TV Marti-Miami Herald Controversy Heats Up

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. In a letter to editors and executives at The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and The McClatchy Co., which owns the papers, Connor wrote that "her contribution to Radio and TV Marti was so well known that articles published in 2002 in both papers included mention of her involvement and no one had previously indicated it was a conflict of interest," according to AP.

An article in the Miami Herald yesterday notes another interesting tidbit

"A March 31, 2002, article published in The Miami Herald -- and a separate article in El Nuevo Herald on that same date written by another reporter -- identified Connor as a paid contributor to TV and Radio Martí.

El Nuevo Herald Executive Editor Humberto Castelló said Monday in an e-mail responding to a reporter's questions that he did not dismiss Connor in 2002 because she was a freelancer.

Asked if he agreed with the company's decision Thursday to terminate her contract, he answered in Spanish: ``I don't agree with the decision taken.''

Jesús Díaz Jr., president of Miami Herald Media Company and publisher of both newspapers, said the decision was his.

``The reason I decided the freelance relationship should be terminated is because many of her assignments are made by us. Most of the articles she writes for El Nuevo Herald appear only in El Nuevo Herald.

''I wasn't aware of the article in 2002, and if I had been this might have happened sooner,'' Díaz said.