Odds and Ends

Herald Circulation is down 11.8% to 210,884 and Sunday circ is down 9% to 279,484. Ouch.

Herald parent McClatchy's shares closed at $2.22 cents on Monday. In April of 2005 MNI shares traded for $74.50. Double ouch.

Herald Watch has learned that Oscar Corral, the author of the Marti Moonlighters article that resulted in the resignation of the Herald's then publisher Jesus Diaz and the disgrace of the paper's then executive editor Tom Fiedler has accepted a buyout from the Herald and will be among the additional staff cuts made by the company.

Corral secured ignominy when he was busted soliciting a teen-aged prostitute in Miami. No word on to whom he will be providing content in the near future.

Corral gets "Pretrial Diversion"

The disposition of Miami Herald reporter, Oscar Corral's case for soliciting a teenage prostitute named Yamilet Lopez has been updated on the Clerk of the Criminal court's web site. It seems that Corral accepted enrollment into what is known as a pretrial diversion as part of something called a deferred prosecution. According to this PDF published by Miami-Dade County the following is the definition of a Pretrial Diversion:

Pretrial Diversion (PTD) is a deferred prosecution program for first time offenders charged with 3rd degree non-violent felonies. PTD acts as the clearinghouse for felony cases where the State Attorney's Office (SAO) has determined diversion is appropriate. Referrals to participate in PTD are made by the SAO at the time that the charges are filed. PTD staff determines if participants meet eligibility requirements and which of the several programs the participant should participate in. Program participation does not usually exceed 12 months with a minimum participation period of 6 months. Successful completion of PTD results in the case against the defendant being dismissed and allows him/her to have his/her record sealed, thereby maintaining a clean record. Failure to complete the program successfully results in the defendant's case being placed back on calendar for prosecution.

In addition to the program, Corral had to make a $150 donation to something called the Denise Moon Foundation. Denise Moon, according to a 1998 Department of justice press release had a distinguished career in victim's services. It's safe to say that unless Corral screws up and misses a meeting or reverts to cruising the Flagami area of Miami again this whole ugly episode will conveniently go away.

Corral byline reappears

Oscar Corral has resurfaced at the Miami Herald. A source close to the Herald reports that he's:

Working as a general assignment reporter. He has been pulled from the Cuba beat and his Cuban connection website has vanished. The general assignment beat covers everything from quinceañera parties to dog and pony shows.

Actually Corral's first report since he disappeared from the pages of the paper is about Pakistanis in south Florida who are keeping a close eye on the situation in their homeland. Corral's blog is still live but is no longer linked from the Herald. He has not posted on it since immediately after his arrest for soliciting prostitution.

On the legal front the Miami-Dade court clerk's office says that Corral's attorney asked for a continuance to prepare the case and therefore no trial date has been set.

A Herald Watch source opines that:

Continuances can be up to six months and a lawyer can ask for three continuances, delaying the case since the time of arrest for up to two years. They will eventually have to go to trial when the continuances run out unless he pleads out. The long postponements mean that the prostitute and pimp might not be around to testify. Yet, because the arresting policewoman is the main witness Oscarito is acorralado.

Double Standard

An industry colleague of mine was arrested Sunday morning. A detailed account appeared in Joan Fleischman's "Talk of Our Town" column:

POLICE REPORT

Coral Gables police arrested Michelle Zubizarreta, chief administrative officer of Zubi Advertising, on a DUI charge.

Zubizarreta, 40, got into an accident in the 1800 block of LeJeune Road at 1:14 a.m. Sunday. The woman driving the other car had a ''large bruise on her right leg,'' says the arrest report, which does not identify that driver. Police ticketed Zubizarreta for allegedly running a stop sign.

Officer Kevin Selent says Zubizarreta ''kept stumbling'' and performed poorly on a roadside sobriety test. She refused to submit to a breath-alcohol test, court records show. Cops had her '06 BMW towed.

En route to CGPD, Selent says, ''she was moving around in the back seat.'' He asked why. ''You will see, I'm going to show you,''' the report says. When she stepped out of the police car, 'her left breast was exposed . . . She told me, `Told you. You need to help me put my shirt up.' '' He obliged -- with another cop present.

