The Cuban journalist Mónica Baró harshly questioned Arleen Rodríguez Derivet after her statements in an interview with Rafael Correa for the program Conversa con Correa, aired by Russia Today in November 2025.
In a video posted on his Facebook page, Baró reacted to the segment in which Rodríguez claimed to have been trained in a "journalism of truth" inspired by Fidel Castro. The independent journalist dismissed those words as false and contrasted them with her own experience within the Cuban state media system.
"Really, what bothered me most about Arleen Rodríguez's interview with Rafael Correa for Russia Today was what she talked about regarding journalism. She dedicated most of the interview to discussing journalism, possibly half of it, and there was a part where she recounted how she became the deputy director of Mesa Redonda, because it was a project initiated by Fidel Castro, always so concerned about ensuring the truth about Cuba was known, and she joined that project. Today she is the deputy director and continues to be part of that team chosen by Fidel," said the exiled Cuban journalist.
In the excerpt quoted by Baró, Rodríguez states: “But the principle that Fidel always told us, do you know what it was? Putin mentioned it during the twentieth anniversary of RT as the strategic weapon: the truth. The truth, Fidel said, ‘the truth is devastating; against the truth, no one can stand.’ And in fact, that was historically his fundamental weapon. He would tell us: ‘You discuss what you consider important about these issues, but if you were wrong because you read something that wasn’t exactly true, come back the next day and apologize. The truth is the most important thing.’ And it was in that kind of journalism that I was trained, I was trained in the journalism of the truth.”
Baró responded with a direct critique: "What irritated me the most about those statements from Arleen Rodríguez regarding journalism, among other things she said throughout the interview, is that she knows it's a lie. Because there is no training in journalism based on truth in Cuba."
He recalled that he studied journalism at the University of Havana from 2007 to 2012, and that although he encountered major international figures like Kapuściński, Günter Wallraff, Gabriel García Márquez, and Pablo de la Torriente Brau in the classrooms, the professional internships confirmed what he had already suspected before entering the field: censorship. “I verified what I had already seen before starting my studies, which was basically censorship,” he stated.
After graduating, he completed his social service at the magazine Bohemia, where —as he recounted— he found that “within the model of state party press, completely subordinate to the party, there were no possibilities for journalism to exist and flourish.” During that time, he coincided with Rodríguez “in various meetings, coverages where the Central Committee was basically telling us what we had to do and how we journalists had to work.”
"Then, it really annoys me to see how she lies so brazenly in that interview," concluded Baró from Miami.
Baró's statements come after another controversy arose from the same conversation between Rodríguez and Correa, in which the presenter tried to justify the blackouts on the island by saying that “José Martí did not know electric light”. The former Ecuadorian president interrupted her with a look of disbelief: “But Arleen, we are in the 21st century.”
Those words sparked a wave of criticism and jokes on social media, where many users recalled that Martí did know and wrote about electricity in texts such as the introduction to La Edad de Oro. Now, the video by Mónica Baró adds a new chapter to the discussion on the role of journalism in Cuba and the use of Fidel Castro's figure as a reference within state-controlled media.
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