News and Commentary

CBS Hypes Castro’s ‘Complex’ Legacy

   DailyWire.com

Left-wing CBS News invited two similarly-minded guests on Sunday’s Face The Nation to discuss issues related to Cuban president Fidel Castro’s death.

Jeffrey Goldberg, an editor with left-wing magazine The Atlantic, credited President Barack Obama with having “subverted” Castro’s political narrative in which America was framed as the eternal enemy:

“Fidel Castro, for 50-plus years, needed the confrontation with the United States in order to — that was his reason for living in a kind of way. And Obama subverted in a very obvious sort of way the Fidel Castro narrative. And Raul, who was in power, who is in power, changed in a more pragmatic way.”

Goldberg described Obama’s overtures to Cuba as “taking away the bogeyman” of Castro’s anti-American propaganda. No evidence was provided to substantiate any meaningful lessening of anti-American propaganda – either qualitatively or quantitatively – dispensed from the Cuban regime as a function of Obama’s foreign policy towards the island state.

Julia Sweig, a Cuba analyst for CBS News, spoke of Castro’s “complex career” and his promotion of Cuba’s status on the “world stage:”

“There is the analysis that will say, look, this guy took power, shut down speech, put people in prison, had a human rights legacy that was quite challenging and difficult for many people who were on the other end of it.

On the other hand, he rewrote the social contract in Cuba in a small island nation in which he put health care, education, culture, and the capacity for Cuba to have an independent foreign policy front and center as part of his legacy.

And in Cuba — and I think we have to understand that there are 11 million people in Cuba — that legacy will be digested as giving Cuba a place on the world stage.”

Despite having written a book entitled “Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know,” Sweig neglected to offer her own analysis of Castro’s legacy, opting instead to reference unnamed “analysts” and people in Cuba.

Goldberg joined Sweig in hyping the socialist narrative of Cuba’s allegedly high-quality health care, education, and culture as functions of Castro’s control.

“But there are three things that Cubans will say Castro did well, health care, education and culture.

But the joke is that there are three things that Fidel Castro did not do well for the Cuban people, which was breakfast, lunch and dinner. And so you are looking at a guy who impoverished — or kept his country in an impoverished state because he refused to open up to capitalist reforms.

And obviously, on the political front, we will remember him in America as a guy who suppressed freedom. There is no way around the fact that it is a single-party communist state, and remains so.”

Like Sweig, Goldberg neglected to offer his own analysis, preferring to reference unnamed Cubans he presented himself as familiar with.

Watch Face The Nation’s segment here.

In 2010, both Goldberg and Sweig were accepted invitations from Castro to come to Cuba for a long-form interview over the course of several days. It was published in two parts (part 1; part 2)

CBS did not speak with any Cubans or experts on Cuba in its analysis of the ramifications of Castro’s death or of his legacy.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  CBS Hypes Castro’s ‘Complex’ Legacy