''She wasn't flashing the officer,'' says her attorney, Robert Reiff. Zubizarreta, dressed in a halter top, had undergone liposuction a few days earlier and was wearing a compression girdle. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and she squirmed from discomfort, causing her top to slip, Reiff says. No court date set.

Interesting that the Herald has no compunction about embarrassing a prominent member of the business community but provided a terse detail-free account of the arrest of one of its "star reporters" when he was arrested for soliciting a prostitute.

Corral hearing on 10/18

A hearing date has been scheduled for Oscar Corral's solicitation of prostitution case. It will be on October 18th at 9:45 AM in courtroom 6-6 at the Justice Building:

1351 N.W. 12 ST
Miami, FL

Will the Herald cover it? Will other South Florida media cover it?

Corral's Cuban Connection in Cyberia

It appears that The Miami Herald has closed the book on Oscar Corral's non-blog blog, Miami's Cuban Connection. Though the blog is still up, it no longer appears on the Herald's blog directory. Interestingly, Corral's last post on the blog (about CNN's coverage of TV Marti expenditures) was made after he was arrested for soliciting a prostitute but before the Herald published it short account of the arrest (perhaps even before he told his employers about it). Odd that a man who had just disgraced himself, his wife, his family and his employer would choose that time post an item to a blog that he only posted on once in the previous two months.

Herald Watch has received a report that Corral will return to the Herald next week though it's unclear in what capacity. A previous report stated that he'd be working on the "copy desk" in the Herald's Broward bureau. If true, it would mean that it wasn't just Corral's blog that got sent to Siberia

Ombudsman says very little with many words

In a follow up to his first column, MHMC's new ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, reflects today on the correct phrase to use when discussing illegal immigrants.

He calls out CNN's Lou Dobbs and "much of Fox News" as being at "one end of the media spectrum" that use the phrase "illegal alient" but does not clue us in to who he sees as being at the other end of the media spectrum. This of course is nothing new as conservatives are often described by the media as conservatives while liberals are rarely described as liberals.

Schumacher-Matos closes his 977-word column with this:

The Herald cannot ride roughshod over local feelings and usage. I don't agree with journalists who think that ethics require working in a vacuum. That is self-righteous arrogance. The Spanish newspapers I published in Texas used "indocumentado." But a second community of readers find themselves marginalized in The Herald, a paper they see as having a pro-immigrant tilt. The use of "undocumented" is part of that. For the sake of all its readers and for accuracy, I would like to see The Herald go back and forth between the two phrases, as some papers do elsewhere. Solomonic? Perhaps. But the truth is, there is no truth. Or at least no single right answer.

I'm not so much interested in Schumacher-Matos' views on illegal immigration as I am on his views about journalistic ethics. If ever there were a perfect phrase to describe the Miami Herald it would be "self-righteous arrogance." If the Herald had been more nuanced and less dogmatic about journalistic "ethics in a vacuum" the entire Marti Moonlighters scandal would have been avoided. Besides, in the end, he doesn't even commit to an answer despite the fact that the headline states "The choice of how to describe immigrants is vital."

Interestingly I have not received even an acknowledgment of receipt of an email I sent the new ombudsman regarding the Herald's minimalistic coverage of the arrest of its one-time star reporter Oscar Corral for soliciting a teen-aged prostitute. I think a frank analysis of how the Herald covers itself when it becomes embroiled in scandal is a better use of 1000 words than semantics about illegal aliens/immigrants undocumented workers, etc., etc.

Corral pleads not guilty

The Miami Herald's "content provider" Oscar Corral, has entered a written plea of "not guilty" to the misdemeanor charge of soliciting a prostitute . His file has been assigned to the "calendar" section which means a trial date f0r the case should be set soon. Corral has apparently contracted the legal services of attorney Hernan Hernandez.

Other developments in Corral's Hummergate case include the acceptance of a pre-trial diversion program by Yamilet Lopez, the teen-aged prositute Corral was allegedly soliciting.

Herald Watch will keep you updated on the case since the Herald won't.

Every accused has his day in court...

