Tuesday, June 10, 1986
Daily Nebraskan
Marti's programming forces
changes in Cuban broadcasts
WILL from Page 4
2,000 jamming stations, costing ap
proximately $1 billion annually.
Aside from the cost, Castro's vanity
causes him to avoid full-scale jamming,
which would affirm Marti's appeal.
Marti, with 80 correspondents, costs
just $10 million annually, less than one
advanced fighter plane. Marti is a mag
nificently cost-effective weapon.
Cubans are ravenous for news from
Angola and Ethiopia, where 400,000
Cubans (half of them civilians) have
served Soviet purposes. Castro's wor
ship of Soviet technology caused a four
day stunned silence in the Cuban press
after Chernobyl. Marti instantly broad
cast not only the news, but a nuclear
glossary, and interviews with exiled
Cuban scientists about a nuclear
plant Soviet technicians are building
in Cuba.
Because Cuba is governed by "scien
tific socialism," there are, by defini
tion, no crimes or other serious defects.
However, since Marti has been broad
casting about developments in Cuba,
Cuban broadcasts have been giving
more attention to crimes and to prob
lems like AIDS (which, until recently,
Cuban authorities said did not exist
there).
From Marti, Cubans learned of the
massacre of dozens of young people
when planes and gunboats sank a plea
sure boat sailing toward freedom. Marti
told Cubans about the attempted kid
napping of a Cuban defector by Cuban
Embassy officials in Madrid. Marti has
reported the shambles of Cuba's sugar
production: Cuba is reduced to buying
sugar in the world market. Then it sells
that, for less than it paid for it, to East
Bloc nations to pay for Soviet subsidies.
An especially popular program on
Marti is "Family Bridge," on which
Cubans and Americans call Marti on an
(800) number and give personal mes
sages that are beamed to Cuba. "Aunt
Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials represent
official policy of the summer 1986
Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the
Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its
members are Bob Asmussen, editor;
James Rogers, editorial page editor;
Kent Endacott, news editor; Jeff
Korbelik, associate news editor; Jeff
Apel, sports editor; Charles Lieur
ance, arts and entertainment editor.
Editorials do not necessarily re
flect the views of the university, its
employees, the students or the NU
Board of Regents.
Maria's operation went well, and Jose
is engaged." But even more popular
than the broadcast of jazz, "Top 40"
rock 'n' roll and baseball is a soap
opera about "Esmerelda."
She Esmerelda, that is is one
reason Cuban broadcasting is improv
ing. Totalitarian regimes politicize
everything and extinguish the freedom
not to think about politics. The growth
of Marti's audience for its non-political
programming has forced Cuban broad
casting to lighten up. There is now
more programming for the restless
young, and more first-run movies in
prime time.
This change is a reluctant conces
sion to consumer sovereignty. Any
acknowledgement, however small and
surly, of the power and claims of popu
lar desires subverts the central pillar of
totalitarianism, the tenet that the
masses should be utterly passive and
plastic to the power of the state.
So the voices beamed from the stu
dios in the building at the foot of
Capitol Hill have produced in Cuba a
small stirring, something like a crocus
sprouting through a crack in concrete.
And life, however frail, has a way of
triumphing in time, even over stone.
1SS6, Washington Post Writers Group
Will is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist
and a contributing editor for Newsweek
magazine.
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