Reporting a Revolution

As the headlines about Cuba began to recede from the front pages last week, they left many a second-day thought in U.S. city rooms and editorial offices. How well did the U.S. press cover the revolution in Cuba? While there were some examples of fine reporting as well as cases of sheer irresponsibility, the answer that most newsmen reluctantly reached about the overall performance was: Not very good.

At basic fault was a lack of careful groundwork. During the seven years of Dictator Fulgencio Batista's iron regime, and during the two years of Rebel Fidel Castro's mountain-locked resistance, Cuba got too little attention from the daily press. Scant word of Batista atrocities--of the Cubans who died at the hands of his army and his police--filtered past his porous censorship. The strength of the Castro position, after the revolt lapsed into a tropical stalemate, was misjudged.

Cuba was left to a single fulltime resident U.S. newspaper correspondent--the New York Times's Ruby Hart Phillips (TIME, Jan. 19)--and the Havana bureaus of the A.P. and the U.P.I.

When at year's end the Batista regime suddenly collapsed, few were prepared for the event. The A.P. in Havana moved a Dec. 31 dispatch--based on but not credited to a Batista bulletin--to the effect that Castro's rebels were on the run. While this story was rolling off U.S. presses, Batista fled Cuba.

Moving in the Troops. Into the sudden news vacuum, the press moved troops. Daily airborne platoons of newsmen landed at Havana's Rancho Boyeros, and the A.P. snapped to military attention: "The Associated Press moved extensive reinforcements into Havana today." Some of the arrivals were trained hands: Richard Dudman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune's Jules Dubois, the New York Herald Tribune's Frank Kelly. Most were not, like the Vancouver Sun's Fashion Editor Marie Moreau, abruptly shifted from a haute couture visit in New York, to a Havana jig ("My third dancing partner casually unstrapped his .38 and placed it under his hat on the chair").

Mustered in a hurry, the journalist army trained its eyes on the riotous color of Cuba in ferment. Rivers of copy surged onto the front pages, but the meaning of Cuba's sudden agony was left to deskbound editorial writers. They fired from the hip. Batista, the deposed tyrant, was condemned. Castro, the idealistic liberator, rated approving choruses, relieved only here and there by a suspicious question. In the next phase, as the tattoo of rebel firing squads stitched a new pattern on the face of Cuba, and the landscape was no longer boldly black and white, U.S. readers were presented with multiple images of Castro, ranging all the way from the Christ-like idealist to the ruthless murderer. The New York Times's Herbert Matthews recalled how Castro had "whispered his passionate hopes and ideals into my ear," wrote stories that could find little to criticize in "the greatest hero" in Cuba's history. "Batista with a beard," scowled the Chicago Sun-Times.

Needed: Understanding. Some old professionals on the scene in Cuba distinguished themselves with colorful yet thoughtful reporting that gave the reader a sound base for judgment. One was Scripps-Howard's Andrew Tully, who wrote of the Sports Palace trial of a Batista army officer: "The American Bar Association would have held up its hands in horror. For it was, largely, a spectacle --a circus--in which the accused was considered guilty and was dared to try to prove his innocence."

Hearst's Bob Considine, who went to Cuba during (but independently of) Castro's flamboyant "Operation Truth" freeload for the press, ably and sharply stuck to the truth as he--not Castro--saw it. "The girl still could not identify the villain of her story," wrote Considine, covering the stadium trial. "Her head turned past him several times, and each time the huge jury in the arena would gasp 'Oh!' " Not all experienced observers had such clear eyes. Glowed the Chicago Tribune's Dubois, who could not overcome his Castro partisanship and his relief at the fall of the tyrant, Batista: "I have just had the first exclusive post-victory interview with Fidel Castro. His words rang with a tone of unmistakable sincerity, and were pronounced with the idealism that produced his outstanding leadership."

The total result of the press coverage was that the U.S. newspaper reader, depending on his paper to bring focus to a scene far beyond his own powers of definition, was left with a murky picture. The facts were all there--the drumhead justice, the full-length profiles of the dramatis personae in a national upheaval. The meaning was not. Publisher John S. Knight (Miami, Akron, Detroit, Charlotte) openly criticized both A.P. and U.P.I, for "obscure coverage." But the blame was wider and the problem deeper than the press services.

"We are deluged with facts," said Earl J. Johnson, general news manager of U.P.I. "We know how many people went before the firing squads in Cuba, but this may not help an individual citizen make up his mind whether Cuba is better off under Castro than under Batista. We have got to find a way to bring in also a knowledge and an understanding of the news."

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