Oscar Corral's is this Thursday. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Judge Edward Newman's courtroom this Thursday, September 20th at 8:30 AM.

Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building
1351 NW 12th Street
Miami, Florida

The case number is: M07046203

Content provided by Oscar Corral

The arrest reports for Oscar Corral, and the alleged prostitute and pimp he got busted with have been posted on the web by Antonio de la Cova Ph.D.

de la Cova makes several key observations about the arrest report. The first is the fact that Corral is deceitful when he tells the arresting officers he is a "content provider" rather than a "newspaper reporter." But there are other things that don't square on his arrest report such as the fact that he is listed as white but the box for "Not Hispanic" is checked off.

Also, I noticed that the "no" box on the section of the report that lists whether the arrested person wears glasses is also checked. Every picture I've ever seen of Corral shows him wearing glasses.

Perhaps Corral took off his glasses and answered certain questions deceptively in an attempt to create some confusion about which Oscar Corral was arrested (plausible deniability). I suspect that the reason the Herald didn't report his arrest until 3 days later is that he didn't inform his employers about it immediately, if at all.

In any case, Professor de la cova publishes the details from the arrest record including this:

Corral’s arrest affidavit states that: “While performing a undercover Prostitution Detail, Officer Sola #27572 (under cover officer) witnessed the above Def[endant] and Co-Def[endant] sitting inside a Bl[ac]k Acura 4 D[oo]r bearing FL tag G77-HJK. The officer (Sola) overheard the Def[endant] and Co-Def[endant] negotiating the price of a blow-job (street slang for oral sex). Undercover officer Sola gave the take down signal, tactical units came in and placed all Def[endant]s into custody.”

Yamilet Lopez, the prostitute that Corral was seeking to provide with oral content, is only 18 years of age as her arrest report lists her birthday as January 24, 1989. The report also states that the amount agreed to for the fellatio was $50.

Professor de la Cova also compares the Herald's reporting on Corral's arrest with that of a Republican congressman who was arrested for a similar crime.

When the Miami Herald tersely reported this incident three days after it occured, they omitted many of the details, including the names of Corral’s prostitute and pimp co-defendants.

In contrast, when Republican Florida state Representative Bob Allen was likewise arrested for soliciting prostitution for oral sex, the Miami Herald published numerous articles, even mentioning in one that Allen is married and has a teenage daughter.

In contrast, the Miami Herald made no mention that Corral is married and has two daughters.

Of course, this is part of a pattern in which the Herald is less than forthcoming about its own problems as I've documented here before. Perhaps it is too much to expect that a newspaper be as vigorous in its reports when they involve the paper's own employees. That's why it's a such a shame that this is a one newspaper town.

As for Corral, I've heard second-hand that he will soon be providing content from the Herald's version of Siberia: the Broward bureau.

Marti Moonlighters, one year later

Today makes one year since the Miami Herald published an article alleging violations of journalistic ethics among several journalists of Cuban origin. The accusations were based on the fact that the journalists in question also freelanced for Radio/TV Marti, a U.S. government-run broadcaster that is a sister entity of the Voice of America. Herald Watch documented the saga in-depth and you can read the as-it-happened accounts from the scandal in the archives. But I wanted to highlight what has happened to all the major players in the story.

Radio talk show commentators Ninoska Perez Castellon and Paul Crespo continue to work on their respective shows for local Univision Radio stations Radio Mambi and WQBA respectively and Perez Castellon now also hosts a TV show on local Channel 8.

El Nuevo Herald reporters Wilfredo Cancio Isla, Pablo Alfonso, and Olga Connor were all fired and then re-hired (Connor was actually a freelancer and her arrangement was reinstated) after it was discovered that Carlos Castañeda, the late editor of El Nuevo Herald, gave his blessing to the freelance assignments and that the Miami Herald had run a story a couple of years earlier about Connor's work with Radio/TV Marti. Alfonso subsequently resigned his position, citing his disappointment with the lack of a public apology from the Herald. He now writes his columns for Miami's other Spanish language daily, Diario las Americas and is also working on TV for channel 41's news department.

