Cuban "Journos" and the Secret Golden Handshake

As anyone who truly understands the media would understand, journalism is a loaded profession. If you are to fight for the rights of all journalists, you will inevitably come into conflict with your own belief in human rights.

This could not be more true of a country like Cuba, where some partisan "independent journalists" have been funded by U.S. organisations openly campaigning for the violent overthrow of the Communist regime.

As Legendary PBS broadcaster Bill Moyers explained in a 2003 interview,

"...the very concept of media is insulting to some of us within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a loud voice were all one and the same...David Broder is not Matt Drudge. "Meet the Press" is not "Tempation Island." And I am not Jerry Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet 'the media' speaks for us all"

Read more in Sydney based Academic Tim Anderson's report for Green Left Weekly

There's also an interesting piece on Cuban Journalism at Project Censored, and some other interesting observations here and here

Understanding the media filter

In Keeping the Media Safe for Big Business, Media Lens adds to the discussion surrounding the way the media is run to benefit some and ignore/attack/trivialise others. Also addressed is how journalists become a part of this system, often without their own knowledge.
The debate builds on the works of Chomsky and Hermann in their landmark book, first published in 1988, Manufacturing Consent. The work aims to show the media is controlled in western democracies, without the need for any sinister conspiracy theories.