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Why US Cuba Coverage Falls Far Short of the Truth
As the Trump regime tightens the screws of the embargo by further restricting oil access to the country, legacy media continue to toe the government’s line on the issue, with coverage that is either low on context or outright stenography.
Mar 22, 2026
The US government’s decades-long economic blockade against Cuba is in many ways not a complicated issue. The policy of restricting trade with the country’s communist government was put into full force under the Kennedy administration, with the explicit goal of causing enough economic hardship, hunger, and desperation to spur regime change.
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly and consistently voted to end the embargo since a resolution to that effect was first introduced in 1992. Member countries argue that the embargo violates international law. It has cost the country anywhere between $130-170 billion since its inception, and has restricted the Cuban people’s access to food and medicine. And it has not accomplished its primary goal of overthrowing the Cuban government.
These are key points that should be included in any article reporting on Cuba’s economic struggles. However, US journalists have consistently leaned into the US government’s framing of the issue: that the country’s communist government is largely or exclusively to blame for its financial woes (FAIR.org, 11/4/24).
As the Trump regime tightens the screws of the embargo by further restricting oil access to the country, a move that has been condemned by UN human rights experts as a further violation of international law (New York Times, 2/13/26), legacy media continue to toe the government’s line on the issue, with coverage that is either low on context or outright stenography.
‘Extraordinary Threat’
President Donald Trump has tried to justify his administration’s significant escalation in tactics on the basis that Cuba represents an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the security of the United States, primarily by supporting US geopolitical enemies. This accusation is not new: The country has previously been accused of hosting both Russian and Chinese spy bases. Despite neither claim being backed by evidence (Belly of the Beast, 2/6/26, 8/1/24), the Trump administration doubled down on them when rolling out its new and harsher set of policies.
But the administration also unveiled a new claim that upped the ante: Cuba has apparently been harboring Hamas and Hezbollah forces, not 90 miles off of our shores! “Cuba welcomes transnational terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” reads an executive order from January 29,
creating a safe environment for these malign groups so that these transnational terrorist groups can build economic, cultural, and security ties throughout the region, and attempt to destabilize the Western Hemisphere, including the United States.
The administration did not provide evidence to support this claim, and none has surfaced, despite local journalists’ investigative efforts (Belly of the Beast, 2/2/26).
That hasn’t stopped legacy media from repeating the claim uncritically, with nothing more than an “alleged” or “accused” attached, suggesting reporters can’t be bothered to fact-check it. This could be found in coverage in both The Guardian (1/29/26) and CNN (2/1/26) at the beginning of the recent round of escalations.
A full month later—plenty of time for a serious reporter to get to the bottom of the allegations, or at least ask the administration what evidence it has—The Atlantic (3/1/26) relayed the claim yet again, with just as little evidence supporting it as when it was first made. Throwing in the word “alleged” does little to change the fact that the US government has been given primary control of the narrative in this media coverage.
Despite the abundance of evidence regarding the intentions of US foreign policy toward Cuba, legacy media often fail to give proper context when reporting on the topic.
The Cuban government has categorically denied harboring or supporting terrorist organizations (Granma, 2/2/26). But defying basic journalistic practice, neither The Guardian nor The Atlantic gave any space to the Cuban government to respond to the claims made against it.
The Atlantic did quote a source that pushed back on using Cuba’s designation as a “state sponsor of terrorism” as a rationale for overthrowing its government. But that designation long preceded Trump’s recent comments, and the article did not offer any challenge to the recent accusations. The CNN article included only that Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that Trump’s threats were made under “empty pretexts.”
‘It Is Indeed a Blockade’
Some recent New York Times reports, on the other hand, have shown a willingness to break from the official narrative. An article by reporter Frances Robles (1/30/26) on the decision to cut off fuel to the island noted that the administration hadn’t provided evidence to support its claims that Cuba is harboring Hamas or Hezbollah fighters.
The article’s sourcing is more robust as well. For instance, the Times gave Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum space to oppose Trump’s decision, affirming her support for the sovereignty of the Cuban people and respect for international law. This was followed by Cuba’s foreign minister saying that what his government calls the “economic genocide” being enacted by Trump’s decision is built on “a long list of lies.” A social media post attributed to the Venezuelan government rounded out the opposing sources balking at the idea that Cuba constitutes a threat to the US.
The Times (2/20/26) challenged official terminology in another piece headlined “A New US Blockade Is Strangling Cuba.” The article, by Jack Nicas and Christiaan Triebert, explained that the term “blockade” is a contentious one:
The US government called its 1962 policy a “quarantine” to avoid using the word “blockade,” which legally could be interpreted as an act of war. The Trump administration has also avoided using the word “‘blockade.”
