"Taming" the American Press

Raul and Ramiro are now trying to tame the wild colt of the American press. They cannot throw American reporters in jail, but they can kick them out of Cuba.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that one of its reporters in Havana, Gary Marx, will not have his press credentials renewed.

Cuba orders Tribune reporter out

Excerpts:

Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Gary Marx, who has been based in Havana since 2002, was told Wednesday by Cuban officials his press credential will not be renewed and he can no longer report from there.

"They said I've been here long enough and they felt my work was negative," Marx said.

"They did not cite any examples.''

A reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel will continue to staff the Tribune Co. bureau, and the Cuban government told Marx it would welcome an application from a new Chicago Tribune correspondent. That might take time to process, however, and new rules for reporters entering Cuba initially require the renewal of papers every 30 days.

"We're very disappointed and concerned by the news that the Cuban government has decided to not renew our correspondent's credentials and has asked him and his family to leave the island," said George de Lama, Chicago Tribune managing editor, for news.

"We remain committed to coverage of Cuba and its people, and we are assessing our options of how to proceed."

Officials told Marx he had 90 days to leave the country. He told them he and his wife have a 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son whose school year ends in mid-June and that they were planning to leave Cuba after that anyway. "They said they would be flexible," he said.

Article Here


"How to proceed?"

Well, expect the Sun Sentinel’s reporting from Havana to return to the sugar coated fluff pieces of old. The Tribune company is going to want to have a bureau in Havana for the impending funeral.

Just this weekend the Contra Revolución highlighted one of Mr. Marx’s pieces in which he went out of his way to get a dissident’s perspective on the intellectual “debate” that is supposedly going on in Havana.

Interestingly, the only hit the Contra Revolución got from Cuba was from a google search on “intelectuales cubanos” . Maybe they didn’t like that Mr. Marx sought out a couple of dissenting views that seemed to expose the sanctioned “debate” as an orchestrated amateur production.

In the last month or so nary an article about Cuba is published where the reporter doesn’t present the dissident point of view.

Let’s see if there’s a change in that trend.