MOORE BLASTS WIKILEAKED CABLE, MEDIA THAT RAN WITH IT

A cable sent by U.S. diplomats in Havana to State Department officials in 2008 claiming that Michael Moore’s film Sicko had been banned by the Cuban government was intended to tell tell the diplomats’ bosses “what they want to hear,” Moore said on his blog Saturday. The cable, revealed by WikiLeaks, had said that Moore’s documentary painted such a glowing picture of the Cuban healthcare system that leaders of the country feared a popular backlash if the general population compared their own health services with those depicted in the film. “Cubans are reportedly very resentful that the best hospital in Havana [featured in Moore’s film] is ‘off-limits’ to them,” the memo said. It added that when the film was screened for a group of Cuban doctors, some became so angry at Moore’s “blatant misrepresentation” that they walked out. However, on his blog, Moore maintained that not only was his film screened in theaters throughout Cuba but that it was also broadcast on national television on April 25, 2008. Moore also criticized Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which originally published the WikiLeaks document, and other newspapers and conservative blogs that ran with the story for not checking it out — “not one scintilla of digging to see if Cuba had actually banned the movie!” he wrote. He went on to cite numerous 2008 news reports about the film’s release in Cuba.