Regardless of the Trump administration’s refusal to call the recent change in policy a “blockade,” the article said, “it is functioning as one.”
The article also quoted Fulton Armstrong, “former lead Latin American analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency,” who agreed with the diagnosis. “Among us longtime Cuba watchers, we’ve always resisted people using the word blockade,” he says. “But it is indeed a blockade.”
(Of course, the Cuban government has considered the US’ economic punishment to be an illegal blockade and a “wartime measure” long before the recent escalation—Granma, 2/2/17.)
The article also had a rare reference to the possible illegality of US sanctions:
The United Nations has criticized the US policy as a violation of international law that has exacerbated the suffering of Cuba’s roughly 10 million residents.
‘Lead an Army of Exiles’
Despite the abundance of evidence regarding the intentions of US foreign policy toward Cuba, legacy media often fail to give proper context when reporting on the topic. In a Reuters report (2/25/26) about the Trump administration allowing oil sales to private companies in Cuba amid the ongoing crisis, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was given space to blame the Cuban government for the country’s woes without any pushback.
“What the Cuban people should know is this: that if they are hungry and they are suffering, it’s not because we’re not prepared to help them. We are,” he said. “It’s that the people standing in the way of us helping them is the regime, the Communist Party.”
Are there any average citizens of Cuba who value their nation’s sovereignty, who don’t want their government to relent, or who blame the United States for enacting policies designed to hurt their own economy? Herald readers may never know.
The article allowed this quote to hang bizarrely in the middle of a story about the US exercising disproportionate power over the country. The article put very little blame on the US at all, noting that its recent escalations have only been “worsening an energy crisis in the Communist-run country that is hitting power generation and fuel for vehicles, houses, and aviation.”
Nowhere was the long history of US attacks on the Cuban economy mentioned. Nor was there any suggestion that Rubio, a man who boasted as a child that he would one day “lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba” (Atlantic, 12/23/14), might be invested in policies that might achieve his childhood dream. Rubio’s recent admission (Belly of the Beast, 1/28/26) that the Trump administration would like to see regime change in Cuba, a condition that is itself codified into US law as a prerequisite for lifting the “embargo,” is glaringly absent as well.
‘Failure of the Socialist Economic Model’
Similarly, the Miami Herald (2/17/26)—long hostile to the Cuban government—depicted Rubio as simply urging the Cuban government “to make economic reforms as a way out of the impasse.” While documenting the poor conditions on the streets of Cuba, the Herald‘s Nora Gámez Torres reported:
The economic crisis, a deep economic contraction that has lasted years, has largely resulted from the failure of the socialist economic model, a hard-currency-hungry military stashing billions of dollars in its accounts, and years of Cuban leaders dragging their feet on urgently needed economic reforms. The Covid-19 pandemic and the tightening of US sanctions under the first Trump administration also played a part.
The “stashing billions” reference is to a bogus story the same reporter (Miami Herald, 8/6/25) published last year; Gámez Torres, who accused the Cuban military of having a huge secret reserve of cash based on a leaked spreadsheet, apparently failed to understand that a dollar sign is used to denote both US dollars and Cuban pesos (FAIR.org, 8/29/25). In her latest piece, the final line of the paragraph is the only reference to the decades-long history of economic warfare against the island.
“By design, these sanctions exist in order to suffocate the country economically, and they’re very effective in doing so,” Alexander Main, director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told FAIR. He notes that the sanctions are aimed at cutting Cuba off from the wider economic world. For instance, Cuba’s current placement on the US State Sponsor of Terrorism list has been deterring foreign investment in the country.
“It’s not going to happen because nobody wants to invest. They’re scared to death of running afoul of the sanctions criteria, so there’s this effect of overcompliance where companies are just not going to do it,” he says. “The risk of being hit by secondary sanctions is just way too high.”
And yet, throughout the Herald article, the US is depicted as simply wanting to “make economic changes,” “increasing external pressure” in an attempt to “reform the island’s hardline Marxist economy.”
‘Willing to Drown an Entire People’
The idea that the Cuban government has been rigid and unwilling to enact reforms is a false one, according to Main. “For better or for worse, they’ve taken a lot of measures to open up the economy,” including a major reform in 2021 that gave the private sector access to most sectors of the economy. “There’s a very limited number of sectors that remain completely under state control.”
