21st Century New Media

21st Century New Media

The television networks and national print media could do a wonderful job informing people of many important things happening in the world today. But they do not. Instead, they focus their camera lenses and printer ink on diversionary stories that hide the truth through omission. We can only focus on one thing at a time and most people are content to watch the news and think what they see is all that is happening in the world.

For example, a friend at work heard me jabbering about how bad things are in Cuba and he asked me if Castro hadn’t really been good for Cuba and the Cuban people. That is when I began showing Dave some recent pictures on therealcuba website. http://www.therealcuba.com/ Suddenly, his whole opinion of the island changed. The poverty was shocking to him. He is an artist and he saw all of the formally beautiful architecture crumbling into the dirt. He witnessed the emaciated people with sullen desperate faces just milling around or worse - digging through trash cans to sustain themselves. He noted that we have poverty here as well with trashcan divers. At first he found it hard to believe what he saw on therealcuba. He thought that perhaps this was just some small portion of Cuba and wondered if there weren’t nice areas on the island. So I showed these areas to him – the tourist areas. I explained that unless you were involved in serving the tourists' needs you were forbidden, as a Cuban, to even be in these areas. I explained that young attractive Cuban women were admitted into the tourists’ spots to sell their body because it is a real tourist attraction for many men. I let him compare the clean tourists’ bathrooms with the university’s filthy ones.

The point is we cannot depend on the Miami Heralds of the world to change things. Instead, depend on them to work very hard to keep things just as they are. Fortunately people are fed up with them and are looking for answers. Bloggers are the 21st Century media. Those who seek the truth can now find it here and on numerous other blogs. So when news media blindly parrot the assertions of the Cuban junta we are there to correct them. Every time we do so we become stronger and they less credible. The people already know that big media is leading them astray so they just ignore it. But as we experience more and more pain and tribulations brought about by bad public policy they will seek the truth. So we are there now for them at the stroke of their keyboard and a mouse click or two. In the past I struggle in vain to express ideas that I believe would make the world a better place for everyone. But in the month that I’ve had my blog up I’ve reached more people, all across the world, than I did in the entire decade of the 1980s trying to go through the traditional big media. I learn so much here in the blogger world that for me it has replaced the big media. They still don’t get it though. They think they can turn back the clock and regain readers and viewers by redesigning the newspaper layouts and with snappy jingles. Many, especially newspapers, have already become extinct. This trend will continue while each day we grow stronger. One day in the near future we will replace the daily newspaper and the nightly news. That is because you are dedicated to telling the truth while they are committed only to their bottom lines.

So let us keep making connection. Please, if anyone has an anti-Castro blog, or Chavez or Lulu or any anti tyrant blog send me your link if you are not already on my blog. I will gleefully put your link on my blog so we can continue to build our own network for truth. Send it to trestradapalma@verizon.net and I’ll continue to promote your blogs.

Thank you,

Tomas Estrada-Palma