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FILE - In this Feb. 3, 2015 file photo, a man reads a copy of the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma, as a woman walks past, in old Havana. Cuba is slightly loosening controls on its state-run media under its new president. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)

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FILE - In this May 19, 2017 file handout photo provided by the Cuba News Agency, ACN, Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel, center, visits with family members of passengers who perished in a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a farm field shortly after taking off from the airport in Havana, Cuba. Minutes after a plane carrying 113 people crashed on takeoff from Havana airport, Cuban state media filled with minute-by-minute updates, cellphone video from the accident and an interview from the scene with newly named President Miguel Diaz-Canel. (Agencia Cubana de Noticias via AP File)

Cuba slightly loosens controls on state media

By Associated Press AP

PUBLISHED 1:50 PM ET May. 09, 2019

HAVANA (AP) — Reports in Cuba's state-run press have long consisted mostly of transcriptions of official Communist Party declarations, but that turgid style appears to be incrementally changing in the wake of Miguel Diaz-Canel becoming president in April.

Cuban journalists tell The Associated Press the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, one of the country's most powerful bodies, recently approved a "New Communication Policy" aimed at giving state media more ability to report news like their colleagues do in other countries.

State journalists say the goal is to compete with the spread of information from alternative online sources. Cuba has one of the world's lowest rates of internet use, but access has been expanding rapidly and Cubans who get online can find a nearly unlimited range of non-official media outlets.