An afternoon Fisking

It was only a matter of time before Ana Menendez, the resident arrepentida of the Miami Herald - one of many, I'm afraid - came out with an opinion piece on the Marti reporters and defending - guess who - the guys that sign her paycheck every week.

Whodathunkit?

I've taken the liberty of responding point by point to her brown-nosing in the guise of ethical standards editorial as follows:

Last week, two reporters and a freelancer were fired from El Nuevo Herald after The Miami Herald's Oscar Corral reported they were paid for appearances on Radio and TV Martí.

The dismissals have invigorated the opinion industry and subjected the people of this town to higher than usual doses of hypocrisy

So far so good, I guess, with the caveat that the major doses of hypocrisy came from the Miami Herald, who not only knew that their reporters were being paid editorial fees by Radio Marti, and had reported same on their own pages and still - STILL - proceeded to do a hatchet job on their employees disingenouosly as a "breaking news" item when in fact they were just trying to beat another major metropolitan newspaper to the story and thus looking like the small time putzes that they are.

The most amusing response comes, as usual, from Cuba, where the official press has been gloating about proof that the ''Miami Mafia'' and its journalists are bought and paid for by the U.S. government. It would be a compelling argument, except for the fact that in Cuba, government hacks are the rule, not the exception. Of the small group of Cuban journalists who don't draw a government salary, many are, sadly, polishing their prose in jail.

All the more reason, Ana, that an entity such as Radio Marti exist, else the people of Cuba certainly wouldnt get any information on the world around them. Especially from all those foreign journalists stationed in Cuba, like the guy from Reuters who also published numeorus articles for some communist rag.

The El Nuevo three were fired for entering into the sort of arrangement that defines journalism in a totalitarian state.

The Herald knew of their arrangements since at least 2002, and apparently had no problems with same for at least four years. And can you please prove to us, your naive and unlearned readers, that these journalists were forced or coerced to voice anything but their own opinions? Why havent you asked them this and quoted it here on this piece? What, it doesnt coincide with the "flavor?" Or is it, maybe, that their responses would completely contradict your blanket statement?

Which brings us to more hypocrites: all the exile patriots who attack Corral for reporting the truth while simultaneously defending El Nuevo Herald's journalists for taking money from propagandists.

But Oscar didnt report the truth, he manipulated it as has been proven here in this blog and others. Why the photos of ten instead of the Herald three? Why no mention of the 2002 report in the Herald stating payments were being accpted by one or more of their journalists? Why only one side of the story? Why no interviews with the subjects at hand?

Some of the postings on Corral's blog are scary. ''You will pay dearly for what you have done,'' says one. ''We are starting a campaign to have Oscar fired at The Herald,'' says another. That's the kind of attitude that makes one hopeful about the future of a free press in Cuba.

Yes. And some of the comment postings on Corral's blogs also call Cubans and Jews "pigs". You're of Cuban descent, arent you, Ana? Then, according to Corral's readers, youre a pig. Are you a pig? Of course not. But by your statement above, we are to take comments at Oscar's blogs as gospel of the entire community. Ive been called many many things and have been slurred and libeled there many a time, but I do what neither you nor Corral nor the Herald do from your ethical journalist high horses: consider the source. Unless, of course, it is your intent to mislead the public, then by all means, go right ahead, journalistic ethics notwithstanding.

And another thing, are you stating that the Cuban-American community should not express their opinions with their voices or their pocketbooks as is the guaranteed right every American citizen via the Bill of Rights?

Let me put it to you straight: if I chose not to purchase the Herald or be a consumer of any product or service that advertises in the Herald while Corral is still in the employ of the Herald, then that is my right to do so, and no journalistic standard can take that away from me. Remember, none of us voted for the Miami Herald to be our local newspaper and yours is a monopoly here in South Florida. A fact, I can assure you would be completely different were we actually able to chose who covered the news for us.

Radio and TV Martí are tools of the United States, conceived with a singular aim: to undermine the Cuban government. They cannot broadcast here because of U.S. anti-propaganda laws.

This is not PBS or NPR; this is programming designed to influence opinion in ways deemed unacceptable for domestic consumption. Propaganda is propaganda, even when a large portion of the population regards its mission as noble. It is not journalism.

Radio Marti's primary goal is to provide the people of Cuba with an alternative news source, since a) the Cuban government controls all sources of media and information on the island and b) your journalistic brethren who happen to have bureaus in Havana have sold their integrity to maintain said bureaus in Havana. You know, in case the big story breaks. They are there as puppets of the regime, reporting from a country what that country's government wants it to report and without even being able to report it to the people of that country. Another thing, not one single editorial or article vis a vis journalistic ethics in the Herald has made mention of the fact that foreign journalists walk on eggshells in Cuba for fear of being tossed out of the island if their reports arent in tune with the government's. Thus these "ethical goliaths" slant their pieces in order not to offend the Cuban government. That, Ana, is true hypocrisy. And from holier than thou journalists, ethically enriched reporters too boot.

