14ymedio: Meet the Couple Behind Cuba's New Dissident Website Rafael Castillo - VICE News
go to original June 1, 2014

Move over Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban government.

There’s a new player in town in the homogenous media landscape of the communist island that is already testing the limits of the government’s strict controls on the digital sphere, and VICE News spoke to its editor, Reinaldo Escobar.

The outlet is called 14ymedio, or “14-and-a-half,” and is the brainchild of the dissident blogger — and constant thorn on the side of the Castro brothers — Yoani Sánchez. 14ymedio launched on May 21, and was promptly cyber-attacked in its first day of existence.

'We believe that the opposition’s complaints are the reality. We are not writing reviews on the opposition, we are speaking about Cuba.'

Within the first three hours of its launch, visitors to 14ymedio in Cuba saw the platform redirect to a website called yoani$landia, which hosts criticism of Sánchez, such as an article by Gordiano Lupi, her former Italian translator at La Stampa, that called her money-hungry.

Visitors accessing the website from countries outside of Cuba were not redirected, but the diversion persisted for several days on Cuban web browsers. Back online and still testing the waters, 14ymedio might be the first independent news source in Cuba in the 55 years of the Castro regime.

Read the rest at VICE News

Photo: (AP/J. Ismael Fernandez Reyes)

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