MEDIA-CUBA: US Correspondents Waiting for a Thaw

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 27 1998 (IPS) - The possibility of more U.S. print media, TV and radio stations setting up shop in Havana, where the CNN cable TV channel is the only U.S. media organ with a permanent correspondent, depends on a thaw in the icy relations between Cuba and Washington.

President Fidel Castro told the executives of some 30 U.S. newspapers visiting Havana that the question would be studied “if conditions toward Cuba improve on the part of the United States.”

Edward Seaton, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), which took an Oct. 21-25 fact-finding trip to Cuba, said the delegation met and talked with Castro for more than six hours the night before returning to the United States.

Castro said that before more permanent U.S. correspondents are accredited in Havana, “trust between the two countries must improve, step by step.”

Seaton said his group asked Castro for priority authorisation to be granted the Associated Press (AP) agency, “which represents all of us.”

According to Seaton, editor-in-chief of the daily Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury, who headed the delegation of journalists, Castro would like to see more objective reporting, free of anti-Cuban bias.

So far CNN cable TV is the only U.S. media organ with a permanent correspondent in Havana, although U.S. reporters, especially from the print media, are occasionally granted transit visas for short-term projects.

The January visit of Pope John Paul II drew close to 3,000 U.S. reporters and technical personnel.

Castro did not sound optimistic with respect to relations between Washington and Havana, during the hour-long interview granted to Lucia Newman, C