Money For Ink

I love Carl Hiassen. I think he’s one of the best columnists to ever make his mark in the beige commentary slots in the Miami Herald, as well as a great novelist. I also think that his satirical play on bribery being a decent thing to do especially when the pay is cheap and the responsibility is high is brilliant.

I’m referring to the September 17^th edition of Issues and Ideas section, when he jokingly downplays the wrongdoing of at least 10 journalists recently discovered to accept payments to appear on the government radio and TV Marti station. Hiassen begins his commentary calling these acts “compassionate conservatism” and saying that reporting is the most “underpaid, ragged and dispirited sector of the American workforce.” He compliments an administration that finally “appreciates our toil and sacrifices and reaches out to help.”

I have to admit I laughed pretty hard. I’m glad there are people who have reservations about employing someone to cover Cuba that is getting paid nearly $175,000 from the U.S. government to host programs on a station that broadcasts supposedly “uncensored” news to Cuba, also known as telling another country basically what they should do.

Why is this? Well, I actually believe that the explanation that Jesus Diaz Jr., Publisher of the Miami Herald, is spot on: “I personally don’t believe that integrity and objectivity can be assured if any of our reporters receive monetary compensation from any entity that he or she may cover or have covered, but particularly if it’s a government agency.”

And that’s just it. Being paid by a government agency clashing ideologies with another government, especially with that particular sum of money, will definitely compromise someone’s point of view, and does not reflect well on the integrity of a newspaper.

And the Cuban Liberty Council and some Cuban exiles demonstrating about it do not help the cause either.

Setting up an online petition, directed towards the CEO of McClatchy (the company that recently purchased the Miami Herald), Cuban exiles are quoted as saying that they “feel that this action is one of the most blatant and direct rejections . . . of our community and of our right to be represented by our own voices in the pages of the newspaper.” This is the problem. It’s not about your voices. The news is not about having your voice in the paper. The news, is supposed to be what happened, not what happened in the eyes of a Cuban reporter. So basically, the petition is saying that we need Cuban bias in the paper.

Hiassen also ridicules the idea that because Radio and TV Marti are not seen by many in Cuba due to jamming of the radio signals and that it broadcasts in the middle of the night, maybe these crimes are not as serious as they seem. It has less to do with people being affected by what he is writing, then with the plain fact that a writer for the dominant newspaper in Miami is getting a check from Uncle Sam. I think that the $15,000 that staff writer Wilfredo Cancio received is enough to maybe alter the direction of a piece, or keep one’s ideas in line. Not to mention Pedro Alfonso’s $175,000.

The bottom line is that one of the newspaper’s most important roles, a role that everyday seems to be diminishing with examples such as the Armstrong Williams case (which is sheer bribery), is the role of watchdog over government. Call me irrational, but I think if Pedro Alonso would have stumbled over a little scandal within the U.S. government he would remember the little Radio and TV Marti gig he booked and look the other way. And quite plainly, just the chance that that might happen is unacceptable.

And I at last come to Hiassen’s little finale where he sarcastically asks for his paycheck because of the numerous years he has said “snarky things” about Castro, such as the fact that he is “a windbag, geezer, liar, despot and all-around phony.” Right on. The reason why we believe you Carl is because you don’t have that paycheck, because you don’t have that man with the red, white and blue top hat and white beard standing over you. You write your column because you’ve done the research, you’ve looked at the facts, and you’re making a rational decision based on those facts. You’re not doing it because you have an extra wad of dirty money in your back pocket. We don't say, well of course he's writing that, he gets paid thousands of dollars from the U.S. government.

