The Bush administration's Office of Cuba Broadcasting paid 10 journalists in Miami to provide commentary on Radio and TV Marti, which transmit government broadcasts critical of Cuban President Fidel Castro, a spokesman for the office said on Friday.
The group included three journalists at El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language sister newspaper of the Miami Herald, which fired them on Thursday after learning of the relationship.
Pablo Alfonso, who reports on Cuba for El Nuevo Herald, received the largest payment -- almost US$175,000 -- since 2001.
Other journalists have been found to have accepted money from the Bush administration.
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 Alfonso, the journalists who received payment include Wilfredo Cancio Isla, who writes for El Nuevo Herald and received about US$15,000 since 2001; Olga Connor, a freelance reporter for the newspaper who received about US$71,000; and Juan Manuel Cao, a reporter for Channel 41 who received US$11,000 this year from TV Marti, according to the Miami Herald, which learned of the payments through a Freedom of Information request.
When Cao followed Castro to Argentina this summer and asked him why Cuba was not letting one of its political dissidents leave, Castro called him a "mercenary" and asked who was paying him.
Cao refused to comment on Friday except to say on Channel 41 that he believed the Cuban government knew in advance about the Miami Herald story.
Ninoska Perez-Castellon, a commentator on the popular Radio Mambi station in Miami, said she had received a total of US$1,550 from the government to do 10 episodes of a documentary-style show on TV Marti called Atrevete a Sonar (Dare to Dream), and saw nothing wrong with it.
"Being Cuban," Perez-Castellon 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," Tompkins said. "If you consider yourself a journalist, then it seems to me it's an obvious conflict of interest to take government dollars."
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS