September 14, 2006

"He likes to fire people."

That's what Jim Defede said of Jesus Díaz Jr., the President and Publisher of The Miami Herald, this morning on his radio show right before I went on the air as Defede's guest.

It was fun, and I thank Jim Defede for offering me the opportunity to speak in a medium (liberal talk radio) that I don't usually listen to.

My premise was that Oscar Corral and the Herald have done a shoddy job of reporting this story. I mentioned how these Martí Moonlighters are not the only journalists working part-time for the government. Bob Norman, who was also a guest, asked "who says what those journalists do isn't unethical too?" I said that it's a good debate to have but the Herald missed the opportunity to have it because they focused only on Cuban-American journalists.

I really agreed with Defede on a lot of his points. His stance was that the Herald did wrong by its employees by not investigating the matter further. That because another newspaper was investigating the story, they rushed to publish out of embarrassment. That the Herald failed to do its duty as an employer in trying to avoid being scooped in a "scandal" that involved their own employees. I agree with that assessment and told him that he was fired under similar circumstances, with Herald in damage control mode.

I have written a column about this whole episode and I'm shopping it around to some of the bigger online media. It will of course be published here, when the time comes. Stay tuned. Also you can keep up with this story at Herald Watch.

Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at September 14, 2006 11:52 AM



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Comments

Henry,

You did an excellent job.

Posted by: Val Prieto [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 14, 2006 12:22 PM

Humberto Fontova with his usual wit has written the following article:

"Mainstream Media Frenzy over Bogus Scandal"

It was emailed to me this morning, and was too long to post with this comment.

Posted by: Firefly [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 14, 2006 12:25 PM

I heard the program at AM940 WINZ this morning. It was well moderated by Jim DeFede. I though him to be very objective, giving both sides of the issue equal time.

Thank you Mr. DeFede.

Henry, you did very well. You brought up several issues of great importance. For those that couldn’t tune in, here are some of the issues he discussed:

That the International Broadcasting Board is the same body that manages Radio and TV Marti and also oversees Voice of America; and that the Office of Cuba Broadcasting must abide by the same code of journalistic ethics.

That panelists such as David Lightman of the Hartford Courant; Hugh Sidey of Time magazine; Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News; Tom M. DeFrank, of the New York Daily News; Georgie Anne Geyer, syndicated columnist just to name a few… participated and were remunerated by …Voice of America. (If we were to go back to 1942 when Voice of America was founded, the list would be much too long)

That there seems to be a battle of ideas between the El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald in that articles (printed in El Nuevo Herald) of great importance to this community and internationally, are not being printed in The Miami Herald to keep English speaking readers “in the dark of about certain issues.”

Good job Henry.

Posted by: Firefly [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 14, 2006 12:46 PM

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