By Madeline Baró Diaz. Miami Bureau. Posted May 25
2001. The Sun-Sentinel
MIAMI · The Cuban American National Foundation says it's battling
negative press about the Cuban community through a journalism scholarship
established with a defamation suit settlement.
The first Jorge Mas Canosa Journalism Scholarship was awarded to
Northwestern University sophomore Alina Machado, 19, who will receive $5,000 a
year for undergraduate and graduate studies. After she completes her studies,
the scholarship will be given to another student.
The scholarship came from a defamation settlement with The New Republic over
a 1994 article about the foundation's founder, Jorge Mas Canosa, headlined "Clinton's
Miami Mobster." In the settlement, reached in 1996, The New Republic agreed
to publish an apology and to fund a journalism scholarship through the
foundation with $100,000.
Mas Canosa thought helping young Cuban-American journalists would lead to
sensitive and positive coverage of the Cuban-American community, said Adolfo
Leyva, executive director of Mas Family Scholarships.
"One thing that he wanted was for the issues involving the community
and the community's concerns over human rights violations in Cuba to be fairly
portrayed in the press, and for the community itself to be fairly portrayed in
the press," Leyva said.
The five-year-old Mas Family Scholarships already go to 10 to 12 students a
year. Those scholarships are renewed each year as new recipients are chosen, so
40 or more students can be on the scholarships at the same time. The journalism
scholarship is separate, although all the scholarships go to students of Cuban
descent.
The Cuban American National Foundation is known for strong anti-Castro and
pro-Cuban embargo stances and has had much political pull in Washington over the
years. Recently it was a key player in the introduction of legislation in
Congress that would give $100 million in aid to dissidents in Cuba.
But that doesn't necessarily taint the credibility or impartiality of young
journalists accepting their scholarship money, said Lee Wilkins, a media ethics
professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Any journalism student will learn core values of the profession, such as
truthfulness and fairness, and will also learn to avoid stereotyping people in
their stories, Wilkins said.
"To me, when you give a young person scholarship money, you're betting
on that young person," she said. "You're not trying to predetermine
how they're going to turn out."
Machado, who wants a career in broadcasting, said she was a little concerned
about the source of her scholarship, but ultimately it won't affect her work.
"I hope to be someone who is fair and balanced and uses her career to
further the goals of journalism, which are to be fair and balanced and present
all sides of the story," she said.
Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or
305-810-5007.
Copyright 2001, Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida
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