“The problem with these reforms,” he says,
is that you can’t really implement them when there’s an embargo or blockade going on, when you’re basically restricting all of foreign capital from getting in, when you’re restricting the means of Cubans to import essential inputs for their own national production, when you’re starving the economy of cash. These reforms aren’t going to go very far.
Yet Cuban leaders are depicted throughout the Herald article as stubborn and cruel for refusing to give in to US pressure, which the paper’s choice of sources would have you believe is contrary to the interests of the people. Indeed, resisting extended economic attack, and refusing to allow the United States its God-given right to decide the structure of any country it chooses, is depicted as Cuban leaders being “willing to drown an entire people in the name of ideology,” by an unnamed “source in connection with Cuban officials.”
Are there any average citizens of Cuba who value their nation’s sovereignty, who don’t want their government to relent, or who blame the United States for enacting policies designed to hurt their own economy? Herald readers may never know, as the source given the most space to push back on the economic attack is a former Democratic congressmember from Miami. A quick reference to Cuban diplomats encouraging comparisons between the Trump admin’s actions and Israel’s in Gaza is also thrown in four paragraphs from the end of the article, though only in the context of “what some Cuba observers see as a strategy to blame the humanitarian crisis entirely on the United States and create a public-opinion crisis that would put pressure on the administration.”
The Herald gives priority to sources that are consistently critical of the Cuban government, though it is not especially difficult to find Cubans capable of giving a different perspective, as a video from Cuba-focused outlet Belly of the Beast (1/31/26) shows. The Herald’s reporting makes clear that the paper is capable of lifting up Cuban voices, just so long as those voices are singing the right tune.
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We Need Honest Journalism About the US-Israel War on Iran
We reject war. But for wars to end, truth must be spoken openly and without hesitation. Journalists must be allowed to work without fear or intimidation. Media ownership must not become a mechanism of control and censorship.
Mar 22, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to have little patience for questions that do not conform to his preferred style of declaring unsubstantiated victories, whether against South Americans or in the Middle East.
In a charged press conference on March 13, Hegseth did more than attack journalists for questioning his unverified claims about the course of the war in the Middle East. He singled out CNN, introducing a troubling dimension to the conversation. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” he said.
Ellison, a close ally of President Donald Trump and a strong supporter of Israel, is widely considered the front-runner to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company that owns CNN. If there was any lingering doubt that such acquisitions are driven by political and ideological considerations, Hegseth’s remarks dispelled it.
Such statements reflect a broader shift in how the media is viewed by segments of the US ruling class, particularly under the Trump administration. During both of his presidential terms, Trump has invested much of his public discourse not in unifying the nation but in deploying deeply hostile language against journalists who question his policies, rhetoric, or political conduct.
At this moment, journalists, intellectuals, and people of conscience must speak the truth in all its manifestations, using every available platform and opportunity.
“The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on February 18, repeating a phrase that has become central to his political lexicon.
Yet American media entered this confrontation with little public trust to begin with, though for reasons that have little to do with Trump’s own political agenda. A 2025 Gallup poll found that only 28% of Americans trust the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly, one of the lowest levels recorded in recent decades.
Historically, this mistrust has co-existed with Americans’ skepticism toward their government—any government, regardless of political orientation. But what is unfolding today appears qualitatively different. The long-standing alignment between political power, corporate interests, and media narratives now seems to be fracturing under the weight of widespread public distrust.
In Israel, however, the situation takes a different form. Mainstream media often mirrors the militant posture of the government itself, translating political belligerence into broad public support for war—whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, or wherever Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chooses to expand the battlefield.
Public opinion data illustrates this dynamic clearly. A survey released on March 4 by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 82% of the Israeli public supported the ongoing military campaign against Iran, including 93% of Israeli Jews.
Such figures reflect a media and political environment in which dissenting voices remain marginal and frequently isolated.
“With this kind of media, there’s no point in fighting for a free press, because the media itself is not on the side of freedom,” Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz on March 12.
While there is little that can realistically be done to shift the dominant Israeli narrative from within Israel itself, journalists elsewhere carry an immense responsibility. They must adhere to the most basic standards of journalistic integrity now more than ever.
This responsibility does not apply only to journalists in the United States or across the Western world. It applies equally to journalists throughout the Middle East. After all, it is our region that is being drawn into wars not of its own making, and it is our societies that have the most to gain from a just and lasting peace.
Over the past two years—particularly during Israel’s genocide on Gaza—we have seen just how difficult it has become to convey reality from the ground. Journalists have confronted censorship, propaganda campaigns, algorithmic suppression, intimidation, and outright violence.
