Pull the Plug on Marti : These anti-Castro radio and TV stations have outlived their value

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. taxpayers have been spending up to $25 million a year on TV Marti, a station that virtually nobody watches, and Radio Marti, which broadcasts the same anti-Castro line that a number of private stations in Miami send out. Now the directors of both projects want to move the operations from Washington to Miami, which could cost a few more millions. Whatever the initial intentions, Marti has become largely irrelevant in the propaganda game. The federal government should shut down the power. It’s time to can this failed project.

Radio Marti was created by Congress in 1983 and began broadcasting two years later. Its mission was to provide an unbiased source of news in Cuba, and in some ways it has been successful. Modeled after the Voice of America, it was intended to express the view of the U.S. government. But at a price. At present, the radio staff numbers 146 and has an annual budget of $13 million.

Jorge Mas Canosa, a Miami-based multimillionaire businessman who heads the powerful Cuban American National Foundation, was appointed chairman of the president’s Advisory Board on Broadcasting to Cuba in 1985. Today, 11 years later, Mas Canosa not only retains the chair, but, according to current and former Radio Marti staff members, exerts undue and controversial influence over the board.

The position of TV Marti is even more untenable than that of its radio counterpart. Launched in 1987, it has a staff of 85 to produce a daily newscast, at an annual cost of $11.6 million, that is seen only occasionally in Cuba. The signal is jammed by Fidel Castro’s government.

To move this white elephant simply makes no sense. In Miami it would be under greater pressure from Mas Canosa and his allies, who have even more clout in election years and do not necessarily follow the American diplomatic line on Cuba.

Why should taxpayers foot the bill to move the operation when the impetus, from most accounts, was a political promise that Sen. Phil Gramm made in Miami during his unsuccessful bid for the GOP presidential nomination? The costs of both Radio Marti and TV Marti far outweigh any presumed benefits. The Cuban people already get an earful from the Miami anti-Castro forces. Enough.