Message to The Miami Herald
Al’s Loupe
Message to The Miami Herald
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alvaro@progreso-weekly.com
I wonder why The Miami Herald often ignores Progreso Weekly/Semanal.
Do they fear us? Or maybe they just don’t take us seriously. I’m not exactly sure. But what I am convinced of, though, is that in this process, over the past seven-plus years, they’ve done my community a disservice.
Interestingly, many of the journalists who have worked there (The Miami Herald not El Nuevo), and some who still continue to do so, have been first rate. A testament to this is the fact that top-flight newspapers (which The Miami Herald can no longer call itself) like the Washington Post, New York Times and others from around the country are full of Miami Herald alumni.
The problem at The Miami Herald is at the top. The honchos. Those who decide what will, and will not, run; what gets covered and how it is covered; who slants the headlines and omits the key paragraphs.
I say this because for years now Progreso Weekly/Semanal has covered Cuba much better than The Miami Herald. It’s logical. Our writers live there. Their writers aren’t even allowed on the island. And I’m not here to argue the merit or demerit of allowing Herald reporters on the island by the Cuban government. That’s another topic for another day.
Anyone who reads Progreso Weekly/Semanal knows that through our reports, blogs and columns, written by first-rate writers and journalists from Havana, we’ve often reported, and announced, things coming from Cuba that it has taken The Miami Herald months and even years later to land. Examples are many; here you have two:
Posada and the Santrina
The Miami Herald reported the allegations that Luis Posada Carriles had entered the U.S. illegally aboard a shrimp boat called Santrina sometime in 2009. They did so as if it had been a breakthrough in the Posada case at the time. They failed to acknowledge and give credit to the fact that Progreso Weekly/Semanal had reported the same four years earlier, in 2005, in a published interview with a Mexican journalist where he speaks of seeing Posada Carriles in Isla Mujeres off the coast of Mexico before departing on the Santrina for Florida.
I can almost guarantee that reporters, editors and others at The Miami Herald read our 2005 Progreso Weekly/Semanal report regarding the Santrina. But having no sources of their own, The Miami Herald decided to keep the fact hidden from their readers.
Gross’ satellite telephones
In July of last year, columnist Saul Landau wrote a column dealing with the Alan Gross case. At the time he explained that the USAID contractor was jailed in Cuba for, among other things, distributing illegal satellite telephones. He suggested that Gross might eventually be used as pawn in an exchange for the Cuban 5, who have been in prison for more than a decade here in the U.S.
This was important information that was totally ignored by The Miami Herald. Juan Tamayo wrote about Gross finally being charged with a crime by the Cuban government this past weekend. In a related piece, he mentions the illegal satellite phones Landau had written about six months earlier. Of course, The Miami Herald offered Progreso Weekly/Semanal not a word of acknowledgement. Something, I assure you, most honest journalists would have done. Truth be told, this little publication had scooped them a half year earlier.
Look, The Miami Herald may not like our politics. Or maybe, just maybe, they may agree with us on some things, but they’re fearful of what some people in Miami might think. There’s a lot of that that goes on in this town. Honestly, we don’t care.
But it’s the community that loses when there is a publication who has information that is important in Miami and The Miami Herald refuses to report it.
Message to The Miami Herald
Expect more from us in the coming months. And coming out of Cuba, we will be telling our readers much of what you should be reporting. Also, we’re looking at a new format that will have us updating news on our front page daily. We’re also in the process of translating more of our Cuba materials to English – our English readers deserve this service.
At the same time, we are not so proud that we don’t recognize that at this moment in time you still have a larger number of readers than we do. So why should you deprive them of good information (Progreso Weekly/Semanal offers) that they deserve to be reading?
All we ask is that you give us the credit. Is that really too much to ask for? In the end, we can actually help you improve.
