As he explained to Prensa Latina, the author of ‘Manufacturing the Enemy’, the ‘Media War Against Cuba’ and two other books on the Antillean country, the reader is more likely to believe what a newspaper publishes which they associate with the so-called free press.

The power of the press is in confidence, and the reader hopes that a medium such as, for example, The New York Times, which they identify as liberal, does not lie to him, added Bolender, who believes that the matter is even more dangerous in The United States, as its citizens, he said, have no chance of freely traveling to Cuba to contrast the information.

In this regard, the journalist recalled the articles favorable to the lifting of the US blockade published by the influential New York newspaper during the administration of President Barack Obama.

According to Bolender, for whom the American press is another corporate institution such as the Stock Exchange, those writings were part of the same government strategy that sought to cause a regime change on the island.

One of the biggest myths is that the corporate press always tells the truth, said the writer, who since the beginning of November has toured the United Kingdom to present his most recent book, as part of a tour sponsored by the Solidarity Campaign with Cuba.

In ‘Manufacturing the Enemy’… Bolender scrutinizes the origins of media hostility against the economic, political and socialist system established in the Caribbean country after the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, and provides data on the propaganda of the so-called American and Western free press.

He says that one of the reasons that motivated him to write it was when it was made public that the United States Government paid journalists from The Miami Herald to write articles against the five Cubans who had been arrested in 1998 under assumptions of spying charges.

In the author’s opinion, it is scandalous the way in which the South Florida media tried to influence the jury, and public opinion, even before the trial.

The problem is there were so many incidents in 60 years of anti-Cuban propaganda, and every time I was going to publish it something else came out, such as the alleged sonic attacks against US diplomats in Havana, or the creation by Washington of The Zunzuneo social network, to try undermine the Cuban government, he said.

Although it mostly focuses on the coverage of Cuba made by the United States corporate press, the book refers to articles published in Canadian and British media.

Bolender, who worked for The Toronto Star, is also the author of Voices From the Other Side. An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba, it includes the testimony of 75 victims of the terrorist attacks against the Caribbean island; and from Cuba under Siege, about the effects on the Cuban people of more than 50 years of hostility from the United States.

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