[Cincinatus' Wife]

THE CASTRO NEWS NETWORK***In 1982, CNN founder Ted Turner paid a visit, and Castro taped a promotional spot for the network. Turner was smitten. He called Castro "a hell of a guy," and never looked back. During an interview with Sports Illustrated in 1986, Turner pulled out a photograph: "Here's us hunting. Twenty-two attempts on his life by the CIA and I'm sitting next to him with a loaded rifle. Can you believe that? . . . I could've shot him in the back." Turner drew a geopolitical lesson from the experience. "Look, this shows what I'm talking about. People are not all that different - all this killing and arms race is for nothing."

Years later, Turner was still swooning for the strongman. "Everyone in Cuba likes him," he told The Washington Post in 2001. That's clearly the impression you would get from watching CNN. During the first five years of the Havana bureau's existence, ordinary Cubans interviewed by the network were six times more likely to express agreement with the regime than they were to disagree with it. That finding comes from a Media Research Center report examining all 212 prime-time news stories produced by the Havana bureau through the first part of 2002. Other data were just as striking: For instance, Castro and his spokesmen were six times more likely than regime critics to provide soundbites for the network, and only seven of the 212 stories focused on dissidents. (Jordan insists the MRC was "misleading and unfair" because its prime-time figures didn't include every report CNN has filed from Cuba.)

THIS comes as no surprise to people who know Lucia Newman, CNN's Havana bureau chief. "When we heard CNN got a Havana bureau, we knew right away who would be going there," says Paul Scoskie, a retired ABC News producer who first met Newman in the 1980s, when they both were covering Central America. (Newman started with CNN in 1986, as its bureau chief in Managua.) "We used to watch Lucia file her stories from Nicaragua, just amazed at how she reported some events." Adds Peter Collins, a former ABC and CNN foreign correspondent: "There were reporters you could always rely upon to follow the Sandinista line, and she was one of them."***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

May 17, 2003 - Cuba Jails Five Would-Be Hijackers for Life [Full Text] HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba sentenced five men to life in prison for attempted to hijack a plane to the United States, the island's authorities said on Saturday in a statement published by the ruling Communist Party daily Granma.

A Havana court convicted the five men of terrorism for planning to commandeer a plane with a stolen rifle and knives.

The five would-be hijackers, and three accomplices -- who received jail sentences ranging from 20 to 30 years -- were arrested as they prepared to take over a domestic airliner at the Isle of Youth airport on April 10, during a spate of hijackings by Cubans trying to reach the United States.

On April 11, Cuba executed three men who hijacked a Havana Bay commuter ferry with a handgun and knives in an attempt to sail 90 miles across to Florida. [End]