Channel 23 Sports reporter Omar Claro was fired although his profile is still up at WLTV's web site. Claro recently authored a book about Cuban athletes called "Medallas de Oro y Rostros de Bronce" (Gold Medals and Bronze Faces) and is currently the sports director at Diario las Americas.

Syndicated columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner's columns never stopped running in the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald (except for one which in which he defended himself and the other journalists implicated by the Herald). Montaner was also given his own show on local TV, Pronósticos on channel 22.

Miami Herald Media Company Publisher Jesus Diaz resigned in the wake of the scandal which blew up in the paper's collective face. He became embroiled in a dispute over a column by Carl Hiaasen that he wanted to spike. That, and the rehiring of the El Nuevo Herald journalists made his position untenable.

Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler took an early retirement after calling members of Miami's anti-castro media "Chihuahuas" and refusing to accept the findings of the Herald's own investigation which was conducted by Clark Hoyt.

Oscar Corral, the author of the original September 8th article, worked on a series of articles alleging malfeasance among contractors that receive federal funds for free cuba activities. He was later taken off the Cuban exile beat, apparently because members of the community refused to talk to him anymore. On August 3, 2007, Corral was arrested for soliciting a teen-aged prostitute in the Flagami area of Miami-Dade county. Corral has not written since the arrest despite the fact the Herald once again stood by their man. Also joining in Corral's defense was Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party. There are unsubstantiated rumors that Corral's wife is seeking a divorce and that Corral will be assigned to a non-visible position at the copy desk in the Herald's Broward office.

All in all, it's pretty safe to say that the mud the Herald's decision makers attempted to sling at the Cuban exile community and the exile media hit the fan and came right back at them.

He may not be a communist...

...or a Cuban intelligence agent but the Cuban communists certainly are defending Oscar Corral. The item below was posted on the Granma web site. For the uninitiated, Granma (yes Granma) is the "Official Organ of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party." It is the Cuban equivalent of the old Soviet Pravda. Translation by Herald Watch.

Miami Police arrested journalist Oscar Corral
OSCAR Corral, the Miami Herald reporter who unmasked well-known Florida journalists [who were] paid by Washington; and who dared to investigate hot subjects related to the international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and who was recently a victim of death threats from the Miami extreme right, has just been implicated by the Miami police in a case in a presumed case of soliciting a prostitute in the street.

According to the Miami press, Corral was arrested during an operation against prostitution in which 14 individuals were detained in the Flagami neighborhood. That zone, located on the west end of Eighth Street, is well-known in Miami for being frequented by prostitutes that come from around the country…and, often, by police women dressed as "hookers" who try to attract men in order to accuse them.

The journalist declared himself innocent of the crime.

The most well-known investigative reporter in the Miami press had recently received death threats, intimidating calls and insulting messages from Cuban-American extremists.

In a recent interview recent with the reporter Rebecca Wakefield of the weekly newspaper The Sun Post from Miami Beach, Corral recounted how he had to take refuge “in a secure location for six weeks " in order to finish news articles, after suffering a “bombardment” of attacks from “anti-Castro” fanatics against his person his person and his family.

Oscar Corral who revealed, several months ago, how South of Florida journalists “including three from El Nuevo Herald ", receive “regular payments” from the government of The United States for their contributions to programs of Radio Martí and TV Martí, two Governmental organizations that belong to the propagandistic machinery of the Bush annexation plan.

Among the journalists thusly remunerated by those affiliates of the Voice of America, that depend directly on the State Department, were the political commentator Pablo Alfonso, known for his attacks on Cuba, and the fugitive terrorist Carlos Alberto Montaner.

Corral also often touched the “taboo” subject of Cuban-American terrorists, while investigating the case of Posada Carriles and his mafioso network. On July 3, 2005 he published an article with his colleague Alfonso Chardy, in which he revealed how the three mafioso congressmen from south of Florida --Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen-- wrote to the ex-president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, so that she might pardon Posada, on the 8th of May, 2003.

Also it was Corral who developed the subject of the scandalous audit report of the General Accounting Office (GAO) that revealed how the Miami Mafia has spent, between 1996 and 2005, the millions [of dollars] assigned [to it] by the government of the United States for its dirty war against Cuba by way of its Agency for Development (USAID, by its abbreviation in English).

