Be Kind to Castro Week? Or, Weak?

Noted at the Babalu Blog this morning:

Michael Graham, blogging at The Natural Truth, brings us this disgusting but not surprising story about how CNN coached its anchors to treat the subject of fidel castro in an early morning email today.

I can now confirm independently that not only did such an email go out, here it is in its entirety:

From: Flexner, Allison
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:46 AM
To: *CNN Superdesk (TBS)
Cc: Neill, Morgan; Darlington, Shasta
Subject: Castro guidance

Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:

* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.

* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.

Any questions, please call the international desk.

Allison

The sender of this email is Allison Flexner whose current position at CNN is unknown. She was a producer and has been in Cuba according to this transcript from 2000.

Well, isn’t that special? It’s as I said last night; American socialists simply cannot stand any questioning of Castro’s status as a warm and wonderful human being. And of course it should be no shock that such “open mindedness ” prevails at CNN. Can’t let mere fact get in the way of our march toward socialism.

I’d say, given that CNN is at nearly the bottom of the ratings pile, being beaten to the bottom only by MSNBC, that most Americans understand that CNN is slanted left as this letter demonstrates quite well. But the point needs to be continuously hammered home.  And so, this post.