ABOUT THE INCIDENT INVOLVING THE MIAMI HERALD, RADIO AND TV MARTÍ, AND THE CONFLICT OF INTERESTS BETWEEN THE COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA AND THE GOVERNMENT 

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Panel on Propaganda, Patriotism and Patronage: The Legal, Ethical and Practical Implications of Journalism Working with Government Agencies. Annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication. Washington, Aug. 9, 2007.

SUMMARY

The point of departure of this panel and the reason why I was invited to participate in it have to do with an unpleasant incident provoked by a report published in The Miami Herald about a year ago, concerning 10 journalists who were accused of violating a Herald rule that forbade employees to collaborate, without permission from the company, with government organs of communication (Radio and TV Martí) and collect honoraria for the work performed.

The report was a model of everything that should not be done in journalism: (1) It contained ethnic prejudices. Everyone accused was Hispanic, even though there were Anglo journalists in the Herald's newsroom who collaborated with PBS and other public media, something that, besides, was frequent in American journalism. (2) The El Nuevo Herald journalists who were accused of breaking the rule had permission from their supervisors, and it was a habitual practice, known for the previous 20 years, that had even been mentioned in the newspaper itself. (3) The other journalists mentioned in the report, who were not Herald employees, worked in media where that peculiar rule did not exist and, therefore, should not have been included. (4) The reporters who wrote the report did not bother to phone some of the people they were accusing, thus violating a basic rule of journalism. (5) They maliciously insinuated that it was a band of corrupt journalists who had violated ethical standards, a message that was conveyed not only in words but also in the use of photographs. (6) Suspiciously, before the report was published in The Herald, the Cuban government boasted on television of knowing the exact contents of the report that would soon be published. The authors, who had some direct or indirect contact with the Cuban government, didn't have the decency to communicate to their colleagues the type of investigation they were doing, mindless of the consequences of the moral lynching they were carrying out.

Later, faced with intense adverse reaction from the Hispanic community in South Florida, the president of The Miami Herald had to resign, the editor retired shortly thereafter, the fired journalists were rehired, and the McClatchy chain assigned journalist Clark Hoyt to write an in-depth analysis of the report and the circumstances under which it was written. His conclusions were very critical, but a clear and public apology from the company to the slandered journalists was never forthcoming.

II

It is totally unfair to assume that Radio and TV Martí broadcast falsehoods or propaganda. All the information they broadcast has to be verified by at least two sources. Those stations are under the control of the Voice of America and are guided exactly by the same ethical and professional code maintained by the VOA. Every month, the stations are visited by a federal inspector who makes sure the standards are met; they are also supervised by a bipartisan board of regents. At the same time, a Congressional committee, obviously bipartisan, verifies that the operations of these stations and the rest of the apparatus of official communications directed to regions outside the United States behave according to the law.

To collaborate with these broadcasting stations is part of the civic duty of any journalist who loves freedom and worries about the people subjugated by totalitarian dictatorships. 

III

The premise that journalists should not collaborate with the public press and charge honoraria to do so, because that supposedly compromises their credibility in the eyes of the public, is perfect nonsense. In Europe, journalists from the private media often collaborate with the public media and nobody thinks that they sell their conscience to the government. The public knows that life is full of conflicts of interest and that the honest journalists will make their decisions correctly, while the dishonest journalists would just as soon sell themselves to the government as to the private interests. To forbid journalists to express their opinions in the public media paid by all citizens with their taxes is an attack on freedom of the press and an affront to society.

Those press media are the product of sovereign decisions made by the people, and are created through laws passed by their representatives in Congress. To deprive them of the support of good journalists is as arbitrary as telling good professors not to teach at public universities, lest they contaminate their research or their opinions. Or as telling good physicians not to work in veterans' hospitals, lest they get involved in the Pentagon's decisions.

Why cast doubt on the good faith of journalists when they give their opinion or report in the public media and not cast doubt on the private media when they endorse candidates to public office or when they recommend movies or books produced by companies that advertise in those media? To prohibit journalists to collaborate with the public media and collect honoraria for their work is not a moral or ethical recommendation; it is pure Puritanical repressive paranoia.

