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.