Complacency in an Indifferent Nation
As an entrance essay to Swarthmore College, my brother, who completed it in 1992 for entrance a year later, wrote about his experiences in Chile during a riot. Set in the mid-1980s, the spark that started the fire was that a concert, one that featured the sounds of the country’s most famous musicians and musical instruments, was cancelled. Authorities proclaimed that the concert was “too communist”, and could not be performed to the public. The Chilean masses in Santiago would not accept such constraint. Riot police began beating those who would raise their hands, and some of those who would not, and “camels” or water spraying trucks began opening up on those screaming for the freedom to play music. The wet bodies hurled into the walls, and the clubs made the pavement red.
Events like these do not happen regularly in the States in the present day, and there are many reasons for this. Some think there is a loss of collaboration and attention that from our country’s youth, and a lack of will to make a difference. Most believe that there is nothing that motivates the masses enough to put forth the effort. College professors and students alike point to the 70s, when large activist organizations were connected and formed to make the civil rights movement a reality and help bring an end to the Vietnam War. Professors, like Ronald Cox, a political science professor at Florida International University, believe that the main difference between two of the more controversial issues of each time, the Vietnam War and Iraq War, is the draft that made it mandatory to report to the armed services.
“The draft brought the war right into young lives, and created a situation where one could die for what one didn’t believe in, that’s powerful motivation,” he says. But now, people seem content with letting those who sign up voluntarily die in a war that according to polls most people disagree with.
The New Republic, a magazine chockablock with political criticism, and is credited with being the only magazine on Air Force One, constantly runs articles claiming that the Bush administration has created a “forgotten war”, one where as the casualties mount, the people care less. I understand this feeling, because I read the headlines daily, and they are always there, a soldier dying here, or a helicopter exploding there, and I pass over it shamelessly and double-click to see if I won my fantasy football league.
It’s not that I don’t care. Because I do. It’s that I honestly don’t care enough. And that’s probably saying a lot more than the average student or citizen.
To say that it’s a phenomenon present in this country only could be close to the truth. Organizing, demonstrating, and being socially aware are actions dominating the daily lives of the youth in foreign countries. For example, earlier this year, again in Chile, secondary-school children boycotted class all over the country demanding that the economic windfall generated by soaring copper prices be spent on improving a deplorable and disintegrating education infrastructure. That kind of organization is unheard of in the high schools of the U.S. In France, teenagers took to the streets to try to put an end to a newly incorporated law saying that it was okay for employers to fire their younger employees for absolutely no reason. In Iraq and in Lebanon, Muslim youth are literally fighting invasion and occupation by taking up arms with their brethren.
So that’s probably it then, the real reason we do not rise up is the fact that we have it the best. One of the richest nations in the world, and certainly the most powerful, we flaunt our military for the world to see, and we slant the trading laws to favor us at the expense of the less developed countries. We impose sanctions on countries for generating weaponry that we already have, and we force countries to cooperate with us. Even with a president that cannot speak coherently and the world loves to ridicule, we’re still untouchable. I guess the real question is, when we’re dominating both hemispheres, albeit unfairly and with an iron fist, how is the resistance going to come from within? Liberalistic thought has no place for morality. It only has space for self, self possession, and individualism.
Another reason for panic is the fact that nobody in our age group knows any of this. Social awareness seems to have hit an all time low. Newspapers do not get read by our age group, and those who say they read it online have to battle social networks like myspace, not to mention the regular bully of print, TV, to get to the news. We don’t know about NAFTA, about CIA interventions, the huge subsidy that the government gave to private oil companies after they achieved record profits, or about the fact that it’s not logical to have nukes and tell others not to create them. We actually believe that the U.S. is driven by the greater good, and the spread of democracy is the reason why we’re in Iraq. The propaganda machine does not just dominate, it’s not challenged. The world fears us, and for good reason. Because the only thing that can stop us at the moment is ourselves. And we really just don’t care; we have more important things to worry about.So my brother got into Swarthmore among other things by writing about an experience that is foreign in this country, and that not many in our age group can relate to. And in the end, really who can blame us for not having that experience? We’re happy, we’re fat, we’re ignorant, we’re irresponsible, we’re distant, and we only care about ourselves. The world should fear that, and they do.