Why Radio/TV Marti is a joke

How is the U.S. government broadcast to Cuba covering the announcement about Title III of the Helms-Burton law?

In this story, TV Marti reporter Tomas Regalado explains the State Department statement and presents some reaction: from Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, from Miami radio powerhouse Ninoska Perez, and from a guy who would like to file a lawsuit based on his property claim. Regalado did not indicate that alternative points of view exist, much less say what they are or show anyone espousing them.

On the evening newscast, they brought out reporter Pablo Alfonso to explain the news, and in addition to explaining the issue of lawsuits, he proceeded to describe an aspect of the legislation that doesn’t exist. He said that Title III “prohibits subsidiaries of foreign businesses, who have subsidiaries in the United States, from doing business with Cuba” (see 3:00). That is nonsense, but it’s not hard to guess why he said it. Someone probably told him, accurately, that the desired effect of the law is to induce companies doing business here to stop doing business there. Rather than doing actual reporting, it appears he went with that and garbled it. (Note also at 4:25 that after referring to the Cuban “government” he quickly corrects himself and says “regime.”)

On the Radio/TV Marti website, there’s a story about Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart supporting the implementation of Title III, and another about dissidents in Cuba with the same point of view.

This is not the first time Radio/TV Marti covers a story by providing information and a single point of view, as if it aspires to be a mirror image of Granma. You get the impression that if you were to read the Voice of America’s charter to it management (VOA represents “America, not any single segment of American society,” and presents “a balanced and comprehensive projection of significant American thought and institutions”), they would look at you as if you were speaking Chinese.

Obviously the funding for Radio/TV Marti will go on forever, so I repeat my suggestion: call it Radio Exilio and spare Marti and the rest of us with any association with it.

Radio/TV Marti in the news

The Washington Post and New York Times have stories today on Radio/TV Marti and, in the Times’ case, on U.S. international broadcasting in general. Both are worth reading. From them, some items of note:

The report on the investigation of the Soros program is “due out in early January,” according to the Times.

The anti-Islam article on the Radio/TV Marti website (now withdrawn but cached here), first reported in El Nuevo Herald, was published in September. Unlike the Soros content, this was published months after the current director Tomas Regalado came on board.

The Times story is inaccurate in saying that Judicial Watch was “relied on” for material in the Soros program. The program gives that impression by mentioning Judicial Watch repeatedly, but no one from that organization is interviewed, nor are they or their work cited specifically. The Post interviewed Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who says his organization was not contacted as the program was being prepared. This, and Regalado’s comment that Judicial Watch is a “good source,” is one of the strangest aspects of the program.

Neither article gets at the question of the Soros program’s origin. Maybe someone at Radio/TV Marti thought it up, but I doubt it.

Radio/TV Marti in action (corrected)

(This was posted 12/13; see correction below, posted 12/17.)

Last week I attended the second public meeting of the State Department’s Cuba Internet Task Force. I didn’t intend to write about it until I saw the coverage from Radio/TV Marti.

At the meeting, two items of business were accomplished. The task force heard from two organizations that were charged with developing recommendations: Freedom House and the Information Technology Industry Council. Then the task force gave the State Department’s Cuba desk the job of writing its report. The report will contain recommendations to the Secretary of State based on its views, the ideas submitted by these organizations, and public comments.

Radio/TV Marti director Tomas Regalado is a member of the task force, and Radio/TV Marti’s story on the task force meeting is all about him. I don’t have verbatim notes, but I think it’s fair to say that he objected to some of the recommendations that were put forward because they involved dealing with the Cuban government and enterprises, and could involve commercial activity.

He moved to have some of these ideas stricken from the report that will go to the Secretary of State, and he announced portentously that if they were not stricken then he would resign from the task force, pick up his marbles, and go home.

He didn’t seem to understand no such motion could be entertained because no such report had been written; there was no draft in front of the members that could be amended. There were two reports from outside groups, that’s all. The deliberation and drafting is about to begin. This was explained by the State Department’s press office here.

This never sunk in with Mr. Regalado, however. Even after the meeting, in the video accompanying the story (at 1:10), he is talking about report already drafted, destined for the Secretary of State and the President.

It’s pretty obvious that this story was pre-planned. The fact that its premise was wrong didn’t stop Radio/TV Marti from running it.

What does this say about the journalism that Radio/TV Marti is practicing?

They didn’t send a reporter to cover a public meeting that was open to press coverage – and if they sent a reporter, either that reporter didn’t understand what was going on, or decided to go with Mr. Regalado’s misrepresentation. The facts were set aside in favor of the pre-cooked story. Pathetic.