ABOUT THE MIAMI HERALD INCIDENT

            In September 2006, some journalists working for The Miami Herald, led by Mr. Oscar Corral, committed several offenses against decency, ethics, good journalistic judgment, and the reputation of their colleagues. On the paper's front page, in a report illustrated with mugshots, as if the journalists had exposed a gang of criminals, they told about 10 or so Hispanic journalists who collaborated with Radio and Tele Martí and collected money for that task, while working in other communications media.

                        Apparently, they had violated a Herald rule that stated that employees could not work for the company and, without permission of their supervisors, collaborate for pay with any government agency, because a conflict of interests might exist. It was later learned that the Nuevo Herald employees who collaborated with Radio Martí had permission from their superiors, so they hadn't broken any rules, while the other journalists accused in the report worked for companies that didn't have that rule, so the report lacked any basis whatsoever. 

            Curiously and suspiciously (something never clarified by TMH), while the colleagues of the authors of the report (who would be slandered in their own newspaper) did not know what Corral and his colleagues were writing against them, even though they worked a few yards away, Cuban television reported in great detail the investigation that would appear in The Miami Herald, long before it appeared, boasting of the penetration of Cuban services into that major newspaper in South Florida. 

In my case, it was amazing that they included me in their report, and the only reason they did so was to harm my reputation ex profeso. I live in Spain, am not a reporter, and don't work for The Miami Herald or El Nuevo Herald. My weekly collaboration with Radio Martí consists of reading and commenting for the Cuban audience my weekly syndicated columns, which are published by both Miami dailies as well as dozens of newspapers in Europe, Latin America and the United States. Because my columns, for obvious reasons, cannot be published in Cuba, the only way my Cuban compatriots can access them is through Radio Martí, a communications medium whose payments are, of course, much smaller than the publication fees paid by many of the newspapers that publish my columns.

Indignant over the inclusion of my name in that infamous report, I wrote an e-mail to Mr. Corral with several questions that he didn't have the decency to answer, apparently because his attorney counseled him not to. An attorney whom he should have consulted before slandering his colleagues, of course. These were the questions: (1) Why did Corral include me in his report if I am neither a reporter nor an employee of any U.S. communications medium? (2) If Corral's criterion was to include any person who wrote opinion pieces in El Nuevo or The Miami Herald and, in addition, collaborated with Radio-TV Martí, why did he select me, when I don't even live in Miami (in his story, he talked about local journalists), and didn't select more than a dozen regular contributors to the opinion pages of both newspapers, some of whom are employed by the company Corral works for, and who are not mentioned in his article? (3) Where are, in my case, the conflict of interests and the alleged ethical problems? (4) Is it morally incorrect for an independent journalist to collaborate  with Voice of America, Radio Martí, PBS or Radio Free Europe, and charge for his work? (5) Why didn't Corral phone me or send me an e-mail to find out my opinion about what he was writing about me? All my telephone numbers and my e-mail address are available at the newspaper. (6) As he improperly included my name in his article, did he realize the enormous moral damage he was causing me? I sent him an example, from about 20 others, taken from La Jornada, a major Mexican newspaper friendly to the Cuban dictatorship. To the allegations made by The Herald's report, La Jornada added to its banner headline a new adjetive: "corrupt."

On the other hand, working at The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald while collaborating with (and collecting honoraria from) Radio Martí had been a common and accepted practice for the previous 20 years. From 1987 to 1989, I edited the opinion pages of El Nuevo Herald and was a member of the editorial board of The Miami Herald, while I collaborated with Radio Martí and charged for my contributions the small amounts stipulated by the modest payment budgets of that organization, something that at the time everyone was aware of. There was nothing unusual in that. Many U.S. journalists did the same: they worked in private communications media and were invited, sporadically or regularly, by the Voice of America, PBS, C-SPAN, or some other public medium, or delivered paid lectures at public universities and colleges. For those collaborations, and for the time they spent preparing them, the journalists received  a known stipend that was regulated by strict payment rates.

