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It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the Public Eye Chat. This week's subject is Havana-based producer Portia Siegelbaum. You can read excerpts, and listen to the full interview, below.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

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Brian Montopoli: You wrote a piece for us last year in which you mentioned that your cell phone cut out for 20 minutes when Fidel Castro's illness was announced. Do you think that the government is playing close attention to you and the other foreign reporters there and keeping tabs on what you're up to?

Portia Siegelbaum: Oh, absolutely. I think they're very concerned, and when they're making an announcement they know is breaking news, they're clearly watching. And I will tell you that every time that there is something that they hope will be reported on, or hope that it won't, they're monitoring. They're monitoring the wire stories, they're monitoring all the print media, and the television and radio also.

Brian Montopoli: Do you ever feel the threat of censorship?

Portia Siegelbaum: Well what they do here, and they just did it recently, is they yank the credentials sometimes of foreign press. And so you know that if you go out and do something they really don't like – usually on a consistent basis. They normally will not yank credentials if you write one story they don't like. They might call you in.

Brian Montopoli: How hard has it been to get good information about Castro's health?

Portia Siegelbaum: It's almost impossible. The government has not been very forthcoming. The only information that we've received recently that we can actually cite has been from him. There are other sources who give us information. It's hard to get some things confirmed by more than one source, and I don't want to report something that I know only from one person or maybe two. Because it could be speculation. There's a very tight circle of silence around him. So it's quite difficult.

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Adventures In Cuban Broadcasting: Remember Radio and TV Marti, the U.S. funded stations that broadcast anti-Castro propaganda into Cuba (which most people in Cuba don't actually see or hear because the Cuban government regularly jams the signals)?

Well, in the wake of rumors that Fidel Castro may be on his deathbed, $377,500 is now being spent "to air select programs on South Florida broadcast stations over the next six months, using loopholes in a law that prohibits the propaganda channels from distribution within the United States." While the stations have primarily U.S. audiences, experts told the Miami Herald that signals from a South Florida AM radio station can reach Cuba "very clearly at night." While the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting argues the move is "another method to get our signal in," critics argue the move is political. Joe García, executive vice president of the New Democratic Network, called the investment "a fraud." He told the Herald: "This is using taxpayer dollars for a political payoff to benefit the most Republican and politically charged radio station in Miami. They know well that the station isn't heard in Cuba, because Cuba transmits Radio Rebelde over the exact same frequency."

More Drama In Santa Barbara: In case you don't follow the journalistic drama that's been plaguing Santa Barbara's community, let us fill you in. This past July, nearly every top editor and several employees of the Santa Barbara News-Press abruptly left the paper. American Journalism Review reporter Susan Paterno wrote an article in AJR's recent issue about the melee, called "Santa Barbara Smackdown," in which she "talked with former staffers, some of whom accused News-Press owner and publisher Wendy McCaw of meddling in the newsroom." Now the company that publishes the News-Press is suing Paterno for "libel and product disparagement," according to the AP. In a court filing, the company calls the article "nothing but a biased, false and misleading diatribe against plaintiff." AJR's Senior Vice President told the AP that "the article was carefully reported and News-Press management had 'ample' opportunity to respond to questions but refused."

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It turns out there’s a bit more to the story behind the recent shake-up (following the initial shake-up) at El Nuevo Herald after the paper fired two reporters and ended relations with a freelancer when it was revealed that they had received payments for appearances on Radio and TV Marti. Yesterday, the paper announced that publisher Jesus Diaz Jr. was resigning and the fired reporters would have their jobs reinstated. Today, the Herald revealed that Diaz “actually quit two weeks ago,” after a disagreement over a column by Carl Hiaasen about the Radio/TV Marti flap that Diaz didn’t think should run. He eventually decided that the column should be published, but it seems that incident was the catalyst for his departure from the paper two weeks later. The Herald has the full story.

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So, remember those reporters at El Nuevo Herald (The Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister paper) who were fired because they accepted payments for appearances on Radio and TV Marti while they worked at the paper? Well, they're not fired anymore. And the guy who fired them, Jesús Díaz Jr., president of The Miami Herald Media Co. and publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, has resigned.

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Information about Cuban President Fidel Castro’s illness and temporary handover of power to his brother has slowed to a trickle lately. And that makes tales of how reporters operate in this tightly controlled regime all that much more intriguing. Producer Portia Siegelbaum, who is based in Cuba, gave us a first-hand account of her experiences covering the country for CBS News back in August, when news of Castro’s condition first broke. Her first line pretty much said it all: “There are no rules or guidelines for covering the news in Cuba except a really big one: If the government wants coverage, you’ll get access. If they don’t you won’t.” In next month’s issue of American Journalism Review, Lori Robertson takes a more detailed look at the situation for reporters in Cuba. She begins with some scenes from Havana's José Martí International Airport on the evening of August 2, where many of the reporters who arrived there to cover one of the biggest stories to befall the Cuban nation were told to go home, they wouldn’t be getting the necessary visas to remain in the country. That was just one example of what has become one of the most frustrating beats in the business, writes Robertson:

For decades, journalists have been trying to cover a country, whether from somewhere on the island or from afar, that is as frustrating an assignment as they come. It's tough to get in, to get an interview, to get "it" – an entire country filled with people wary of talking to anyone about how they really feel. The small group of foreign journalists who live there struggle to build trust with sources – and find sources they can trust. Others fly in on weeklong or shorter visas or work the phones, reporting methods that are never ideal for penetrating anyplace, let alone a venue as elusive as Cuba.

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It was revealed this weekend that 10 Miami journalists from various outlets were being paid by the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting to provide commentary on Radio/TV Marti, a U.S.-funded outlet that broadcasts anti-Castro material in Cuba. (We took a look at Marti last month, when the U.S. increased its funding for programming. Notably, Radio/T.V. Marti is rarely actually seen or heard by people inside Cuba because the signal is routinely blocked by the Cuban government.)

