Canada‐Cuba relations: An ambivalent media and policy
What a difference a decade makes. While in the midto late-1990s the Helms-Burton Act, passed by the US Congress, created a outcry of media protest and support for Cuba in the press, by 2009 media coverage had become increasingly sparse and much more critical of Cuba, raising questions of whether a broad and general change in public sympathies related to Cuba had developed, or whether this was a media phenomenon resulting from greater access to Cuba and a broadening of reportage. Was another mutually reinforcing shift and convergence underway between critical media accounts, parliamentary discussions, and public opinion surrounding Cuba, much as there was in the late-1990s, when both press and Parliamentarians criticized Chrétien’s failed human rights agenda in Cuba? If, today, media coverage of Cuba is becoming more critical, and there are indications that this is the case, to what is Canadian media coverage responding? Canadians have always constructed popular perceptions about Cuba, which, in turn, support broader foreign policy platforms. Wright (2007) documents Canadian media support and the critical role this played in shaping Canadian support for Cuba during the early years of the Cuban Revolution and the Castro administration. Canadian journalists eagerly participated in news casting from the island, while the media romanticized the Revolution. Indeed, the publicity generated in the Canadian press at that time was extremely favourable. There was a strong “Robin Hood” analogy which subsequently played out in the Canadian newspapers and which shaped Canadian support of the Castro regime. Moreover, as Wright (2007: 46-47) indicates, equally caught up in the pro-Castro enthusiasm, and clearly affected by public sentiment, the federal government quickly recognized the new government. While one event did not create the other, they were mutually constitutive. The interaction between public perception and political policies is quite complex. Generally speaking, there may be consonance between popular values (the press) and foreign policy goals, and if these popular or public perceptions and foreign policy elements become convergent, the result can be a popularized geopolitics, which, in turn, reinforces or is incorporated into the status quo in formal policy-making (Dijkink, 1998). Most scholars would suggest, however, that this relationship is not one of direct influence between media coverage and foreign policy, but rather, that it can be mutually reinforcing (or divisive) in terms of the way in which the media responds by framing the events or news, leading to its “spreading activation” (Entman, 2004: 7). While partisan politics is involved, this framing of news goes beyond such politics, and yet, is not independent of it. This means that for Canadians, understanding Canada’s foreign policy position towards Cuba through media accounts has agency, as well as reflects agency, in ways which mere partisanship cannot explain. 103