                        My successor at the post, Dr. Luis Aguilar León, professor emeritus at Georgetown University, did exactly as I did, and for the same reasons. To both Luis and me, to collaborate with Radio Martí was more of a civic duty than a job or a ridiculous source of income. Why not do it? We were Cuban exiles and had a moral responsibility to the society to which we originally belonged. Besides, The Miami Herald, in all the editorials it published on the topic, supported the existence of Radio Martí as something positive and backed the assignation of federal funds to the project. If the cause was noble and the ends were just, it made total sense for the journalists in that publishing company -- the best specialists on the topic of Cuba -- to support the station and share with the Cubans on the island the same information and opinions that they wrote for both newspapers.

The incident climaxed in the fury of Hispanic readers (hundreds of them cancelled their subscriptions to TMH), the departure from the company of Jesús Díaz, president of The Miami Herald, the readmission of the unjustly fired journalists, and the later retirement of Tom Fiedler, executive editor of TMH, after he described the people who criticized him bitterly on radio as "little Chihuahuas." A journalistic investigation conducted later by Clark Hoyt, which was basically objective, demonstrated that the reporting had been unfair and out of all proportion, including the sensationalist typographic display that assigned guilt to the people mentioned in the article. It was -- I add -- as if The New York Times had printed on its front page the pictures of McClatchy executives under a headline saying “The publishing company that assesses the work of municipal politicians in Miami sells land to the city and does multimillion-dollar business.” None of that is false and the transactions are legitimate, but, to the readers, an unfair implication of culpability and corruption would be complete. That is called bad faith and is an expression of innuendo, the vilest and most cowardly form of slander.

But something very important was lacking to really bring the incident to an end and wipe the slate clean: an editorial that would ask the offended and unjustly discredited journalists for forgiveness. Why didn't the company do it? Why didn't Mr. David Landsberg, new president of the company ordered it published? According to what some friends who work at the TMH told me, off the record, they didn't publish the editorial so as not to irritate the members of the newsroom who were satisfied with this wretched attack on the honesty of several Hispanic journalists.

The company figured that justice had been done with Hoyt's analysis, but that work showed only that Hoyt is a serious journalist, not that TMH or the McClatchy Group, after committing a grave injustice, were willing to rectify and ask publicly for forgiveness. That is why, one year after the incident, tensions still remain between the newsrooms of the two newspapers in the same chain -- many perceive the incident as a vendetta against Hispanic journalists -- and that is why a considerable number of Hispanic readers in South Florida continue to think that the company has not been fair to them. “The day that this city gets an English-language newspaper that reflects the interests of the Hispanics in South Florida, the readers of The Miami Herald who are members of that ethnic group will switch over en masse to the new publication,” I was told, in worried tones, by a veteran journalist at TMH (who asked that his name not be published) after seeing how his newspaper's circulation drops as the Hispanic population in the region climbs.

ABOUT RADIO AND TV MARTÍ

            Many Western journalists who have not lived under a totalitarian dictatorship do not usually respect the public communications media that report on the victims of such regimes. Nor do they respect the journalists and communicators who perform that task. They consider it propaganda and don't feel the least professional esteem for their colleagues.

                        They are wrong. Few journalistic tasks are more honorable, important and transcendent to journalists and communicators than to deliver a taste of freedom to those who have none and are willing to go to prison for listening to the radio programs broadcast to them. This was seen in Europe during the war against Nazi-fascism and later during the Cold War, when Radio Free Europe was almost the only voice of hope that reached those who lived behind the Iron Curtain.

                        In the case of Radio Martí, the injustice is even greater. Although it is a public communications medium created by a sovereign act of Congress and sustained by administrations that have been either Democratic or Republican, Radio Martí does not arouse much sympathy among U.S. journalists and communicators. On one hand, many of those people reject the official communications media, but that attitude is aggravated by the prejudices that exist against Cuban exiles. The stereotype of the Cuban exile is an unpleasant, inflexible and dogmatic character who almost always adheres to the most conservative positions. Another stereotype is worse: the cruel drug trafficker immortalized by Al Pacino in the movie Scarface. While in the 1950s the stereotype of the Cuban was Ricky Ricardo, that figure today is -- to a great degree -- Tony Montana. And that image (like all others, naturally) is the work of the press and the communications media, except that in this case it is fed from Havana in the regime's constant campaigns against "the Miami mafia."

