Tom Fiedler. Published Sunday, January 9, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Without even setting foot on the island, the American editorial writers encountered the real Fidel in all his mercurial despotism.
One of the precepts we hold to in the opinion business is to aim our criticism away from the personal and at the behavioral. We want to hate the sin and love the sinner, to borrow an evangelist's motto: Thou shalt take no pleasure in criticizing others.
But heck, when it comes to the Cuban government, I'll admit to feeling pleased when a recent editorial not only hit the target but drew loud yelps from ``the highest levels of the [Cuban] government,'' a euphemism for Fidel Castro. Under the headline What is Castro afraid of?, we'd blistered the
regime for refusing to issue a travel visa to either editorial writer Susana Barciela or me, to join a contingent of 40 other opinion writers who had been invited for a week-long visit to Cuba.
We urged our colleagues to continue with their plans, not wanting our fight to prevent them from witnessing what 41 years of Castro have done for Cuba. And they agreed to go ahead, with some promising to raise a fuss with the Cuban hosts. Outside The Herald, the initial snub didn't draw much
notice.
But unseen by the public, that decision ignited a thoughtful, at times heated and quite possibly historic debate on the Internet among opinion writers across the country. Some seemed to take even-more personally than I had the offense of being snubbed by a dictator who initially extended a
welcome mat then yanked it away when this newspaper attempted to cross.
That debate, conducted within the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW) on the Internet, ranged over the duty of a free press, loyalty to colleagues and the importance of defending the principle that those who want to be in the news cannot choose those who will report and comment on
it.
Although competitors by day, the majority of those who posted comments agreed that when it comes to standing up for the common cause of a free and independent press, we must, like the Musketeers, be all for one and one for all.
Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said: ``I regret even more not signing up because, after the Cuban regime's denying one of our people a visa, it would have been so satisfying to cancel out. I would not want to go where a fellow NCEW'er was denied admission.''
Joanna Wragg, The Herald's former associate editor and a past president of the editorial writer's organization, argued strongly against continuing with the trip. ``NCEW either has a policy of allowing host governments to `pick and choose which members are issued visas' or it does not. We cannot
be a little bit pregnant here. . . . We should not do it and will pay a high price in the future if we set this dangerous precedent.''
Krishna Kumar Gaur, editorial-page editor of The Times of Northwest Indiana, recalled that in the 1980s another newspaper organization canceled a trip to South Africa when that country's apartheid government enacted measures severely restricting the free press.
``The importance of an unfiltered look at apartheid was the compelling factor for planning the trip, but the importance of principle was greater and prevailed,'' he wrote.
To its credit, the trip's organizers took steps to assure that those who continued with their plans wouldn't receive just Castro's views about Cuba. They'd planned pre-trip briefings in Miami with local experts and exile-community leaders, even inviting us to participate.
I remained confident that, by seeing first hand the wreckage of Castroism, the editorial writers would return from Cuba anything but dewey-eyed about the revolution. Then one of the leaders, Dave Hage of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, publicly remarked that he was ``frustrated and disappointed''
with Castro's action regarding The Herald and promised it would become ``an issue of discussion.''
He quickly learned that the Cuban government doesn't look kindly on having its actions questioned and looks even less kindly on the prospect of having those questions coming from editorial writers from newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and dozens more.
Abruptly, the Cuban government withdrew its invitation to NCEW. The raging debate over going or not going to preserve the principle of an independent press suddenly was moot.
I sympathize with the editorial writers' disappointment. But there is irony in the fact that the rejection may have taught my colleagues more than they would otherwise have learned about today's Cuba.
Without even setting foot on the island, they encountered the real Fidel in all his mercurial despotism, a man terrified of a press he can't control.
fiedler@herald.com
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |