10 Miami journalists take U.S. pay

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"At least 10 South Florida journalists, including three from El Nuevo Herald, received regular payments from the U.S. government for programs on Radio Martí and TV Martí, two broadcasters aimed at undermining the communist government of Fidel Castro. The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years.

Those who were paid the most were veteran reporters and a freelance contributor for El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language newspaper published by the corporate parent of The Miami Herald. Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba and writes an opinion column, was paid almost $175,000 since 2001 to host shows on Radio Martí and TV Martí. El Nuevo Herald freelance reporter Olga Connor, who writes about Cuban culture, received about $71,000, and staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who covers the Cuban exile community and politics, was paid almost $15,000 in the last five years.

Alfonso and Cancio were dismissed after The Miami Herald questioned editors at El Nuevo Herald about the payments. Connor's freelance relationship with the newspaper also was severed.

Alfonso and Cancio declined to comment. Connor was unavailable for comment.

Jesús Díaz Jr., president of the Miami Herald Media Co. and publisher of both newspapers, expressed disappointment, saying the payments violated a ''sacred trust'' between journalists and the public."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15465622.htm

[Robbien]

1. What, has the Miami Herald admin been sleeping all these years?

The fact that these so called reporters were being paid out of government money through NED has been widely known.

How could an organization calling itself a newspaper not know this?

[tkmorris]

2. Oh they knew

It's not that THEY just found out, it's that others did I'm sure. So now they feel forced to do what they should have done in the first place. Sad aint it?

[donheld]

3. The Miami Herald admin been sleeping with the Bushies all these years

Nothing new there.

[eccles12]

27. I don't like the fact that my tax dollars went for this.

Protecting our borders on one side of cournty while knocking a hole through them on the other side. It's shameful and most don't seem to notice the hypocrisy of it all not to mention the possible illegality.

[UpInArms]

4. Dimson just loves the smell of propaganda in the morning

- he knows it smells like victory.

:puke:

How very low this once great nation has sunk under the misleadership of this junto.

[Mika]

5. Their anti Castro mewling was for pay? I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, I tell ya.

From the article,

Other journalists receiving payments from the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and TV Martí, included: Diario Las Americas opinion page editor Helen Aguirre Ferre and reporter/columnist Ariel Remos; Channel 41 news director Miguel Cossio; and syndicated columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner, whose opinions appear in the pages of El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald.

Oh, and this part from the story..

Channel 41 reporter Juan Manuel Cao, who received $11,400 this year from TV Martí, made news in July when he confronted Castro during an appearance in Argentina by pressing the Cuban leader to explain why his government had not allowed a well-known doctor and dissident, Hilda Molina, to leave the island to visit her son in Argentina.

During the exchange, Castro openly questioned Cao if anyone was paying him to ask that question. The Cuban government has long contended that some South Florida Spanish-language journalists were on the federal payroll.

''There is nothing suspect in this,'' Cao said. ``I would do it for free. But the regulations don't allow it. I charge symbolically, below market prices.''

So, Castro knew the "reporter" was on the US payroll and confronted him. Typically, the Bushbot gusano response is to lie.

[gratuitous]

7. "I charge symbolically," said Cao

Oh, a cut-rate presstitute. Here Mr. Cao; can you think of a way to get this golf ball through this garden hose?

[Say_What]

19. 'Castro openly questioned Cao if anyone was paying him...'

Cao's response to the question:

''There is nothing suspect in this,'' Cao said. ``I would do it for free. But the regulations don't allow it. I charge symbolically, below market prices.''

It appears we have a Gusano LIAR here. Why am I not surprised. :eyes:

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. And we're surprised, why?

Did you know that latin American news is pure government propaganda? At least it was in the country I lived in. I always marveled at how much more information traveled by word of mouth, than what I saw on the news. The thing is, that the people knew the newsmen were lying to them, which just made them curious to find out what was really going on in the country.

[Joanne98]

8. Someone should send out FOIA's on all the Reporters without Borders

criminals.

[geek tragedy]

9. How very fascist of you.

Let's lock up the criminals in Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well.

They too have criticized Big Brother.

[Mika]

10. But don't you repeat the refrain..

.. along the lines of 'the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend'?

Its a two way street.

[geek tragedy]

12. People have every right to question the objectivity

of an organization like RSF.

