the island from aircraft flying north of the Cuban coast, Potter noted in a report on MSNBC.com, a report to Congress indicated that fewer than one percent of Cuban households watched TV Marti during the past year. (Satellite dishes are forbidden in Cuba.) Penn State professor of communications John Nichols told NBC, "They're getting zero bang for their buck. It's counterproductive to U.S. foreign-policy interests. It's embarrassing ourselves to the rest of the world, and we're in violation of international law." He added that the station often focuses on Cuban-exile politics in South Florida and that its real purpose is "to curry favor with a very important U.S. domestic political constituency." Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake agreed. "It's a mess. ... Republicans have used it lately, but Democrats have used this issue as well to mine for voters." But Alberto Mascaro, head of the government office that oversees TV Marti, insisted, "We are giving a service to people who don't have the freedom and democracy that we all enjoy."
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