The story covered only Mr. Regalado – nothing on the statements of the government officials present, nothing on the representatives of Freedom House and the Information Technology Industry Council who presented their interesting reports, nothing on the discussion that ensued. Real journaIism would present the content of those groups’ presentations, in addition to Mr. Regalado’s criticism – to say nothing of giving a complete sense of what happened at the meeting beyond one person’s interventions. This is more like propaganda.

Mr. Regalado is certainly a qualified commentator. But his personal involvement in a misleading story like this shows he has no place running a news organization.

The story linked above is introduced by two anchors and then cuts to a report from a reporter in the Miami newsroom. The reporter is Mr. Regalado’s son. This isn’t nepotism because the son was there long before the father was hired. But apparently, Radio/TV Marti has no editor to point out that it’s wrong to assign a reporter to cover a story about an immediate family member, in this case his father.

In the video, Mr. Regalado says he felt a responsibility to speak as “the only Cuban voice of the exile community.” It was important to note, he said, that “with the Cuban government one can’t negotiate, with the Cuban government one can’t talk, that the Cuban government is the problem, not the solution, and that in the United States there are brilliant minds, there are people who can design a series of projects to give free Internet to the Cuban people.”

Therein lies the real story from the meeting that Radio/TV Marti completely blew. Current Trump Administration regulations provide ample space for American companies to be involved in Internet and telecommunications, including selling equipment to businesses and consumers and, should Cuban officials and enterprises agree, to help extend the network. Mr. Regalado has a different idea: for the U.S. government to involve itself in “a series of projects” to expand access independent of Cuban networks. Haven’t we seen that movie before?

Some may think I’m writing as part of a campaign to bring down Radio and TV Marti. Not quite. Realistically speaking, I will sooner become President of the United States than Congress will end this waste.

But Congress could do us a favor: divorce them from the Voice of America and call them the Voice of El Exilio. That would end the association with poor Jose Marti and diminish the association with us.

Correction (12/17):

In fact there were two stories on this meeting. There was the one that centered on Mr. Regalado, discussed above, which was the front-page story on the Radio/TV Marti website, and there was another that I missed.

The other story is based in part on reporting from the meeting – so I was wrong to say they didn’t send a reporter.

How did this story cover the meeting?

It notes that recommendations were presented at the meeting and it describes some of them, but for some reason it fails to note that they were presented by representatives of Freedom House and the Information Technology Industry Council. Isn’t it a basic task for a reporter covering a public meeting to identify who said what?

The story notes that “some of these recommendations were rejected by the audience” but it fails to report that some in the audience supported them. What do you call journalism that reports one point of view and omits its opposite?

The story omitted other aspects of the discussion. There was a suggestion that current Treasury regulations should be maintained so as to enable U.S. companies to try to get involved commercially in expanding the Cuban network, and there was another suggestion that the United States use technologies that can expand Internet access in Cuba without any connection to the Cuban network. Neither was mentioned.

It does not report on Mr. Regalado’s confusion, discussed above.

So that’s the correction. I stand by the rest of what I wrote.

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An apology to Mr. Soros

More reporting on the TV Marti program on George Soros:

OnCuba reports that John Lansing, head of the U.S. agency that oversees Radio/TV Marti, has apologized to George Soros and to the head of his foundation for the program that he judges to be “utterly offensive in its anti-Semitism and clear bias.” His letters, embedded in the article, are not your typical U.S. government statement; they are a strong and complete rejection of the product that TV Marti purveyed. Here’s hoping that Lansing’s attitude permeates the investigation. He has ordered Radio/TV Marti to hire a Standards and Practices Editor, and he is having a third-party contractor conduct an audit of the past year of Radio/TV Marti’s output.

El Nuevo Herald reports that a total of four employees of Radio/TV Marti have been suspended as the investigation continues, and that the investigation revealed that the Radio/TV Marti webpage had published “excessive attacks on the Quran,” according to director Tomas Regalado. Regalado made that statement in a Miami radio interview last week. The article also mentions a web article based on Judicial Watch materials that was removed from the Radio/TV Marti site but is cached here.

TV Marti Soros program, subtitled

Here’s a friend’s translation of the TV Marti program on George Soros.

Three errata: at 3:50 it should be “Popper’s liberalism” (reference to Karl Popper); at 9:08 the word “NSA” was omitted from the presentation of Madsen; at 12:08 it should be “exercise of eight months.”
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Mr. Regalado adapts

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Radio/TV Marti which oversees the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), is investigating the TV Marti Soros program, and from this Herald story we learn it’s a 10-day investigation.