However, when people start throwing around the terms "criminal" and "traitor" towards critics of a government--that stinks of Neocon totalitarianism.

[Mika]

13. Very true, But..

.. if their "reporting" is in support of the fabrications of a regime that seeks to overthrow a sovereign government then their "reporting" is tantamount to criminal. In relation to Cuba, RSF has never mentioned that the 75 Cuban so called "independent journalists" were on the payroll of a foreign entity that is seeking to overthrow the sovereign government of Cuba (that entity being the US gov - the DECLARED enemy of the sovereign gov of Cuba). They were acting as undeclared paid foreign agents of an enemy entity, which is as illegal in the US as it is in Cuba. RSF NEVER reports this fact, and in neglecting to do so they are aiding and abetting a criminal operation. Aiding and abetting BushCrimeInc policy against Cuba. Aiding and abetting BushCrimeInc Neocon totalitarianism.

[1932]

30. The criminals would be the people in US gov't who paid reporters

because there actually are laws against doing this, no?

The reporters...I don't know. They're certainly in breach of the ethical rules of their profession and, hopefully, their contracts with their employers.

[Joanne98]

14. Greg Palast saz RWB helped steal the Mexican Election.

They were funded by The International Republican Institute! Argue with him!

[Judi Lynn]

15. SO GLAD you brought RWB up. Have heard about this, also. New article:

August 1, 2006

International Republican Institute Grants Uncovered
Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups
By DIANA BARAHONA and JEB SPRAGUE

British press baron Lord Northcliff said, "News is something that someone, somewhere wants to keep secret, everything else is advertising." If this is true, then U.S. government funding of Reporters Without Borders must be news, because the organization and its friends in Washington have gone to extraordinary lengths to cover it up. In spite of 14 months of stonewalling by the National Endowment for Democracy over a Freedom of Information Act request and a flat denial from RSF executive director Lucie Morillon, the NED has revealed that Reporters Without Borders received grants over at least three years from the International Republican Institute.

The NED still refuses to provide the requested documents or even reveal the grant amounts, but they are identified by these numbers: IRI 2002-022/7270, IRI 2003-027/7470 and IRI 2004-035/7473. Investigative reporter Jeremy Bigwood asked Morillon on April 25 if her group was getting any money from the I.R.I., and she denied it, but the existence of the grants was confirmed by NED assistant to the president, Patrick Thomas.

The discovery of the grants reveals a major deception by the group, which for years denied it was getting any Washington dollars until some relatively small grants from the NED and the Center for a Free Cuba were revealed (see Counterpunch: "Reporters Without Borders Unmasked"). When asked to account for its large income RSF has claimed the money came from the sale of books of photographs. But researcher Salim Lamrani has pointed out the improbability of this claim. Even taking into account that the books are published for free, it would have had to sell 170 200 books in 2004 and 188 400 books in 2005 to earn the more than $2 million the organization claims to make each year ­ 516 books per day in 2005. The money clearly had to come from other sources, as it turns out it did.

The I.R.I., an arm of the Republican Party, specializes in meddling in elections in foreign countries, as a look at NED annual reports and the I.R.I. website shows. It is one of the four core grantees of the NED, the organization founded by Congress under the Reagan administration in 1983 to replace the CIA's civil society covert action programs, which had been devastated by exposure by the Church committee in the mid-1970s (Ignatius, 1991). The other three pillars of the NED are the National Democratic Institute (the Democratic Party), the Solidarity Center (AFL-CIO) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (U.S. Chamber of Commerce). But of all the groups the I.R.I. is closest to the Bush administration, according to a recent piece in The New York Times exposing its role in the overthrow of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide:

"President Bush picked its president, Lorne W. Craner, to run his administration's democracy-building efforts. The institute, which works in more than 60 countries, has seen its federal financing nearly triple in three years, from $26 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2005. Last spring, at an I.R.I. fund-raiser, Mr. Bush called democracy-building 'a growth industry.'" (Bogdanich and Nordberg, 2006)

Funding from the I.R.I. presents a major problem for RSF's credibility as a "press freedom" organization because the group manufactured propaganda against the popular democratic governments of Venezuela and Haiti at the same time that its patron, the I.R.I., was deeply involved in efforts to overthrow them. The I.R.I. funded the Venezuelan opposition to President Hugo Chavez (Barry, 2005) and actively organized Haitian opposition to Aristide in conjunction with the CIA (Bogdanich and Nordberg, 2006).
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/barahona08012006.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's amazing what some people will do to put one over on DU'ers, if someone isn't there to throw a little light on things, Joanne98. THANKS! :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

[1932]

31. wow.