Yet the consequences of this information crisis are far from abstract. When truth disappears, civilians suffer in silence. Political decisions are justified through distorted narratives. Wars themselves become easier to prolong when the public is denied the facts necessary to challenge them.
For years, many of us warned that if the promoters of war and chaos were not restrained, the entire region could descend into a cycle of deliberate destabilization. If this trajectory continues, our shared aspirations will suffer for generations. Our collective prosperity—already fragile—could be permanently undermined.
This struggle is not merely about journalistic integrity, nor even about truth telling as an ethical imperative. It is about the fate of entire societies whose futures are deeply interconnected. In our region, we either rise together or fall together.
Governments across the Arab and Muslim world warned against the military adventurism now engulfing the Middle East long before the current escalation. Their warnings went largely unheeded, and the consequences are now unfolding.
At this moment, journalists, intellectuals, and people of conscience must speak the truth in all its manifestations, using every available platform and opportunity.
We reject war. But for wars to end, truth must be spoken openly and without hesitation. Journalists must be allowed to work without fear or intimidation. Media ownership must not become a mechanism of control and censorship.
Politicians and generals risk reputational damage, the loss of office, or perhaps the disappearance of a generous holiday bonus if their wars fail. For the people of the Middle East—and for all victims of war—the stakes are far greater. We risk losing our families, our economies, our homes, and the very possibility of a stable future.
For that reason, gratitude is owed to the courageous individuals who continue to speak truth to power; to those who insist on unity during moments deliberately engineered to produce division; and to those who understand that honest journalism is not merely a profession.
It is a moral obligation.
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Siding With NYT, US Judge Blocks 'Outrageous' Pentagon Press Policy
"It's unfortunate that it took this long for the Pentagon's ridiculous policy to be thrown in the trash," said one press freedom advocate.
Mar 20, 2026
A federal judge in Washington, DC blocked the US Department of Defense's widely decried press policy on Friday, which The New York Times and reporter Julian Barnes had argued violates their rights under the First and Fifth amendments to the Constitution.
The Times filed its lawsuit in December, shortly after the first briefing for the "Pentagon Propaganda Corps," which critics called those who signed the DOD's pledge not to report on any information unless it is explicitly authorized by the Trump administration. Journalists who refused the agreement turned over their press credentials and carried out boxes of their belongings.
"A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription," Judge Paul Friedman, who was appointed to the US District Court for DC by former President Bill Clinton, wrote in a 40-page opinion.
"Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation's security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech," he continued. "That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now."
Friedman recognized that "national security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected," but also stressed that "especially in light of the country's recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing—so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election."
The newspaper said that Friday's ruling "enforces the constitutionally protected rights for the free press in this country. Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars. Today's ruling reaffirms the right of the Times and other independent media to continue to ask questions on the public's behalf."
The Times had hired a prominent First Amendment lawyer, Theodore Boutrous Jr. of Gibson Dunn, who celebrated the decision as "a powerful rejection of the Pentagon's effort to impede freedom of the press and the reporting of vital information to the American people during a time of war."
"As the court recognized, those provisions violate not only the First Amendment and the due process clause, but also the founding principle that the nation's security depends upon a free press," Boutrous said. "The district court's opinion is not just a win for the Times, Mr. Barnes, and other journalists, but most importantly, for the American people who benefit from their coverage of the Pentagon."
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, also welcomed the ruling, saying that "the judge was right to see the Pentagon's outrageous censorship for what it is, but this wasn't exactly a close call. If the same issue was presented as a hypothetical question on a first-year law school exam, the professor would be criticized for making the test too easy."
"It's shocking that this sweeping prior restraint was the official policy of our federal government and that Department of Justice lawyers had the nerve to argue that journalists asking questions of the government is criminal," Stern declared. "Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court called prior restraints on the press 'the most serious and the least tolerable' of First Amendment violations. At the time, the court was talking about relatively targeted orders restraining specific reporting because of a specific alleged threat—like in the Pentagon Papers case, where the government falsely claimed that the documents about the Vietnam War leaked by Daniel Ellsberg threatened national security."
"Courts back then could never have anticipated the government broadly restraining all reporting that it doesn't authorize without any justification beyond hypothetical speculation," he added. "It's unfortunate that it took this long for the Pentagon's ridiculous policy to be thrown in the trash. Especially now that we are spending money and blood on yet another war based on constantly shifting pretexts, journalists should double down on their commitment to finding out what the Pentagon does not want the public to know rather than parroting 'authorized' narratives."
The Trump administration has not yet said whether it will appeal the decision in the case, which was brought against the DOD—which President Donald Trump calls the Department of War—as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell.
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