While the investigation proceeds, OCB Director Tomas Regalado has been commenting and seemingly trying to find safe political ground.

He began by half-embracing the program, saying that Judicial Watch is a “good source” but should not have been the only source, and that the program fell short because it was “not precise” and lacked “balance.” As if the program contained an actual story that was not properly told.

By last Wednesday he was saying the program “looks like an anti-Semitic report” and he made the ridiculous suggestion that the Radio/TV Marti staff needs diversity training.

In his statement yesterday, he flatly called the program anti-Semitic and called for “ethics and standards training,” which presumably includes the basics of journalism.

I suppose it’s good that Regalado is adapting. The program was produced and aired before he assumed his duties, but his initial reactions to it set a terrible example for his newsroom.

He also told the Herald – again, before the investigation is complete – that two people, and two people alone, are responsible for this fiasco. They were “the only two people who had anything to do with the report coming out on the air,” he said. That statement strains credulity and looks like an effort to limit and isolate the damage. Fire two people, case closed, everybody moves on.

Regalado also told the Herald another interesting detail. Reporter Isabel Cuervo, he says, did no on-camera interviews for the program. That means that Cuervo lied on the Levantate Cuba program when she said that she herself interviewed Lia Fowler, whose comments appeared to be from a Skype interview. (I would post the clip but TV Marti removed it from YouTube, and appears to be purging everything on its website and elsewhere that refers to the Soros program.)

Meanwhile, Senator Menendez wrote to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to set some expectations for the investigation and to demand information. Good for him.

You're welcome, Vladimir

It was apparent that some of the video material in the TV Marti Soros program was drawn from other sources. Some, it turns out, was lifted from an RT program and included on the TV Marti broadcast, without attribution.

I’m referring to comments by Michele Steinberg, editor of a magazine affiliated with Lyndon LaRouche. She is interviewed extensively in this Spanish-language RT program about Mr. Soros, titled “Who is George Soros Really?” Part of her interview with RT and other footage from the RT program appear in the TV Marti program, with the RT logo erased from the screen.

If you want to see for yourself, the RT footage here at 4:20 was clipped and used by TV Marti here at 5:26.

The RT program features Ms. Steinberg’s discussion of the links between Mr. Soros and the Rothschilds. So two of three people cited in the TV Marti program turn out to be exponents of one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes in the world.

As a friend points out, the U.S. government used Russian anti-Semitic propaganda to make American anti-Semitic propaganda for broadcast to Latin America.

"Anti-Semitism and clear bias" at TV Marti...

...a statement in Spanish and English from the director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Tomas Regalado, on the Radio/TV Marti website.

"Apparent misconduct" at TV Marti...

…and an investigation launched by the body that oversees Radio/TV Marti, the U.S. Agency for Global Media. A forthright statement from its CEO, John Lansing, was issued today.

TV Marti and "balance" (link restored)

Tomas Regalado, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting that houses Radio and TV Marti, is a rare Trump appointee who strongly opposed President Trump’s candidacy. He was mayor of Miami and before that, a prominent radio journalist. Recalling a feature of his own radio program, he has brought a fact-checking feature (Detector de Mentiras) to the Martis’ website.

When Mother Jones wrote last Friday about the TV Marti program that smeared George Soros, Regalado responded directly: “Judicial Watch is a good source, but having said that, it should not have been the only source. The two part series was not precise and did not have on the record sources to balance the story…To be fair and to show that we in the new administration are committed to journalistic integrity, the stories have been pulled out of the digital page, not because we want to hide anything, but because we want to be transparent if we say that the story did not have the required balance, then it should not be on the air.” By “new administration” he means his own stewardship because he started in his job shortly after the Soros program aired.

It is good that he responded personally and critically. But while he stands up for “journalistic integrity,” he whitewashes the problems with the program. A few things need to be pointed out.

“Judicial Watch is a good source,” Regalado says, but what is he talking about? One of the strange aspects of the program is that the narrator repeatedly mentions Judicial Watch but no one from that organization is quoted, none of its work is cited, none of its people appear on camera. (Fox News, by the way, dumped Judicial Watch’s research director last weekend for statements about Soros’ secret control of the State Department, but the organization is a “good source” for Radio/TV Marti.)

This idea that the program lacked “balance,” additional sources, or on-the-record statements misses the mark. What it lacked was truthful information to support its wild assertions – for example that Soros was the “architect” of the financial crisis in 2008 and that he is now making money from his political activism. Or, as persons quoted in the program assert, that he financed Gorbachev, has destabilized countries, and seeks to undermine democracies and turn Latin American countries into satellites of Cuba. Reporting a series of blatant falsehoods is not remedied by “balance.” You don’t have to be a journalist to realize this.