The reporter made public the list of doubtful acquisitions made by the mercenaries of the State Department: Nintendo and Playstation games, mountain bicycles, fur coats, cashmere sweaters, chocolates and crab meat.

The scandal caused the untimely exit of the mafioso Adolfo Franco from his position as chief in this cave of brigands.

Corral's arrest, presumably under mistaken circumstances, by all means, serves the interests of the local Mafia that has always known, in the past, how to solve the “case” of those reporters who dared bother it.

First a few words about Granma. We often complain here in the US about the lack of media objectivity and the intrusion of bias in the news. In Cuba they don't have that problem because there isn't even a pretext of impartiality. You can see from the liberal use of adjectives and hyperbole that this is plainly obvious. The problem of course is that there are no legal alternatives to the official state-run media in Cuba. It's quite ironic that that Granma attacks Miami journalists who were moonlighting for Radio and TV Marti because those are government-run while the only permitted media in Cuba is government-run.

In addition to the one-sided nature of the report certain things are simply false. The article leaves the reader with the impression that the Herald's own Marti Moonlighters continue to freelance for Radio/TV Marti. The truth is when they were rehired that they agreed not to continue with their freelance assignments.

But what's interesting here is how quick they are defend Corral and imply that he was set-up by the Cuban exile community which they call the "Miami Mafia" (a slur that Bob Norman doesn't mind repeating). The reader is supposed to believe that the "Miami Mafia" placed a device in Corral's car which directed him (against his will) to an area frequented by street walkers and to allegedly negotiate fellatio from a prostitute named Yamilet Lopez.

It's worth remembering that when a column appeared in El Nuevo Herald wondering if Corral was a Cuban agent, because the official Cuban media had the scoop on the Marti Moonlighters story before the Herald itself could break it, that (then) TMH executive editor Tom Fiedler called it a "blood libel". Now when Corral is in hot water with law it's the official Cuban media that comes to his defense. Whether Corral actually works for the Cuban government is pure speculation but this article in Granma leaves no doubt that they are very very happy with his work.

It should be noted as well that the Herald has never conducted an investigation (at least they have never made one public) into how they were scooped by the Cuban communist media. They have also refused to take seriously statements made by Dr. Antonio de la Cova about a Cuban intelligence defector named Jesus Perez Mendez who in 1982 allegedly denounced current Herald editorial contributor Marifeli Perez-Stable as being controlled (at least at one time) by the Cuban DGI during an FBI debriefing. Dr. de la Cova reports on his web site that "Perez-Stable refused to respond to Miami Herald reporter Miriam Marquez when questioned about the espionage allegations made by DGI defector Jesus Perez Mendez." Herald Watch wants to know what she is hiding.

It should also be noted that Ms. Perez-Stable, through here attorney (and ACLU lawyer) John de Leon, threatened me with a libel/slander lawsuit for publishing de la Cova's statements. To date nothing has come of that. Herald Watch suspects that Ms. Perez-Stable doesn't actually want to be deposed or have other witnesses including Perez Mendez himself testifying. But she is still cashing paychecks from the Herald. Most recently Perez-Stable has been publicly supporting a Cuban transition to a "Chinese model" where the economy would be liberalized while the government (and presumably the Communist Party) retain control of the political institutions.

Herald Letters Butchery

One of the reasons I started this blog was because the Herald printed a letter I sent the editors. Well it was actually a version of my letter that stripped out the main point which was that the Herald was guilty of manipulating facts to promote an agenda.

Well here's a recent example of creative editing letters submitted to the Herald. The letter in question was authored by Paul Crespo who was implicated in a story written by Oscar Corral, the Miami Herald reporter that was recently arrested for soliciting a prostitute. Crespo is also a former editorial contributor to the Herald. I had previously posted a copy of the letter as it was originally emailed to the Herald. Today a much shorter and sanitized version of the letter appeared at Herald.com.

