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Editor Disagrees With Cuban Columnist Who Actually Lived in Cuba
National Post from Worldwire

CREDIT: Leslie Mazoch, The Associated Press

The Canadian owners of a New York-based Spanish newspaper have created a stir by pulling a column on education reform by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, sparking the resignation of the paper’s editor. Anti-Castro Canadiens, I like that.

Two Canadian media executives who are part owners of a Spanish-language daily in New York have found themselves caught in a political storm over Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Douglas Knight, former publisher of the Toronto Sun and the Financial Post, and his partner, John Paton, recently spiked a controversial column by Mr. Castro in El Diario-La Prensa, according to the newspaper’s editor, Gerson Borrero.

The column, on educational reform in Cuba, was meant to run on Monday, and the paper carried ads promoting it in its weekend editions.

But the owners and the paper’s publisher, Rossana Rosado, reportedly decided not to run the column after three Cuban-American journalists on the newspaper’s staff wrote a letter calling the planned column "pro-Castro propaganda." The creations of a genius are never properly appreciated until after the genius is dead. Here’s to hoping that Fidel soon recieves his full appreciation.

The letter was circulated in Miami among anti-Castro Cuban exiles, who e-mailed it to the paper’s owners with a petition demanding the column not appear. The voice of the customer speaks.

The suspension of Mr. Castro’s much-publicized column angered Mr. Borrero, who called a meeting of his staff on Monday to announce his resignation. Happily, Mr. Borrero is now free to move to Cuba and join the worker’s paradise...

"Obviously it’s a position I am not willing to tolerate," said Mr. Borrero, 52, in an interview with New York’s Daily News, citing the last-minute decision to spike Mr. Castro’s column as an issue of media freedom.

"It’s their money. It’s their paper. They do as they please," he said. Mr. Borrero has just learned who actually controls the factors of production in the newspaper industry: the customers who buy and read the product.

Mr. Borrero, editor since 2000, has agreed to stay on as a weekly columnist for the newspaper. He writes a popular column on political issues entitled Bajo Fuego, or Under Fire. I guess Mr. Borrero has decided to forgo moving to the worker’s paradise.

Yesterday, some of Mr. Borrero’s former colleagues in the hispanic journalism community in the United States described him as too pro-Cuban -- a point of view that was a major point of dissension with the newspaper’s new owners.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Borrero fired columnist Alcibiades Hidalgo, Mr. Castro’s former chief of staff and a columnist for El Diario since last November. Mr. Hidalgo’s column, describing corruption and economic hardship on the Communist island, was deemed too anti-Cuban for Mr. Borrero, Mr. Hidalgo said in an interview yesterday.

"I think he [Mr. Borrero] just used that column as an excuse to fire me because he didn’t like what I was writing about Cuba," said Mr. Hidalgo from his home in Washington. Mr. Hidalgo, a journalist and editor, sought asylum in the United States last year.
Mr. Hidalgo was obviously not fired because of the content of his column as that would be inconsistent with Mr. Borrero’s protection of Fidel Castro’s rights of journalistic freedom.

Mr. Hidalgo said many of the paper’s staff members in New York felt strongly that Mr. Borrero should have offered to publish a column critical of Mr. Castro’s views.

"I am not denying Borrero the right to run Castro’s column, but he needs to present it in a balanced way," said Mr. Hidalgo, who writes frequently for hispanic and English-language newspapers in the United States. That would have been acceptatble to me, but I doubt that Castro would have been pleased with a political debate. I don’t expect to see him appear on Scarborough Country duking it out in a battle of ideas.
"The new owners want to change the newspaper," said a media analyst who did not want to be identified. "And I don’t think running columns by Fidel Castro fit in with their world view."

El Diario-La Prensa, with editorial and administrative offices in lower Manhattan, is the oldest hispanic newspaper in the United States. Among the newspaper’s weekly columnists is one appearing -- in Spanish -- under the byline of U.S. President George Bush, which is also featured prominently on the newspaper’s Web site. Might be worth a look.

Mr. Paton and Mr. Knight are part of a consortium that bought the 90-year-old El Diario last July for US$19.9-million. Both men, who are veterans of the Canadian newspaper publishing scene, are now based at the newspaper’s offices in New York.

Although neither speaks Spanish, they are consulting on the newspaper’s management and editorial policies. I wonder what the paper’s position on Bustamante is.

"We don’t speak Spanish but we speak newspaper," Mr. Knight said in an interview shortly after the paper was purchased this summer.


Posted by: Superhose 2003-10-01
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19342