Monday, September 18, 2006

More notes on Jesus Diaz Jr.'s column

A couple of things have been brought to my attention regarding Herald Publishing Company president Jesus Diaz Jr.'s column that appeared in Yesterday's Miami Herald and also appeared in today's El Nuevo Herald. The first note is in reference to this excerpt:

We do not know why the Cuban TV program Mesa Redonda commented on the essence of our story before it ran. We are confident this information did not come from anyone at The Miami Herald, and we believe that Mesa Redonda may have gained this information from a review of our public-records requests, since these requests are available to the public.
An astute observer pointed out to me that Mr. Diaz Jr.'s confidence may be unfounded. After all, how could three Herald employees be working for Radio/TV Martí in plain sight without anyone discovering it? It leads one to conclude that the leadership at the Herald really doesn't know what's going on with its employees. How could they be so certain that an employee didn't leak the information to the official Cuban press (assuming it wasn't the official Cuban press that suggested the story to the Herald)?

Secondly, the Spanish version of the article made no mention of the Ana Menendez and Carl Hiaasen columns that Diaz Jr. considered spiking. Of course by the time the Spanish version of Diaz Jr.'s column was published, a day had passed since those columns ran. But certainly the reference could have stayed since even on Sunday he was writing in hindsight because he had already decided against spiking the columns.

And lastly in the Spanish version of the column Diaz Jr. title is given as "el editor de The Miami Herald y El Nuevo Herald." Editor in Spanish means the same as in English. In the English version of the ad, his title is "publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald".

Perhaps a simple mistake, but there's a distinction between editor and publisher. Mr. Diaz Jr. himself denied to me in an email that he is an editor. But he also implied in his column that he has the power to spike a story which is an editor's power. Perhaps, like the Herald's ethical standards, the organization chart and corresponding delegation of responsibility is a little murky?