First of all if you click the opinions link on the Herald.com home page you will never know this letter was published because it was posted among a group of letters under the headline "Bonds sets record". For this reason it was only after an anonymous reader posted a comment here at Herald Watch that I learned they had published "the letter."

But what did they publish? The answer is a much shorter and less powerful letter. The parts that were ommitted were the parts that cast the Herald in the most unfavorable light and a call for Corral's firing.

Below is a marked up version of Crespo's original letter showing what the Herald changed. Click on it to enlarge.

As you can see what made it into the paper was less than half (40%) of Crespo's 383-word original letter. Of course newspapers edit letters all the time for space but I think we can all agree that this is a special case. Paul Crespo is not just a reader, he's a person who once contributed to the Herald and was subsequently wronged by the reporter in question and the Herald as an institution. The Herald had an obligation to its readers to present Crespo's comments in their entirety. It did not live up to that obligation.

The problem, beyond the readers not being able to see Crespo's complete thoughts, is that the by publishing a shorter sanitized version and hiding it among other reader letters the Herald leaves readers with the impression that it's is not afraid to publish criticisms of itself, when in reality its very sensitive of them.

This is precisely the reason for this blog. As long as things like this continue to be acceptable at 1 Herald Plaza I'll have plenty of material to blog about.

By the way, it's also a reminder that I need reader input to make this blog better. Many eyes are better than two. If you know of something going on at the Herald that would be of interest to Herald Watch readers email me.

Corral's Hummergate

Adding some details to the story about Oscar Corral's arrest, Riptide 2.0 reported yesterday that the alleged prostitute is a woman named Yamilet Lopez and that Corral was heard by police making a deal for her to fellate him for the sum of $50.

The latest post on Corral's non-blog blog (which was made after he was arrested but before the Herald "reported" it) has been sanitized of comments, even those that had nothing to do with the arrest but were related to the content of his post. The only thing that remains is a copy and paste of an email which I also received. It's an email that Paul Crespo, one of the 11 journalists that was implicated in Oscar Corral's controversial news story about Radio and TV Marti, sent to the editors of the Miami Herald. It reads:

I was amazed (but not surprised) by your coverage of the arrest of Oscar Corral, one of your "intrepid" and controversial reporters. As the self-styled sole arbiters of professional ethics in Miami, The Herald is displaying its own lack of ethics and professionalism in this case. In contrast to the ridiculous front-page coverage you provided Mr. Corral's thoroughly flawed smear against me, and several other journalists in 2006, your microscopic coverage of Corral's recent arrest for soliciting a prostitute was hidden on page three of the Metro section. That small-type, one-paragraph note was in a small sidebar just above a one-paragraph story about some dogs. Worse yet, the tiny headline made no mention that the reporter arrested was from The Miami Herald. You should be ashamed. You couldn't have done a better job of covering it up, other than by ignoring it totally.

Regarding the front-page hit-piece by Mr. Corral about our fee-lancing [sic] for TV Marti, your own Ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, found numerous flaws in Corral's reporting. Among the many critiques in his scathing report on Corral's article, Mr. Hoyt stated that Mr. Corral's story's "hard and accusatory tone and the large and breathless headline suggested something more sinister than the story actually reported." What a difference between your piece against us and this minimalist coverage of your reporter who wrote that smear.

In the TV Marti story case The Herald also immediately fired two Nuevo Herald journalists mentioned in the story without any due process, or chance for explanation, for allegedly violating Herald policy and some debatable ethical norms regarding conflicts of interest. Those reporters were quickly rehired when it was discovered they had done nothing wrong and had been treated harshly and unfairly by The Herald.

Oscar Corral hasn't just violated ethical and moral norms by soliciting prostitutes, he clearly broke the law. While legally he may be innocent till proven guilty, he already is a disgrace to The Herald and the profession of journalism. Will The Herald fire him as quickly as it fired the others? Judging from your coverage it seems you hope not to, and hope no one notices as you sweep the tawdry affair under the rug in the Metro section. But Mr. Corral is not fit to cover this community. He needs to be fired.

Paul Crespo
Coral Gables

Bad boys, bad boys...