[Judi Lynn]

32. More on RSF's ties to "Center for a Free Cuba."

May 17, 2005

Its Secret Deal with Otto Reich to Wreck Cuba's Economy
Reporters Without Borders Unmasked
By DIANA BARAHONA

When Robert Menard founded Reporters Without Borders twenty years ago, he gave his group a name which evokes another French organization respected worldwide for its humanitarian work and which maintains a strict neutrality in political conflicts ­ Doctors Without Borders. But RSF (French acronym) has been anything but nonpartisan and objective in its approach to Latin America and to Cuba in particular.

From the beginning, RSF has made Cuba its No. 1 target. Allegedly founded to advocate freedom of the press around the world and to help journalists under attack, the organization has called Cuba "the world's biggest prison for journalists." It even gives the country a lower ranking on its press freedom index than countries where journalists routinely have been killed, such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico. RSF has waged campaigns aimed at discouraging Europeans from vacationing in Cuba and the European Union from doing business there ­ its only campaigns worldwide intended to damage a country's economy.

The above is not a matter of chance because it turns out that RSF is on the payroll of the U.S. State Department and has close ties to Helms-Burton-funded Cuban exile groups.

As a majority of members of Congress work toward normalizing trade and travel with Cuba, the extremist anti-Castro groups that have dictated U.S. Cuba policy for 40 years continue working tirelessly to maintain an economic stranglehold on the island. Their support for RSF is part of this overall strategy.

Havana-based journalist Jean-Guy Allard wrote a book about RSF's leader (El expediente Robert Ménard: Por qué Reporteros sin Fronteras se ensaña con Cuba, Quebec: Lanctôt, 2005) which lays out the pieces of the puzzle regarding Menard's activities, associations and sources of funding in an attempt to explain what he calls Menard's "obsession" with Cuba. On April 27 this year the pieces began to come together: Thierry Meyssan, president of the Paris daily, Red Voltaire, published an article in which he claimed Menard had negotiated a contract with Otto Reich and the Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) in 2001. Reich was a trustee of the center, which receives the bulk of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The contract, according to Meyssan, was signed in 2002 around the time Reich was appointed Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere for the Secretary of State. The initial payment for RSF's services was approximately 24,970 euros in 2002 ($25,000), which went up to 59,201 euros in 2003 ($50,000).
(snip/...)http://www.counterpunch.org/barahona05172005.html

[Javaman]

11. Nope, no fascist trends here...move alone nothing to see. nt

[Judi Lynn]

16. The Miami Herald and its Spanish paper, El Nuevo Herald, deal in

such questionable approaches to journalism themselves that a local publication, connected to a local radio station, El Progreso, spends time regularly telling the Miami readers just WHAT they've left out or mangled in their stories designed for their Cuban readers.

One of the men connected with the publication has had his offices bombed, broken into, and his employees beaten over the years by gusano "exiles" who don't play well with others. He has known it's dangerous (another radio talk show host had his car bombed and his legs blown off after he was outrageous to speak out against "exile" violence in Miami) yet he has pushed ahead, anyway, determined to get the truth out.

Too bad it's the Herald everyone knows about, isn't it?

From a recent issue, a very good example of this creative approach to the truth:

B.S. Detector

More questions than answers
'Investigation' of CANF plot 'initiated' by El Nuevo is a hollow claim

We were amused to read the Page One story in El Nuevo Herald on June 22 headlined "They reveal a plan to try to kill Castro," and its translation on Page One of The Miami Herald the same day, headlined: "Exile: We plotted attacks on Cuba."

And we were amused because the story contained very little that hasn't been said before by the Cuban government about the cloak-and-dagger plots by Miami exiles to penetrate the island and -- as the Herald article put it -- "do away with" President Fidel Castro. Granted, this time the report had details, but also there were elements that demanded a closer reading of both papers' versions of the story.

How do you spell CANF?

First, the lead of the story said that "a former board member of the Cuban American National Foundation says he and other CANF leaders created a paramilitary group" in the early 1990s to perform the nasty deeds described above, yet the headline does not mention the Foundation at all. The news is not just that a group of elderly émigrés had plotted raids on the island but that the Foundation, an emblematic organization in Miami and Washington, had organized and funded a secret armed branch to commit terrorism in Cuba.

