Cuban-American Group Ends Newspaper Boycott

A Cuban-American group has halted a boycott of the Miami Herald, saying it succeeded in making the newspaper more sensitive to Cuban exiles.

“For the time being, it’s over,” said Jorge Mas Canosa, head of the Cuban-American National Foundation. He said his group had stopped the four-month boycott “in the best interests of the community” and because the newspaper had become more objective in reporting on Cuba and the exile community in the United States.

“We called the attention of the Herald to our plight,” Mas Canosa said Thursday at an Easter Seal Society fund-raising luncheon, where Herald publisher David Lawrence also spoke. Lawrence denied that the newspaper had been insensitive to Cuban-Americans.

The “standards of the newspaper are exactly what they were before,” he said. “We work like hell to tell the damn truth. We work hard to listen, to make sure everyone gets his or her point of view in the paper.”

Mas Canosa initiated the campaign after the newspaper editorialized against a congressional bill that would tighten the trade embargo against Cuba. The campaign also targeted the newspaper’s Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald. The group denied any role in threatening newspaper executives or vandalizing vending machines.