There is more, however. That phenomenon of a negative image is something that has affected all exiles from communist dictatorships, as a result of the fine propagandistic work of the tyrannies the exiles oppose and the complicity of the tyrants' allies in the West. To be described as an "antifascist" has a positive affective charge. On the contrary, to be described as "anticommunist" is to be saddled with an adjective with negative connotations. Years ago, when a Chilean journalist was said to be "an anti-Pinochet fighter," that description was admired. In turn, when a Cuban journalist is said to be "an anti-Castro fighter," very few colleagues appreciate him, even though the Cuban dictatorship has lasted three times as many years as the Chilean dictatorship and has been a lot more bloodthirsty and repressive.

In Cuba, where people go to jail for listening to Radio Martí, for owning a clandestine dish antenna or for trying to link up to the Internet without government authorization, Radio Martí's broadcasts are not only the only available source of information but also Cubans' only hope for a democratic and prosperous tomorrow, without dictatorship, in a country where it will no longer be necessary to escape on a raft to the United States or Mexico.

Radio Martí and TV Martí broadcast neither propaganda nor lies. They are rigorously forbidden to do so. The contents of their broadcasts must be true and objective, and any information obtained must be checked with more than one source. The stations are under the control of the Voice of America, and therefore are ruled by the same standards that rule the VOA. The regulations are much more extensive and detailed than those of the private communications media. Every month, a federal inspector visits these journalistic enterprises to make sure that the standards are being met. As in the case of public universities, all these official communications media are supervised by a group of regents from both political parties and overseen by a Congressional committee. Last year (2006), the president of Radio and TV Martí, Dr. Pedro Roig, received an award for his job from the committee that evaluates the public communications media.

Naturally, some of the contents broadcast by these communications media is partially different from the contents expressed to open societies that have access of all kinds of information and analysis. The purpose of stations like Radio and TV Martí is to broadcast to societies under this type of dictatorship everything that their government is keeping concealed. The information has to be true and the analyses have to be reasonable, but the aim is to counteract the propaganda, the heavy-handed manipulation and the concealment of facts. It is not a question of giving both sides of the issue, as if the public could choose, but to show the side the regime distorts or hides. To ask these stations to remain equidistant from the positions of the dictatorship and the democrats is like asking the BBC or the VOA, during World War II, to give access to their microphones to Nazi journalists to explain the "scientific" reasons of anti-Semitism and the need to murder the Jews. Is that the type of balance that the Europeans invaded by the Nazists and fascists wanted to hear?

Finally, let me be precise on two points. First, it is absurd to discount the opinions of Cuba held by exiled journalists on the grounds that they are part of the conflict. To take sides with freedom and democracy never disqualifies a journalist, no matter what his or her origin. When Hemingway, rifle in hand, sent reports to the U.S. press from a liberated Paris, he was not disqualified as a journalist. Second, to ask the exiled journalists not to participate actively in the political struggle to reconquer democracy and liberty, with the request that they remain "neutral," is to betray the finest Western democratic tradition: the tradition of Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, José Martí and Domingo F. Sarmiento. A journalist is not a being without social responsibilities; he is not beyond good and evil; not an indifferent witness to the tragedies of his time. A journalist is -- and should be -- a citizen committed to the struggle for freedom.