Oscar Corral the Miami Herald reporter that authored a controversial article about journalists moonlighting for Radio/TV Marti less than one year ago, has found himself in a bit of hot water. He was arrested for soliciting a prostitute on Friday night but word didn't come out in the media until the Herald itself reported it this morning.

The Marti Moonlighters scandal that shook out of Corral's September 2006 article ultimately led ultimately to the resignation of MHMC's publisher and the ignominious exit of its embattled executive editor.

Interestingly Corral had been keeping a low profile for several months and had been moved off the Cuban exile beat, Herald Watch believes his sources dried up and refused to talk to him based on his reputation as a muck raker.

Then a couple of weeks ago the SunPost's Rebecca Wakefield did a piece about Corral that included an interview. Corral tried to portray himself as someone who had been charged with an impossible task: covering Cuban exiles without inflaming public sentiment. Now he's charged with something altogether different.

The Herald article does not say the gender of the would-be prostitute he attempted to solicit, and it would be unfair to speculate.

Herald Watch wonders though, who knew about this arrest and when they knew it. It seems like this should have hit the electronic media Saturday and the Herald on Sunday morning, but instead we get a story with very few details three mornings after the arrest?

This is, once again, a case of the Herald's coverage of itself lacking transparency. One must ask how much importance and how much space the paper would have given this story if instead of Corral it had been a reporter from El Nuevo Herald, the paper's Spanish language sister whose reporters MHMC gladly threw overboard after Corral's reporting last year (only to have to hire them back when they completed the full investigation). Or God forbid it had been an exile leader? I'm sure the coverage would have been quite different.

Interestingly, after his arrest Corral did find time to post a note on his all but abandoned blog about a report Wolf Blitzer did yesterday on TV Marti and how it's reportedly a waste of taxpayer money. It seems that Corral relieves his stress by stirring up emotions in the exile community, that is when he's not having sex with prostitutes of undetermined gender in the low rent parts of Miami.

H/T: Babalu

The Scoop on Corral - UPDATED

The SunPost's Rebecca Wakefield has written a piece about embattled Miami Herald reporter, Oscar Corral. The piece includes an interview with Corral. I have some thoughts the matter, from both the journalistic and Cuban-American angles. I'll limit my comments here to the journalistic elements of the story. For the Cuban angle please read Babalu.

Ms. Wakefield, who I respect, mentions that Corral has had to cover some volatile subjects related to the Cuban-American community. There seems to be a an overriding sentiment that covering exile politics is a no-win situation for the journalist. One that portrays Cubans angry torch-bearing villagers ready to kill the messenger which I'm not inclined to believe.

Most of the negative feelings the community has toward Corral stem from the Marti Moonlighters saga which was well documented on this blog. Without re-hashing the entire episode, it turned out to be a terrible piece of journalism that appeared to readers to be a thinly veiled hatchet job on other Cuban-American journalists. The piece was a preemptive move to head off an article about the same subject being investigated by the Chicago Tribune. It was incomplete, misleading and sloppy. I stated at the time, and will reiterate now, that Corral can't be held fully responsible for the article, his editors and his executive editor have to bear the brunt of the responsibility, but at the end of the day he agreed to do the piece and allowed his byline to be used. Perhaps the lesson is that when a subject is volatile, one has to be doubly careful to cover it fairly.

In Wakefield's piece much is made of the accusation that Corral might be a Castro agent, an accusation that to many might seem absurd. But given the context of the situation, with Cuban spies being periodically uncovered here in Miami and beyond, with one editorial contributor facing a serious allegation of being a former Cuban DGI agent, and with official Cuban TV breaking the Herald's Marti Moonlighters story before the Herald could, is it unreasonable to ask whether the newsroom at 1 Herald Plaza has been infiltrated?

Regardless of Corral's ideology, the fact remains that the Marti Moonlighters fiasco led to sharp declines in newspaper subscriptions (particularly of ENH), the resignation of the Herald's publisher and the quick departure of its executive editor.

Wakefield mentions Corral's non-blog blog as a battleground filled with "hateful screeds". About the blog Corral states:

When I started my blog, people were upset that I didn’t offer my opinion. Some of the hard-line exiles felt I should be out there as a champion for anti-Castro cause. There is a concept in parts of the traditional Cuban exile community where you have to pass a litmus test of opinion to be approved of or included.