''I fully support what Radio Martí is doing,'' Miami Herald Publisher Jesús Díaz Jr. told me Tuesday. ``The issue is, don't do it with independent U.S. journalists. Leave them alone.''

Your publisher doesnt want to make any more hay out of this issue and thus comes up with this absolutely preposterous quote. I guess maybe distribution has dropped since Oscar blew the lid off the painfully obvious with his smear job of a non-story. And who, prey tell, could Radio Marti hire as editorialists and columnists and reporters if not independent US journalists? They have to have some kind of expertise in Cuba and Cuban issues, no? Who are they gonna call, independent journalists from Granma? Talk about a double standard.

I've never accepted money from Radio Martí. But years after I left journalism, I contributed an essay to a journal put out by the State Department. I've regretted it ever since. Not because it was unethical, but because I believe writers -- even fiction writers -- must remain independent of governments.

Cry me a river. An essay is but an opinion, and if some member of the MSM, or even an arm of the government thinks well enough of that opinion and how it's expressed to publish it and pay you for it, then that, Ana, is capitalism at its finest. And if a writer's opinion happens to coincide with the government's and that writer opts not to voice that opinion for fear that he may be construed as an instrument of said government, then that writer has succesfully dimished his first ammendment right to voice his opinion. Self-censorship is the worst of all censorships.

It's a conviction born of my family's own struggles in Cuba and strengthened in recent years by the Bush administration's attempts to manipulate and distort information.

Let's think about this last sentence of yours. I challenge you, Ana, to find one instance in government run media where photographs were staged to ellicit pity as in the case of the famous missiled ambulance, find one instance where a rescuer was asked to lay down amid the rubble for a photograph to show the inhumanity of war, find one instance of Green Helmet man, one instance where smoke and billowing flames were added to a photograph for effect, where missiles where inserted into a photo of a jet fighter, where obviously fake documents were used in a story during an election year to sway public opinion - Fake! But accurate!. All of these, Ana, plus many many more in the form of manipulation of facts, changing of context, omission of facts, misleading headlines and outright deception are all recent actions of your fellow journalists. Bastions of ethics! Your profession, Ana, is morally and ethically bankrupt.

And here's another challenge, Ana. You just made a blanket statement that the Bush administration has manipulated and distorted information without offering even a sliver of proof. Are we supposed to take this statement as a given and move on? Your average discerning reader wants proof, since you put it out there. Please provide same in your next piece.

El Nuevo Herald's journalists are guilty of not following common sense. Their firings may have been justified. But were they fair?

No. El Herald's editorial board is guilty of not following common sense. It was well known they did work for Radio Marti and if they state they didnt know then theyre being dishonest, as its not as if said work was covert. Common sense, Ana, dictates that a Radio station with a specific demographic and a specific target audience hire personnel that are familiar with said specifics.

And here's something else that's painfully obvious: Not one of those journalists who "worked" for Radio Marti strayed from their convictions and not one of those jounalists castigated the truth. And I can assure you, not one of those journalists were coerced by the government to report what was painfully obvious to them. If you'd had the integrity to ask them, you would have known that, but neither you nor Corral nor any other of your "ethically perfect" fellow journalists had the gumption or integrity to do so. Perhaps, and Im just tossing this out there, the Miami Herald, your bosses, didnt want you to and thus you, yourself, compromised your journalistic ethics.

Far from being a secret, freelancer Olga Connor's arrangement with Radio Martí already had been reported in both papers as far back as 2002. Díaz, who was not publisher then, says he hadn't been aware of the article or the arrangement. Connor's bosses, however, presumably took no issue with it.

Connor (who once said nice things about my books in one of her columns) can be forgiven for being confused. The rest of us do well to remember that the ''battle of ideas'' is best left to demagogues and dictators. Journalists, in a free society, are paid to watch the government, not to be its hired servants.

Come November, the Herald editorial staff should remember just that and refrain from endorsing any candidate in any race. That way, we can all sleep soundly knowing the thimble-ful of integrity remaining at the Miami Herald will stay in tact.

If your going to criticize a few reporters for a "lapse" in journalistic ethics, then it behooves you to look in a mirror and be honest with yourself. This opinion piece you just wrote is all about you.

Posted by Val Prieto at September 14, 2006 12:26 PM

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