Anita Snow
Associated Press
Feb. 24, 2007 12:00 AM
HAVANA - Cuban press authorities have told the Havana correspondents for
the Chicago Tribune, the BBC and a major Mexican newspaper that they can
no longer report from the island.
The Chicago Tribune said correspondent Gary Marx, based in the country
since 2002, was told Wednesday that his stories were too negative. His
press credentials were not renewed during an annual process, and he and
his family were given 90 days to leave Cuba, the newspaper said.
The Mexican newspaper El Universal said Cesar Gonzalez Calero, its
Havana reporter since 2003, was told this week his credentials would not
be renewed. Authorities told him his reporting was "not the most
convenient for the Cuban government," the reporter said, adding he would
be allowed to remain in Cuba as the husband of a Spanish journalist.
The British Broadcasting Corp. was "talking to the authorities in Havana
about the status of its Cuba correspondent after his accreditation was
withdrawn," spokeswoman Karen Rosine said Friday in a statement from
London. Without naming correspondent Stephen Gibbs, Rosine said he
"remains in Cuba, pending the outcome of these discussions."
Jose Luis Ponce, director of Cuba's International Press Center, said
Friday that the government would have no immediate comment on the
correspondents' status.
Havana in recent years has grown increasingly sensitive about how the
international media portrays the communist-run nation.
And officials have been enraged by speculation in the foreign press
about the health of Fidel Castro, who temporarily ceded power to his
brother Raul after undergoing intestinal surgery in July.
The government, like many around the world, has long used the annual
renewal process to review the work of international journalists.
The latest regulations for foreign correspondents, released in December,
state that Cuba can suspend accreditation when journalists undertake
activities it considers inappropriate or display "a lack of journalistic
ethics and/or objectivity in their dispatches."
The Chicago Tribune said Cuban officials weren't closing their office
and told Marx they would accept an application from another correspondent.
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