Cuban press focuses more on country's problems

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Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:49pm EDT

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Granma newspaper, the mouthpiece of Cuba's ruling Communist Party and former President Fidel Castro, has doubled the page count of its Friday editions to provide more information in a country debating its future.

The larger edition -- 16 pages instead of the usual eight -- points to changes in the Cuban press since Castro, 81 and sidelined by illness, handed over the running of Cuba in July 2006 to his brother Raul Castro, who has encouraged debate on the country's economic problems.

Granma and its sister paper, Juventud Rebelde of the Communist Youth organization, have begun to print stories on inefficiency, theft and corruption in the state-run economy.

The newspapers have long focused their criticism on Cuba's ideological enemy, the United States, and ignored negative news on Cuba. Crime stories seldom appeared in print.

Last year, Juventud Rebelde exposed the dysfunction in many state enterprises and serious problems in the delivery of dental care, and reported on widespread unemployment in Cuba.

Even top party officials are now following Raul Castro's cue and encouraging journalists to be more hard-nosed.

"The Cuban revolution needs analytical and investigative journalism that can help solve the central issues of today's society," Rolando Alfonso, head of the party's ideology department, said on Thursday.

Cuban journalists are more accustomed to toeing the official line than digging up dirt in a one-party government that censors the media and allows no independent press.

The change of attitude comes at a time when Cubans are speaking out more openly about the shortcomings of communism and discussing Cuba's future without Fidel Castro at the helm for the first time in almost half a century.

Granma is named after the yacht Fidel Castro and his guerrillas used to land in Cuba in 1956 to launch an uprising that ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and turned Cuba into a Soviet ally.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union that plunged Cuba into crisis in the 1990s, the number of copies printed dropped by half to 500,000 and it was reduced to four pages due to the lack of newsprint.

Today, the newspaper is printed on North American newsprint imported from Canada and the United States.

An image of Fidel Castro and his young rebels raising their guns in the air still appears at the top of page one.

But the ailing "Comandante," who has not appeared in public since July 2006, has slipped from Granma's front page. At his own bidding, the regular "Reflections of comrade Fidel" appear on page two (http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/).

Granma's political line remains unchanged. Its front-page lead on Friday marked the 125th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx.

(For more on Cuba since Fidel Castro retired, click here)

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)