[Marxism] U.S. Paid 10 Journalists for Anti-Castro Reports (NYT)

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As much as the New York Times hates the Cuban Revolution, it now
seems to hate the Bush administration 1% more. And because of that,
it seeks out reasons and issues which it would have ignored before
and helps give them traction, as this story is getting. The key to
THIS article is the further confirmation of what Cuba has all along
been saying: Washington PAYS its propagandists in Miami, just as it
pays them in Cuba. "Independent" journalists, hah! This jouralistic
falling-out among thieves is some of the best news we've had in a
very long time. Typically, Cuba stories, and above all Cuba stories
which put Washington in a less favorable light than Havana were to be
ignored. That's changing now. Fidel's illness is turning out to be a
very good thing politically, as it is putting U.S. policy toward 
Cuba out on the table in a new and more serious manner. This NYT
story continues along the train of thought in the recent editorial
in the NYT: "90 Miles and Light Years Away", also important reading:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs881.html

Perhaps the most important question is why these financial payments
to the strident supporters of "independent journalism" in Cuba have
been keep secret for so long. Paying these presstitutes is and has
been official U.S. policy for ages. That the story is now beginning
to see the light, that is excellent news. No doubt Fidel is pleased.


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews 
===================================================================

THE NEW YORK TIMES
September 9, 2006 
U.S. Paid 10 Journalists for Anti-Castro Reports 
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/09/washington/09cuba.html>

MIAMI, Sept. 8 ? The Bush administration?s Office of Cuba
Broadcasting paid 10 journalists here to provide commentary on Radio
and TV Martí, which transmit to Cuba government broadcasts critical
of Fidel Castro, a spokesman for the office said Friday.

The group included three journalists at El Nuevo Herald, the
Spanish-language sister newspaper of The Miami Herald, which fired
them Thursday after learning of the relationship. Pablo Alfonso, who
reports on Cuba for El Nuevo Herald, received the largest payment,
almost $175,000 since 2001.

Other journalists have been found to accept money from the Bush
administration, including Armstrong Williams, a commentator and
talk-show host who received $240,000 to promote its education
initiatives. But while the Castro regime has long alleged that some
Cuban-American reporters in Miami were paid by the government, the
revelation on Friday, reported in The Miami Herald, was the first
evidence of that.

In addition to Mr. Alfonso, the journalists who received payment
include Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who writes for El Nuevo Herald and
received about $15,000 since 2001; Olga Connor, a freelance reporter
for the newspaper who received about $71,000; and Juan Manuel Cao, a
reporter for Channel 41 who got $11,000 this year from TV Martí,
according to The Miami Herald, which learned of the payments through
a Freedom of Information Request.

When Mr. Cao followed Mr. Castro to Argentina this summer and asked
him why Cuba was not letting one of its political dissidents leave,
Mr. Castro called him a ?mercenary? and asked who was paying him.

Mr. Cao refused to comment Friday except to say on Channel 41 that he
believed the Cuban government knew in advance about the article in
The Miami Herald. Most of the other journalists could not be reached.
Ninoska Perez-Castellón, a commentator on the popular Radio Mambí
station here, said she had received a total of $1,550 from the
government to do 10 episodes of a documentary-style show on TV Martí
called ?Atrévete a Soñar,? or ?Dare to Dream,? and saw nothing wrong
with it. Her employer has always known about the arrangement, she
added.

?Being Cuban,? Ms. Perez-Castellón said, ?there?s nothing wrong with
working on programs that are on a mission to inform the people of
Cuba. It?s no secret we do that. My face has always been on the
shows.?

But Al Tompkins, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute for
Media Studies in St. Petersburg, called it a conflict of interest for
journalists to accept payment from any government agency.

?It?s all about credibility and independence,? Mr. Tompkins said. ?If
you consider yourself a journalist, then it seems to me it?s an
obvious conflict of interest to take government dollars.?

Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican congressman and one of Miami?s most
stridently anti-Castro voices, said 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 Martí and Ms. Connor as a paid
commentator for the station.

But Robert Beatty, vice president for public affairs at the Miami
Herald Media Company, said the editor of El Nuevo, Humberto Castello,
learned only on Thursday. The Herald, long owned by Knight Ridder,
was acquired in March by the McClatchy Company.

Mr. Beatty said that Jesús Diaz, publisher of The Miami Herald and El
Nuevo Herald, had decided to fire Mr. Alfonso and Mr. Cancio and to
sever ties with Ms. Connor, a freelance journalist who wrote about
Cuban culture.

?Journalism?s ethical guidelines are neither subjective nor
selectively enforced,? Mr. Beatty said. ?Where conduct of this sort
is brought to our attention, we act decisively.?

Mr. Cancio said Friday evening that his supervisors had known and
approved of his appearances on Radio and TV Mambí, during which he
said he always expressed his own opinions and not the government?s.

?It is for these reasons that I deny any conflict of interest in my
professional behavior,? he said, ?and I believe my termination to be
an unfair and disproportionate decision made in bad faith.?

Pedro Roig, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, could not be
reached for comment. But he told The Miami Herald that hiring
Cuban-American journalists was part of a broader mission to improve
the stations? quality.

Joe O?Connell, a spokesman for the government?s International
Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees the Office of Cuba Broadcasting
as well as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, said the bureau
did background checks on journalists who contributed to its
programming but had no ethics code for them.

After Mr. Williams admitted in 2005 to accepting money from the
Federal Education Department through a public relations company,
federal auditors said the Bush administration had violated the law by
disseminating ?covert propaganda.?

A few months later, The Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon
had paid millions of dollars to another public relations firm to
plant propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi
journalists monthly stipends.

Government spending on Radio and TV Martí ? $37 million this year ?
has long been the subject of criticism because the broadcasts appear
to reach only a minute number of Cubans. The Cuban government jams
the signals. This year, the Bush administration spent $10 million on
a new plane designed to transmit TV Martí more effectively.

Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami.


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