Since January 1959, nearly half a century ago, U.S. mass media have reflected the views of the U.S. government and systematically misreported the Cuban Revolution. This should not surprise readers familiar with the equally unrevealing journalism on revolutions in Russia and China, although notable exceptions in each case shined beacon lights on reality. In 1957 Herbert Matthews, like John Reed in Russia and Edgar Snow in China, wrote front-page stories on Fidel Castro’s guerrilla band in Cuba’s eastern mountains. He emphasized the brutality of Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship and U.S. support for that corrupt and brutal regime, portraying Fidel as a democrat who followed a long line of Latin American revolutionaries. After the revolution triumphed, Lee Lockwood’s photojournalism for Life marked a second exception in which facts placed in context emerged from the stories.