ABOUT THE CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

BETWEEN THE PRIVATE MEDIA AND THE GOVERNMENT

To forbid journalists to collaborate with the official communications media, under the threat of punishment, is not to enforce an ethical standard but to recur to a repressive measure that is contrary to freedom of expression and the good judgment of journalists. A measure that limits freedom of expression is anything but an ethical standard and, even though it may be legal, it is probably contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, something that might be interesting to test in the courts

The idea that a journalist incurs in a conflict of interests and becomes suspect of bias and corruption because he openly receives honoraria from public funds when he collaborates with media like PBS, Radio Martí, Voice of America, or Radio Free Europe is absurd and offensive. Professors at state universities receive their salaries from public funds, conduct their research and publish their articles in newspapers without letting the origin of their salaries prevent them from saying what they really believe. Public defenders are paid to defend people charged by "the government" and nobody thinks that they thereby sell their conscience to the government. Members of juries are paid honoraria for the time they devote to that task, yet they frequently are not in agreement with the presentations of the prosecutors.

Those who think that collaborating in a public activity, and collecting clearly stipulated honoraria for doing so, morally compromises people do not understand the meaning of a democratic government or the rule or law. Nor do they understand the responsibility of civilian society, much less what is called "civic duty." If one expects citizens to collaborate with the proper functioning of the State, and if society, through its representatives in Congress, has created these organizations and pays tens of millions of dollars to have press outlets such as the Voice of America, PBS, Radio Martí, or Radio Free Europe, why should responsible journalists refuse to collaborate with these agencies and betray the wishes of the people to get the best programming possible?

In Europe, journalists who work in the private media collaborate with the BBC, France Presse or Televisión Española -- the official channel -- without the public questioning their honesty and objectivity. In Spain, Pedro J. Ramírez, the harshest critic of government, the editor of El Mundo, participates weekly in a public-television program and receives about US$8,000 for each appearance. Like him, dozens of journalists collaborate with the public media and, far from defending the government, utilize those spaces to attack it, if they deem it fair criticism.

It is a mistake to think that, by collaborating with a public medium, a journalist loses his or her objectivity or compromises his ability to judge the government and condemn it, if that were necessary. On any program of Voice of America, or Radio Martí, PBS, or any other similar medium, if the topic is proper, it is perfectly possible to criticize the government of the United States, the president or any official (I myself have done that.) That same freedom is not enjoyed by private-media journalists in terms of the people who pay their salaries. It is inconceivable that The New York Times, The Miami Herald or CBS would allow one of its journalists to attack the organization's top editor for his lack of journalistic judgment, the injustices he commits, or the way he mismanages resources.

Obviously, it is easier to be objective and critical of the government in a public space than to be objective and critical of private interests in the private media. And there are at least three reasons for this: (1) Leaders and functionaries are public servants whose salary is paid by society, whereas the directors and executives of a private medium are the ones who pay the journalists their salary. (2) The behavior of leaders and functionaries is strictly regulated by law, while in the private media the ability to hire and fire is infinitely more discretional. (3) While private entrepreneurs can do anything that the law does not explicitly forbid, public functionaries can do only what the law authorizes and demands. This makes functionaries and elected politicians a lot more vulnerable to criticism.

To question the honor of a journalist because he appears on a radio or television program and receives an honorarium there for shows lack of respect for the journalist and an example of the worst Puritanical repressive paranoia. To think that the listener or viewer would suspect the journalist because he participates in such programs and receives honoraria shows lack of respect for the public, because it assumes that they are malicious beings, convinced that people opine only because of petty economic interests. In a society where the rule is that a person is innocent until proven guilty, it is inconceivable to treat journalists a priori as guilty of corruption.

Newspaper readers, radio listeners and TV viewers know that journalists are just like them; they are aware that life is a continuous conflict of interests, but trust that people are guided by moral rules and the desire to be fair. An honest disclaimer usually is enough for them to assay the journalist's opinion fairly.

If the public suffered the Puritanical paranoia some people attribute to them, the communications media that trade in the Stock Exchange could not analyze Wall Street affairs without raising suspicion. They could not criticize fiscal pressures because they pay taxes. They could not recommend books, films or restaurants because who knows what dark interests might lurk behind those opinions. And, above all, they could not endorse candidates to official posts -- president, members of Congress, mayors, council members -- because it would be easy to think that they do so in quest of prebendries and privileges that might favor them.

August 12, 2007

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