Great moments in journalism

What do you get when you send a group of newspaper reporters out to interview a couple of dozen “ordinary” workers supposedly chosen at random?

If you are in communist Cuba, you get … the same opinion.

Following last week’s meeting of the Cuban Labour Federation, the official propaganda sheet of the Castro regime, Granma, sent its reporters out to interview workers from all sectors of the Cuban economy.

Teachers, railway workers, university lecturers, wharfies, mechanics, cigar-makers … Even a baseball player.

All were asked for their views on the speech to the trade union organisation by Raul Castro calling on workers to work even harder and to help stamp our corruption, laziness and other ideological impurities in the workplace.

Believe it or not, every one of the workers interviewed by the paper agreed wholeheartedly with Raul Castro. All had the very same opinions. Spooky, eh?

Even the baseball player, Pedro Luis Lazo, the pitcher for the national team.

According to Lazo, the speech by the younger Castro was an inspiration not just to workers in factories and schools and offices across the island but to baseball players, too.

“As [Raul] said, we need to lift our game and achieve a higher degree of discipline,” the pitcher told Granma. “In fact, we have already started to train for next season and we are expecting to perform even better then.”

Read the article here. In Spanish.