Three of those paid journalists were employed at El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language newspaper of The Miami Herald. After news hit that the three journalists - Pablo Alfonso, Wilfredo Cancio Isla and a freelancer, Olga Connor – were paid for their work for Marti, they were fired, because the publisher said the payments posed an unethical conflict of interest. As some are drawing similarities between this situation and last year's Armstrong Williams brouhaha -- when USA Today revealed that the commentator was being paid to promote the Bush administration’s education initiatives – it’s drumming up a lot of attention.

However, Cancio told The New York Times on Saturday that “his supervisors had known and approved of his appearances on Radio and TV Marti, during which he said he always expressed his own opinions and not the government's.”

The Times also reported that Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, “a Republican congressman and one of Miami's most stridently anti-Castro voices,” said that “he believed editors at El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald had known that the three writers for El Nuevo had worked for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. He pointed to articles from both papers in 2002 that describe Mr. Alfonso as a moderator for a program on Radio Marti and Ms. Connor as a paid commentator for the station.”

The story advanced again yesterday, when Connor, who wrote freelance articles about Cuban culture for El Nuevo Herald, came forward herself to say that “it was widely known inside the paper that she was paid by the U.S. government for work she did for an anti-Castro broadcaster,” according to the Associated Press.

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We’ve heard about the many ways in which information is controlled within Cuba, so the government’s condemnation of a recent move by the U.S. to increase the frequency of its TV Marti broadcasts in the country isn’t terribly surprising. TV Marti is a U.S.-funded radio and television station based in Miami and run mostly by Cuban exiles. According to the Associated Press, “Congress has approved roughly $500 million for both broadcasts since Radio Marti opened 21 years ago, and TV Marti five years later, in an effort to promote the free flow of ideas within Cuba.”

On Saturday, the U.S. “unveiled a G-1 twin turbo propeller plane that is increasing [TV Marti] transmissions from one afternoon a week to six. The privately owned plane was set to go up in mid-August, but TV Marti pushed the date forward after Castro's surgery,” according to another AP story. The problem with TV Marti, however, is that the signals are frequently jammed by the government – apparently, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Cuba who actually has seen the station. Wayne Smith, head of the U.S. interests sections in Cuba from 1979 to 1985 told AP: "‘They were told 16 years ago that to transmit a TV signal that far, it would be child's play to block it out at the other end. It was child's play, and it's been blocked out.'"

The headline of a January Los Angeles Times article about TV Marti indicated as much: “Broadcasting a Vision of Democracy Into a Void; The U.S. has sunk nearly $200 million into TV Marti's programming aimed at Cuba. But one scholar estimates it has 'nearly zero viewership.’” The article noted TV Marti executives' argument -- "that the broadcast is a good investment because it will be a vital means of communicating with Cubans when Castro dies and the country needs guidance on how to reinvent itself after the failed experiment with communism." CBS producer Portia Siegelbaum told us she’s never seen TV Marti, and has never found anyone who’s seen it because it’s always jammed. The AP did speak with "one man in western Havana" who said he caught "some of the Monday night broadcast before it was jammed by the government."

It should be interesting to see whether the U.S.’s most recent investment in the station proves useful in deterring the Cuban government from jamming the signal. While there are clearly challenges in getting information out of Cuba, getting information in seems just as complicated.

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We haven’t heard much about Cuban President Fidel Castro’s condition since the announcement last week that he was provisionally transferring power to his brother Raul while Fidel underwent surgery for intestinal bleeding and recovered. Indeed, gathering the facts about what’s going on behind the scenes of a tightly controlled Communist regime is not easy, as CBS News producer Portia Siegelbaum, who is based in Cuba full time, is well aware. Here, she describes the challenges in covering the biggest story out of the island since the Pope’s visit there in 1998 – a story that the Cuban government was much more enthusiastic about sharing with the world.

There are no rules or guidelines for covering the news in Cuba except a really big one: If the government wants coverage, you’ll get access. If they don’t you won’t.

Case in point: Fidel Castro’s sudden mysterious illness and his temporary handing over of power to his long-designated successor Raul Castro just a week ago. As some anticipated the worst, media interest almost mirrored in size the Pope’s visit to the Communist island in 1998.

Then, the government threw open the doors to 2,000 journalists—more than 1,000 of them from the U.S., along with an army of engineers and crews. The networks got carte blanche to bring in microwave systems, uplinks, computer networks, and even golf carts to zip around town. They stuck all their gear on a barge that sailed across the Florida Straits into the Port of Havana.

That’s not the case now. From the moment Castro’s operation for intestinal bleeding was announced on the evening of July 31, a thousand journalists from nearly every continent applied for press visas to enter the country. All were turned down.

So hundreds sneaked in. Without gear. Even a reporter’s notebook tucked in a pocket raised suspicion.

Some reporters from papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post are “undercover” in the Cuban capital. Dozens more hung out for days at the Cancun, Mexico airport hoping to slip in as tourists. Some, mostly Japanese, sneaked in past the Cuban censors only to face a dearth of information and the threat of deportation should they file stories. A team from a local Miami TV station made it as far as Havana’s Jose Marti International airport only to be stopped by immigration officers and put on the next flight out.

This left us, the press corps, on long-term assignments in Havana. We’re a small group. There are only four American outlets officially here. CNN, the Associated Press, and two newspapers, The Sun Sentinel of South Florida (which, to their chagrin, had no correspondent here at the moment the story broke) and the Chicago Tribune. The Dallas Morning News closed their Havana bureau last year for budget reasons.

The three major American networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, are here under a wink and a nod from island officials.

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