The program was thoroughly promoted by TV Marti. For example, there’s the Levantate Cuba morning program, where host Maite Luna interviews Isabel Cuervo, the narrator of the Soros program who claims to have conducted the “investigation” of the subject matter.

The passage beginning at 5:06 here and in the clip above is emblematic. (Sorry for the audio, it's my own recording of the video that was pulled from the government site.) At this point they are running an excerpt from the Soros program. Over scary sound effects, the narrator explains that Soros spends millions in “hundreds of countries” and is “accused thus of influencing, with his fortune, in their political and social destinies, in order to later take out revenue in the millions.” (Accused by whom, she doesn’t say.) Lia Fowler then appears very briefly on camera saying it is “much easier to work with a dictator than in a democracy and an open market.” Then with Fowler no longer on camera, the narrator attributes to her the idea that “behind the magnate is a hidden craving for global power.” Then the narrator mentions Soros’ support for communications media and nongovernmental organizations on five continents and says: “Latin America does not escape his spell.” During this, on the screen are images of a wall being spraypainted, street demonstrations, a burning effigy of President Trump, and a line of masked demonstrators hurling projectiles. The excerpt ends; back in the studio, the host Maite Luna says that Soros engages in philanthropy, “but he is also very dangerous, that he is giving and offering money where it can end up being a danger – that government – for the society.”

This is not journalism, it is a smear; none of the accusations are supported. No “balance” can improve it. Worse, it touches on all the themes that have been central to anti-Semitic screeds throughout history.

I assume that many of the journalists at Radio/TV Marti are repulsed by this program and the stain it puts on their organization and U.S. international broadcasting. Neither Radio/TV Marti nor its governing body have addressed a word to their audience, to say nothing of Mr. Soros. The silence is deafening.

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Le ronca...

Deemed essential to U.S. foreign relations and national security, the broadcasts of Radio Marti and the unseen TV Marti are going to continue even as the federal government shuts down for lack of appropriations, Miami New Times reports. 

Odds and ends

• Reuters: Robertico Carcasses, son of jazz musician Bobby Carcasses, drew flak from the Cuban government when during a concert he called for free access to information and direct popular election of the Cuban President.  Singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez came to his defense and it appears that Robertico may be getting out of hot water.  Carcasses is also in favor of ending the U.S. embargo and releasing the four remaining members of the “Cuban Five.”

• In CubaEncuentro, General Rafael del Pino, the highest-ranking Cuban military defector, calls on Cuban Americans in Congress to do the right thing and pull the plug on TV Marti.

• IPS reports on cost-consciousness coming to the Cuban health care system, which has cut its workforce by one sixth (nearly 100,000 personnel) and nearly doubled the number of family doctor offices in the past four years.

• Conservative columnist George F. Will chides the CIA for resisting releasing the final volume of its own history of the Bay of Pigs debacle, arguing that it would be good for the country and for the U.S. government to ponder its lessons.  Good for the National Security Archive for fighting in court to get it released.

• Herald: Florida Governor Rick Scott, who shamelessly played to both sides regarding the Florida law that bans state government and Florida local governments from doing business with companies that do business with Cuba, has given up the fight.  Setting aside Miami’s foreign policy prerogatives, federal courts have deemed the law unconstitutional.

• EFE: Cuban tour operators will begin selling the services of private restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts, Tourism Ministry official Jose Manuel Bisbe announced.

Odds and ends

• The Washington Post reports on two federal programs that cannot die: the unseen TV Marti and within it, the airplane that carries the transmitter that has not succeeded in overcoming Cuban jamming.  The government continues to carry the cost of the plane and the transmitter but it does not fly because “that’s what the customer wants,” the contractor says.

• Historian Michael Beschloss tweets a map of western Cuba with President Kennedy’s notes indicating missile sites, 1962.

• Granma marks the 16^th anniversary of the death of Italian national Fabio diCelmo, killed in a terrorist hotel bombing in Havana.

• Café Fuerte: A group of batistianos, and they don’t mind being called that, have their annual celebration in Miami Saturday night.  Here, a video from novelist Zoe Valdes, part of an interview she did with Fulgencio Rubén Batista y Godínez, the ex-president’s son, about Batista family life.

• Trabajadores has a story about a new blog on the block, from British Ambassador Timothy Cole.

• Jamaica Observer: After a seven-year course of study, 68 Jamaican graduates of Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine are returning to Jamaica to begin practicing medicine.

• Havana Times rounds up Parque Central opinions on Cuban players in the big leagues.  My musings on the same subject here.