[HCDX] Broadcast Blunder (Radio Marti)

["polisci" <polisci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Miami New Times, August 31 - September 6, 2000

Broadcast Blunder By Kathy Glasgow

Taxpayer-funded Radio Marti managed to blow its coverage of the year's
biggest story.



Only a few months ago, Miami-Dade County had pretty much lost its already
tenuous grip on reason. The place was in a blind frenzy over Elian Gonzalez,
and it seemed that no one escaped the mass contagion. Just across the
Florida Straits, in the other Cuba, arose equally zealous public displays of
love, hate, and solidarity. Journalists flooded Little Havana and La Habana
to chronicle the ongoing obsession.

In all the excitement of the saga's climactic event -- the April 22 raid on
the home of Elian's Miami relatives -- an embarrassing faux pas on the U.S.
side went virtually unnoticed. Radio Martí, the U.S. government station
created for the sole purpose of beaming uncensored information to the Cuban
people, inexplicably waited four hours before mentioning that definitive
event.

Only in recent weeks has it appeared likely there will be consequences for
the station's journalistic lapse. Word has emerged from Washington, D.C., of
the imminent reassignment of Radio Martí's director. Yet that decision
resulted in a baffling standoff between the station's bipartisan government
regulators and the three Cuban-American members of Congress. In the
seething, multilayered world of exile politics, most actions take on
symbolic import that often is impossible for outsiders to interpret. Thus a
former Radio Martí employee who insists on anonymity offers a deceptively
transparent explanation of the standoff: "It has nothing to do with
Democrats or Republicans," the Martí insider says. "It's a Cuban thing."

Radio Martí, which is based in Miami and had at least two reporters on the
scene when the dramatic predawn raid took place, was beaten by everyone on
the story. Even the Castro regime's mouthpiece, Radio Rebelde, scooped Martí
by about three hours. Unbeknownst to those listening to Radio Martí early on
the morning of April 22, the Martí newsroom was in disarray, the station
director unreachable while editors watched the story unfolding on TV
monitors, unable to obtain their boss's permission to interrupt regular
programming and inform the Cuban people of the dramatic events taking place
in Little Havana.

In the days that followed, those responsible for the delay never offered an
explanation on the air or in any public forum. But in Miami the subject was
of negligible consequence anyway; the local media has never concerned itself
much with Radio Martí or its companion station, Television Martí. But the
Elian blunder was promptly detailed on an Internet site critical of Radio
Martí's management and briefly noted more than a week later in a column by
Al Kamen of the Washington Post. (To hear the broadcasts, one needs either
an audio-equipped computer or some luck picking up the shortwave or AM
signal.)

But the mysterious silence was glaring enough to attract scrutiny from Radio
Martí's Washington, D.C., overseer, the Broadcasting Board of Governors
(BBG). This agency supervises all government-run broadcasting operations
(except military) and is headed by a nine-member presidentially appointed
board, also referred to as the BBG. The board meets monthly and is charged
with ensuring that U.S.-sponsored radio and television stations comply with
congressional mandates.

But the BBG, in its concern over the Radio Martí gaffe, touched off a
defiant backlash from the station's Cuban-American padrinos in Congress. The
reasons for the backlash are hard to discern, at least partly because the
situation has been kept unusually quiet. Only a handful of people are
familiar with it, and they have been exceptionally close-mouthed. The
International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), the administrative arm of the BBG,
won't release any relevant documents and has not yet responded to a Freedom
of Information Act request filed by New Times. Adding to the edginess is the
Martí stations' long tradition of autonomy: Ever since Radio Martí first
went on the air fifteen years ago (TV Martí is ten years old), every
Washington administration has kept a safe distance from the intrigue-ridden,
politically perilous Cuba broadcasting operations. Now the BBG, by actually
attempting to mete out punishment for a clear professional transgression, is
bringing to light what some probably would prefer to let quietly fade away.
"Everybody compartmentalizes Radio Martí," says a former employee. "[Federal
oversight agencies] are in denial about what goes on there."

For full text of article visit:

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2000-08-31/feature2.html/page1.html



---
Armando . Mastrapa III - Crisis at Radio Marti
http://www.cubapolidata.com/carm/carm.html


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