I'm not quite sure which hard line exiles he's talking about. Perhaps he considers me one of them but my criticisms of his blog have always stemmed from the idea that a blog devoid of opinion is not a blog. I wrote several pieces about the Herald's proliferation of blogs without them having any real sense of what a blog is and what readers like about them. Corral's blog was simply a place where he promoted his latest articles.

It was also an unregulated anonymous forum. Of course there were hateful screeds posted on it, there was nobody watching the store. Corral's choice of subjects on the blog also lends credence to the idea that he was simply trying to stir up emotions rather than report any truths.

And speaking of truths, on the Herald as an institution Corral tells Wakefield that as a college student he saw The Herald building as an "incredible fortress of truth". But the reason this blog exists is because of the Herald's propensity to not report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

UPDATE: Robert shares his thoughts on Corral at 26th Parallel.

What gets reported and in what language?

Chuck Strouse, the editor of the Miami New Times brings something to the attention of Herald Watch in a blog post today.

Over the last several days TMH has published a series of stories about Radio/TV Martí and their parent organization, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). The stories allege shady financial dealings, cronyism at the organization and a lack of balance in the programs transmitted by its broadcasters.

The thing is that ENH has not published any of these stories or the details found in them.

Herald Watch readers already know that one of the big problems at MHMC, as I see it, is the lack of coordination between the two papers. The standard fall-back argument from executives at the company is that the two papers are independent of each other, with their own editors and editorial boards. And I suppose there is some merit to the idea, particularly because it gives ENH freedom to report stories that are more important to its target audience instead of being merely a translation shop.

In the past I have advocated for some sort of liaison editor that would bring be able to introduce important stories into one paper that originated in the other.

In this particular case it appears that ENH has been reluctant to run the stories that attack OCB because of the fallout from the Martí Moonlighters affair in which ENH lost a significant number of subscribers when it published a controversal piece by TMH reporter Oscar Corral.

The Corral story resulted in the firing and subsequent re-hiring of 3 ENH journalists for supposed ethics violations because they moonlighted for OCB. Cuban-Americans, which make up a good proportion of ENH's readership, have fond feelings for the idea of Radio/TV Martí if not their results. Many Cubans were outraged by the attacks on Radio/TV Martí and defended the implicated journalists.

But it doesn't look good that now ENH has, to date, decided to avoid publishing the articles (many penned by Corral himself) about the alleged irregularities at OCB in a form of "soft self-censorship."

It should be noted that TMH did engage in its fair share of "soft censorship" during the Martí Moonlighters scandal by not running many articles or columns (in the days subsequent to the intitial Corral report) that could have provided more balance to the story. Many times when such an article or column did run in TMH it was days after ENH published it.

Olga Connor speaks

Former El Nuevo Herald freelancer Olga Connor claims that her bosses at the paper knew she was working for pay at Radio Marti. An article, by Oscar Corral, published on the Herald's web site today, contains excerpts from a letter Ms. Connor wrote to executives of The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and their parent company, The McClatchy Co.

"I totally reject the accusation of breach of ethics. My work in Radio and TV Martí was so well known . . . that two articles about this station and my involvement [were published] in 2002.''

One revealing aspect is the article is that that El Nuevo Herald's Executive Editor, Humberto Castelló, told Corral in an email that he does not agree with the decision to terminate Connor's freelance relationship with the paper. Apparently he was overruled by higher-ups at McClatchy. Herald Watch will be keeping tabs on what may develop into a contentious relationship between El Nuevo Herald, its sister paper and their parent.

On a related note, Oscarr Corral has, on at least two occasions, written that Radio/TV Marti's aim is to "undermine" the Castro regime in Cuba. I suppose that's right inasmuch as uncensored information can destabilize a totalitarian government, but according to the Office for Cuba Broadcasting's web site the mission of Radio/TV Marti is:

In accordance with the principles established by the legislation that created to the Voice of America, VOA, both stations transmit true and objective news and information about subjects of interest to the people of Cuba.