http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15466239.htm

This surprises me considerably - not that the government is paying reporters - but rather that the Miami Herald investigated and fired its reporters that were being paid by the US government - its almost as if its trying to become a real newspaper instead of a tool of American propaganda.

That kind of deception is unacceptable, and the Herald should be ashamed of itself. I find it hard to believe that someone in the newsroom didn't know about these payments.

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The Cuban government has long alleged that journalists writing on US-Cuban politics were in the pay of the US government.

In July a row erupted in Argentina between Cuban President Fidel Castro and Juan Manuel Cao, a reporter for Miami's Spanish-language Channel 41.

Mr Cao put Mr Castro on the spot and the president replied by asking if anyone was paying him to ask that question.

Mr Cao has now admitted being paid by the US government, the Herald reports.

''There is nothing suspect in this,'' he said. "I would do it for free. But the regulations don't allow it. I charge symbolically, below market prices.''

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The BBC actually ran a piece about this on their world news, while our own Conservative Broadcasting Corporation continues its 911 nightly vigil (they're now even superimposing the WTC in the background of their Afghanistan stories). Of course no word about this blatant propoganda.

Our media is increasingly bought and paid for by the neo-con corporate agenda.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as the US is spending $5 milion in "anti-Cuban advertising" as part of their recently announced 80 million dollar agression against the Cuban peoples:

link

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Bush instructed his former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to draw a plan to overthrow the Cuban government and its economy. The May 2004 report led to appropriations for $59 million to “assist a future transition government” complete with its own office and personnel in Washington. Their current plan is to “build solidarity with Cuba’s human rights activists”; “give voice to Cuba’s independent journalists”; $18 million to keep a C130 in the air sending radio and television signals; $5 million for an advertising campaign against Cuba.

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One only needs to ask how many others are on the take?

ETA: link

[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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Even if every word they wrote about Cuba was true, this sucks.

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The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years.

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Originally posted by Pearson:

It makes you take a second look at the reporters imprisoned in Cuba for taking bribes from the US government to lie about Cuba.

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PHILIP AGEE Whatever the amount of money reaching Cuba may have been, everyone in Cuba working in the various dissident projects knows of US government's sponsorship, funding and of its purpose — regime change.

Far from being “independent” journalists, “idealistic” human rights activists, “legitimate” advocates for change or “Marian librarians from River City”, every one of the 75 “dissidents” arrested and convicted was knowingly a participant in US government operations to overthrow the government and install a US-favoured political, economic and social order. They knew what they were doing was illegal, they got caught and they are paying the price.

Anyone who thinks these people are prisoners of conscience, persecuted for their ideas or speech, or victims of repression, simply fails to see them properly as instruments of a US government that has declared revolutionary Cuba its enemy.

They were not convicted for ideas but for their paid actions on behalf of a foreign power that has waged a 44-year war of varying degrees of intensity against this poor country.

To think that the “dissidents” were creating an independent, free civil society is absurd, for they were funded and controlled by a hostile foreign power and to that degree, which was total, they were not free or independent in the least.

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Evidence of the amount of money these agencies have been spending on their Cuban projects is fragmentary. Nothing is publicly available about the CIA's spending, but what is easily found about the other two is interesting. The AID web site cites $12 million spent for Cuba programs during 1996-2001, but for 2002 the budget jumped to $5 million plus unobligated funds of $3 million from 2001. AID's 2003 budget for Cuba is $6 million showing a tripling of annual funds since the George Bush junta seized power. No surprise given the number of Miami Cubans Bush has appointed to high office in his administration.

From 1996 to 2001, AID disbursed the $12 million to 22 NGOs, all apparently based in the US, mostly in Miami. By 2002, the number of front-line NGOs had shrunk to 12 — the University of Miami, Center for a Free Cuba, Pan-American Development Foundation, Florida International University, Freedom House, Grupo de Apoyo a la Disidencia, Cuba On-Line, CubaNet, National Policy Association, Accion Democratica Cubana and Carta de Cuba.

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Take this CIA lie about Venezuela, for example:

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If other Latin American experience holds true, U.S. undercover work will try to influence the media in Venezuela, a fertile field inasmuch as opposition newspapers and television stations there are far from silent.

On Aug. 25, for example, a few newspapers throughout Latin America, among them La Nacion of Buenos Aires, carried an article by Simon Romero of Caracas claiming that Venezuela has collaborated with Iran in a uranium enrichment program.

Journalists working with that paper and others told the Association of Media Professionals in Argentina that the CIA had fostered that line. They alleged that U.S. "diplomats" had offered them bribes to present the U.S. side in stories covering Venezuela's admission into the Mercosur trade group and Brazilian President Lula da Silva's bid for re-election in October.

The exposé by Victor Ego Ducrotto, appearing on the Rebelion web site on Aug. 25, claimed that CIA personnel worked "elbow to elbow" with the representatives of the right-wing Inter American Press Society, based in Miami.

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