Any editor with journalistic sense (a.k.a. "a nose for news") would have mentioned the CANF in the headline -- "CANF plan to kill Castro is revealed" and "Exile: CANF plotted attacks on Cuba" -- but somehow that important name was left out. Why was the emphasis shifted in the headlines? Our guess: Not to make a bad thing worse for the Herald's amigos at the Foundation.

El Nuevo's story was based on an interview with a former CANF board member, José Antonio Llama Muñoz, at his Miami home back in November of 2005, fully seven months ago. Yet, it was published only last week, four days after Radio Miami, a daily program on WOCN-1450 AM, reported that Llama was distributing pamphlets in which he demanded repayment by the CANF for his investment in the terrorist project.

To boot, both Heralds ran the story one day after Cuba's official newspaper, Granma, published a report on Llama's claims, titled "A revealing list and note." Clearly, the pamphlets being handed out by Llama had become newsworthy, which brings us to our next question: Did El Nuevo purposely sit on the story for seven months and was it forced to publish it when Llama's claims made the airwaves in Miami and the pages of Granma in Havana?

English text left out information

There are some interesting differences between El Nuevo's story and its translation by The Miami Herald. El Nuevo says that it received a denial from the CANF last November, cautioning that it would be "extremely irresponsible" for the newspaper to publish Llama's claims, but The Herald omits the date. Why? To keep readers from realizing that El Nuevo shelved the story for seven months?
(snip/…)

http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=bs_detector_ant&otherweek=1153976400

[Judi Lynn]

17. Photos of the "journalists" were published in Common Dreams.....

AT LEAST 10: The list of local journalists includes
El Nuevo Herald's columnist Pablo Alfonso, freelancer
Olga Connor, and staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0908-12.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Miami journalists reported on U.S. government payroll

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted September 8 2006, 11:07 AM EDT

MIAMI -- Ten South Florida journalists, including three with The Miami Herald's Spanish-language sister paper, received thousands of dollars from the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting for working on a radio and TV station aimed at undermining Fidel Castro's communist regime, the Herald reported Friday.

Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba and writes an opinion column for El Nuevo Herald, was paid almost $175,000 since 2001 to host shows on Radio and TV Marti, U.S. government programs that promote democracy in Cuba, according to government documents obtained by The Miami Herald.

Olga Connor, a freelance reporter who writes about Cuban culture for El Nuevo Herald, received about $71,000, and staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who covers the Cuban exile community and politics, was paid almost $15,000 in the last five years.
(snip/...)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/miami/sfl-98governmentpayroll,0,7567115.story?coll=sfla-news-miami

[Say_What]

18. Paid PROPAGANDISTS

El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald? No surprise...

[OzarkDem]

20. How many US journalists does Bush have on the payroll?

We know he's using our tax dollars to influence the news media in Iraq.

He's also got Tweety and other commentators on his payroll vis a vis exhorbitant honoraria. Wonder who else?

[PeaceProgProsp]

21. What's with Bush Administration paying journalists?

Remind me of the other cases of this -- didn't the DoEd pay a couple people to lie for them about vouchers recently?

[IndianaGreen]

22. AP: U.S. hired journalists for anti-Castro reports

Here is the AP version:

U.S. hired journalists for anti-Castro reports
Miami Herald's Spanish publication severs ties to three

MIAMI - Ten South Florida journalists, including three with The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister paper, received thousands of dollars from the federal government for their work on radio and TV programming aimed at undermining Fidel Castro’s communist regime, the Herald reported Friday.

Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba and wrote an opinion column for El Nuevo Herald, was paid almost $175,000 since 2001 to host shows on Radio and TV Marti, U.S. government programs that promote democracy in Cuba, according to government documents obtained by The Miami Herald.

Olga Connor, a freelance reporter who wrote about Cuban culture for El Nuevo Herald, received about $71,000 from the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who covered the Cuban exile community and politics, was paid almost $15,000 in the last five years, the Herald said.

<snip>

The journalists are among several accused in recent years of taking money from the government without making those connections clear.

