Pretending It’s Not Happening: Cuba Helps Haiti

It's the unofficial policy of the USA not to acknowledge the humanitarian efforts of the Cuban government throughout various parts of the world. The US media largely complies with this policy. Unsurprisingly, Cuba's contribution to the humanitarian efforts in Haiti after the earthquake were largely ignored by the US media in its early reports:

There are only two US media outlets that have reported on Cuba's response to the deadly 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti. One was Fox News, which claimed, wrongly, that the Cubans were absent from the list of neighboring Caribbean countries providing aid. The other was the Christian Science Monitor (a respected news organization that recently shut down its print edition), which reported correctly that Cuba had dispatched 30 doctors to the stricken nation….

As for the rest of the US media, they have simply ignored Cuba's role and actions. (link)

Not only did the 30 doctors Cuba sent to Haiti go largely unreported, but the doctors that Cuba already had working in Haiti scarcely warranted a mention:

In fact, left unmentioned is the reality that Cuba already had over 400 doctors posted to Haiti to help with the day-to-day health needs of this poorest nation in the Americas, and that those doctors were the first to respond to the disaster, setting up a hospital right next to the main hospital in Port-au-Prince which collapsed in the earthquake. (link) (emphasis original)

But this got plenty of media attention:

The United States struck a rare deal Friday with the Cuban government to send medical evacuation flights with victims of the Haiti earthquake through restricted Cuban airspace, a White House official told Fox News.

The flights, from the U.S. naval station at Guantanamo Bay to Miami, will be cut by 90 minutes in each direction by using the airspace. (link)

To the extent that Cuba facilitates the USA's humanitarian efforts, it's newsworthy. To the extent that Cuba exercises its own humanitarian efforts, it's not newsworthy. Fascinating.

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