Ending Decades of Animosity: Framing 2014 Thaw in US-Cuba Diplomatic Relations in the Washington Post and Miami Herald

El Bendary Md

doi:10.4172/2332-0761.1000199

Abstract

On December 17, 2014, US President Barak Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro simultaneously announced from Washington and Havana that their countries would resume diplomatic relations ended half a century ago. But how did the US press frame the detente? Exploratory and comparative in nature, the study mainly and inclusively examinesvia qualitative and quantitative analysis-the US press’s coverage of the restoration of US-Cuba diplomatic relations. It seeks out the themes in newspaper opinion items in the Miami Herald and The Washington Post to explain the American public’s position and interpretation of Obama’s new Cuba policy.

Highlights

On December 17, 2014, U.S President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro simultaneously announced from Washington and Havana that their countries would resume normal diplomatic relations ended half a century ago
Under Castro’s communist leadership, U.S Cuba relations were filled with animosities, including the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and an American trade embargo imposed on the island a year later
Finding revealed a significant generational gape, with 53% of those born in Cuba opposing the policy change and 64% of Cuban Americans born in the US supporting it

Summary

Introduction

On December 17, 2014, U.S President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro simultaneously announced from Washington and Havana that their countries would resume normal diplomatic relations ended half a century ago. “These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked,” said Obama in his announcement In his televised address, eighty-three-year-old President Castro, who assumed leadership from his brother Fidel in 2008, observed that there remain profound differences between his country and America with the embargo continuing to be the stumbling block. Exploratory and comparative in nature, this study mainly and inclusively examines the US press’s coverage of the 2014 restoration of US-Cuba diplomatic relations It seeks out the themes in newspaper opinion items of the détente in the Miami Herald, which is published from south Florida and caters to America’s largest Cuban community, and The Washington Post, a “newspaper of record” which operates from the nation’s capital where US foreign policy decisions are manufactured. It usually involves the study of particular texts: interviews, speeches, conversations, etc., and can “range from the description and interpretation of meaning-making and meaning-understanding in specific situations through to the critical analysis of ideology and access to meaning-systems and discourse networks” [10]

Method

Findings

Conclusion