U.S. Media Provides Biased Coverage of Cuban and Colombian Protests - Mikael Wolfe
An analysis of how two major U.S. newspapers presented the civil unrest in Latin America this year demonstrates how corporate media favors political allies and blames enemies.
The November 15 demonstration calling for the release of political prisoners in Cuba was announced on September 20. While it is unclear what form the protest will take, its mere announcement has provoked strong responses both within and without Cuba. In the United States, the government and much of the corporate media condemned the Cuban government for refusing to give demonstrators a permit. The U.S. government also threatened to increase sanctions. The Cuban government, in turn, accused the United States of funding and organizing the march to foment a regime change.
On July 11, widespread protests in Cuba provoked similar debate. Some Cuba experts denounced the Left for idealizing the Cuban Revolution and ignoring or downplaying the Cuban government’s authoritarianism. The Black Lives Matter’s statement supporting the Cuban government is an example that epitomizes this “Leftist” response. These experts, who argue that supporting the Cuban government is an unjustifiable stance regardless of U.S. policy, will likely react similarly to the aftermath of the November 15 demonstrations.
The critiques levied at Leftists in the wake of the J-11 protests assumed statements like the BLM Instagram post to be far-reaching and influential. Yet mostly absent from these critiques was any recognition of the actual influence that leftwing groups exert on U.S. corporate media coverage of Cuba. As a result of their massive resources and outreach, both on social media and through traditional news channels, U.S. corporate media largely set the terms of political debate over U.S. foreign policy by shaping how U.S. and international audiences and politicians perceive the Cuban government’s actions.
To see whether these leftist groups exerted any discernible influence on U.S. media coverage of J-11, we examined the coverage of the protests in Cuba that began on July 11 and the protests in Colombia that erupted ten weeks before on April 28. In The Washington Post and The New York Times, that coverage included 74 news stories, op-eds, and editorials. We chose these two papers because they are two of the most influential U.S. newspapers and have a reputation as “liberal” media. Conservatives often claim that these newspapers cover U.S. enemies like Cuba more favorably than U.S. allies like Colombia and equate them to the leftist groups that many Cuba experts have denounced.
This study examined the coverage of the protests in Colombia and Cuba in the two newspapers during a period of six to eight weeks from the day that the protests broke out in each country. The table below displays the quantitative and qualitative results of our analysis.