Last year, congressional auditors concluded that the Education Department engaged in illegal “covert propaganda” by hiring columnist Armstrong Williams to endorse the No Child Left Behind Act without requiring him to disclose he was paid.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14736481/

Remember that the purpose of these payments is for these "journalist" to keep the American public confused and uninformed about what is really going on in Cuba.

[1932]

28. The hypocrisy is that US says Cuba doing things like this is reason Castro

is bad.

[Judi Lynn]

23. In the meantime, the Miami Herald tossed out a fabulous Miami writer,

Jim DeFede, who really DOES write, just like a bonafide JOURNALIST!

I was just rummaging around, and found this protest letter signed by many journalists when he got the axe, and this one comment caught my eye:

Alejandra said...
The Miami Herald editors simply punished DeFede for his objective positions concerning terrorism against Cuba and regarding the case of Luis Posada Carriles. The Miami Herald cannot live with the luxury of objectivity.
(snip)

http://journalistsfordefede.blogspot.com/2005/07/open-letter-to-miami-herald-publisher.html

(I can't remember the actual "reason" this happened, but I think any DU'er who remembers when it happened realizes deFede was very conscientious and came forward to admit a problem which was actually not very serious, in a situation many others would have let it slide. Here's the group letter to the Herald:

Thursday, July 28, 2005
An open letter to Miami Herald Publisher Jesus Diaz and Executive Editor Tom Fiedler
July 28th, 2005

We are writing as journalists to express our sadness, distress and disappointment at the way the newspaper has treated Jim DeFede. He has been an important face of the newspaper in a community that has embraced him. Jim represents the finest journalism values: inquisitiveness, commitment to community, and determination to hold figures in power accountable for their actions. We believe firing him was an overreaction to an offense that should be viewed in the context of an intense, immediate episode during which he had little time to consider his actions.

Further, we are concerned that Jim’s willingness in the past to offend powerful figures in Miami and, at times, his own employers, may have contributed to the hasty decision to fire him. We believe that Jim’s determination to be a voice for the poor and powerless in Miami makes him an asset to the community and to The Herald, even if his words may at times make some people uncomfortable.

Jim’s actions may not even have been a technical violation of the law upon closer examination, and whether or not it was an ethical violation is questionable, given the extreme circumstances. But in any case he came forward on his own and has admitted his mistake. The Herald should do likewise and take him back.

Signed,

[Judi Lynn]

24. Here's the story published in Cuba:Miami Herald journalists paid to circul

Havana. September 8, 2006

Miami Herald journalists paid to circulate anti-Cuba propaganda fired

PABLO Alfonso and Wilfredo Cancio Isla, two of The Miami Herald’s most recalcitrant journalists, have been fired in the wake of a scandal involving them with federal government payments to appear on Radio and TV Martí and transmit anti-Cuba information.

This year Radio Martí and TV Martí have received $37 million to keep broadcasting anti-Cuban programs that cannot be circulated within U.S. territory due to anti-propaganda legislation.

The total sum received by dozens of Miami journalists, including Cancio and Alfonso, in charge of writing vicious articles on the island, amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Pablo Alfonso has received some $175,000 since 2001 for heading up programs on Radio and TV Martí, while Wilfredo Cancio has earned $15,000 in the last five years.
(snip/...)

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2006/septiembre/vier8/38expuls-e.html

[Up2Late]

25. NPR covered this well today, here's the link...

Fla. Journalists Paid to Hasten Castro's Ouster

Listen to this story...(at link)

by Doualy Xaykaothao

All Things Considered, September 8, 2006 · The U.S. government paid at least 10 journalists in southern Florida tens of thousands of dollars for coverage that undermined Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba. The Miami Herald has fired three journalists who received payments from the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

All three journalists were fired after the Herald learned about their conflict of interest. Each had received payments from the U.S. government, apparently for appearing as guests on radio and TV broadcasts run by the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

Robert Beatty, the newspaper's general counsel and vice president of public affairs, cited a need for trust, accuracy and integrity, saying, "we are compelled to act, and to act decisively, and we did."

Beatty says the employees worked for the El Nuevo newspaper, a Spanish-language publication owned by the Herald.

Seven other Miami journalists also received regular payments from the government, ranging from $1,500 to almost $170,000 since 2001. The reporters apparently appeared on TV Marti or Radio Marti, two broadcasts run by the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5952850>

[mitchum]

26. Miami Crybabies crying all the way to the bank

[goforit]

29. And your tax money goes to it!!!!