Pablo Alfonso and Wilfredo Cancio Isla, two of the Miami Herald’s most recalcitrant journalists, have been fired in the wake of a scandal involving them receiving US government payments to appear on Radio Marti and TV Marti to transmit anti-Cuba information.

This year Radio and TV Marti have received US$37 million to broadcast anti-Cuban programs. The total sum received by dozens of Miami journalists, including Cancio and Alfonso, in charge of writing vicious articles about Cuba, amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pablo Alfonso received some $175,000 since 2001. Wilfredo Cancio earned $15,000 in the last five years.

The payments were made by the Cuba Transmissions Office, which operates Radio and TV Marti. Other journalists involved include Helen Aguirre Ferre, editor of the opinion page of Diario Las Americas; columnist and reporter Ariel Remos; Miguel Cossio, news editor of Channel 41; Juan Manuel Cao, Channel 41 reporter; and syndicated columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner, whose opinions are published in El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald.

Neither Wilfredo Cancio nor Pablo Alfonso were available for comment, but the president and editor of the Miami Herald Media Co, Jesus Diaz Jr, backed the decision to dismiss them alleging that the payments received violated the “sacred confidence between journalists and the public”.

Diaz Jr said: “I do not believe that we can guarantee objectivity or integrity if one of our reporters receives monetary compensation from any agency that s/he has covered, but particularly if it concerns a government agency.”

According to the Miami Herald, the payments came to light in documents recently received by the newspaper after an August 15 application under the Freedom of Information Act.

[Abridged from Granma. Visit <http://www.granma.cu>.]

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