As American Outlets Prepare To Move In
By Mark Fitzgerald. Editor
& Publisher magazine. Monday, February 5, 2001
CHICAGO — In the last few weeks, reporters from The Dallas Morning News
and Tribune Co. papers have been moving furniture into an Old Havana office
building to establish the first U.S. newspaper bureaus permitted in Cuba since
The New York Times was expelled nearly 40 years ago.
They've received a distinctly schizophrenic welcome.
On the one hand, the Cuban government sometimes seems as excited about the
bureaus as the newspapers, which lobbied for permanent offices for the better
part of a decade. The Communist Party greeted the opening of the Tribune Co.
bureau with an article in its daily paper, Granma. And Ricardo Chavira, the
Morning News' assistant managing editor for national and international news,
said government officials at a recent meeting seemed "anxious" that
the bureaucratic hurdles in opening the bureau "got expedited as quickly as
they could."
But, on the other hand, President Fidel Castro also picked the moment U.S.
reporters arrived to launch a highly publicized campaign against foreign
journalists. In a televised address Jan. 9, he accused Pascal Fletcher, the
longtime Havana correspondent for the Financial Times, of publishing "confidential"
data about the Cuban economy and working for the U.S. Interests Section office
in Havana. A week later, Castro set off an international incident by jailing a
Czech legislator and a human- rights activist because they met with the
independent Cuban journalist Antonio Femenias and another dissident.
In another speech, Castro suggested he might kick entire news organizations
off the island for the "insults" of individual reporters. "We
often know what they seek with these insults: that we adopt a drastic measure by
expelling them," Castro said, according to Anita Snow, The Associated
Press' Havana correspondent. Perhaps, he added, "it would be more
reasonable to cancel the permission that the agency has to inform from Cuba."
The Morning News, which has sent Tracey Eaton as its first Cuban
correspondent, won't be affected by Castro's outbursts, said President and
General Manager Robert W. Mong Jr.: "We've certainly angered the Cuban
government before, and we'll probably do it again, but they've always let us
back into the country." In his recent meeting with Cuban officials,
Associate Managing Editor Chavira added, "There was no intimidation, no
sense of 'Behave yourself or you'll be kicked out.' And we're not writing with
any fear over our head."
Indeed, Castro can bluster, but he undoubtedly realizes that tolerating the
foreign press is the price he must pay to attract the tourism and business
investment Cuba desperately needs, said American University Professor William
LeoGrande, a Cuban specialist.
"Cuba is stuck with an information flow that is essential to doing
business on the world stage," LeoGrande said, "and though the
government may not like what the international press says about them — just
as they don't like paying real-world market prices instead of getting Soviet
subsidies — they really don't have a choice."
Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@edit orandpublisher.com) is editor at large for
E&P. | 