By Terry Jackson. tjackson@herald.com. Published Sunday, May 28, 2000, in the Miami Herald
On the day federal agents took Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives, CNN's Cuba dilemma flared up in dramatic fashion.
Protesters outside the Gonzalez's Little Havana home, their frustration already at a fevered pitched, tore down the tent that served as CNN's Elian outpost, striking a blow at what some in Miami's Cuban-American community call the Castro News Network.
Working from its bureau in Havana, CNN has been alternately condemned and praised for its reports from Cuba.
When in 1998 thugs beat more than 100 people demonstrating in Havana in support of independent journalist Mario Viera, CNN was there to record the attack, earning praise from the Cuban American National Foundation. And a story on a Cuban journalists convention by bureau chief Lucia Newman, who
made the point that Cuban reporters serve only the communist government's interests, was hailed by conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).
But other CNN broadcasts, including live coverage of speeches by Fidel Castro and Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, have angered some Cuban-American viewers, who believe CNN is serving as a propaganda tool.
And there have been other complaints that too many stories from CNN's Havana bureau have been soft features rather than hard-hitting reports about human-rights violations.
Ninoska Perez-Castellon, spokeswoman for the foundation, contends there is no way CNN can cover what's really going on in Cuba.
``When someone has a bureau in Cuba, the Cuban government makes them earn that visa,'' she says. ``They do far too many stories about fishing tournaments and cigars, rather than the oppression of the Castro government. You would think that Cuba was a paradise based on CNN's coverage.''
CNN Chairman Tom Johnson bristles at such criticism: ``We get hammered because we have regular bureau filings out of Havana and there are those who call us the Castro News Network.
``And yet we reported on the Elian story from every side possible -- the position of the government, the side that's pro-Elian staying in the U.S., the side that's pro-Elian being returned to his father.
``I think you spend so much time trying to defend yourself from these emotional attacks that it's really tough at times to do good journalism.''
Newman says criticism of her coverage as soft or biased just isn't true.
``I think that a lot of people in Miami are selective in what they remember of what we've done,'' she says. ``We are constantly doing stories on dissidents.''
CNN has a long history of Cuba coverage, dating to the network's early years.
In 1982, CNN was the first U.S. television crew to broadcast live from Havana since NBC in 1959. Take Two, a CNN feature program, did two weeks of live shows from Havana starting April 2, 1982, but because of the U.S. trade embargo, the signal had to be bounced to Prague, Czechoslovakia, then to
England and finally to the United States.
Today CNN beams its signal by satellite directly from Havana to Atlanta.
Although South Florida has emerged as a media gateway to Latin America, CNN passed over Miami when it was planning where to base CNN en Español, the Atlanta news channel it primarily beams into Central and South America.
``Early on people said, `Why don't you put it in Miami?' and I said Miami would be just about the last place I want to be because I don't want to be in that crossfire,'' Johnson said.
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