US-Cuba: Radio, TV Marti seen as bust

Despite spending more than half a billion dollars over the last quarter century, U.S. government broadcasts to Cuba have gained only a tiny audience and have had virtually no effect on the island's politics, according to a new report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Radio and TV Marti have failed to make any discernable inroads into Cuban society or to influence the Cuban Government," according to the report, which was prepared by the Committee's Democratic staff and released Monday. The report found that less than two percent of Cubans listen to Radio Marti, while virtually no Cubans at all see TV Marti's programming due not only to the Castro government's jamming of their signals, but also to widespread perception that the news carried on both media is not "objective". The 15-page report called for both stations to be moved from Miami to Washington, D.C. where they should be "subordinated" to the Voice of America (VOA) whose "journalistic standards" for news programming are more professional. The report, which was released amid a continuing debate in Congress over major changes in the more than 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo of Cuba, was strongly denounced by hard-line anti-Castro lawmakers who have long championed both Radio and TV Marti and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) which oversees their operations.