U.S. Gives Approval for News Groups to Operate in Cuba

In a move that the White House believes will help “bring about peaceful democratic change in Cuba,” the Clinton administration cleared the way for CNN to open a bureau on the island and gave nine other news organizations permission to do the same--if Havana agrees.

The decision effectively waives restrictions imposed under the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. If all proceeds as planned, Cable News Network next month will open its bureau on the 20th floor of a Havana hotel and become the first American news organization to have a permanent reporter in the Communist nation since 1969.

But so far, CNN is the only news organization that has won Cuban permission to operate there; the other nine outlets await approval by dictator Fidel Castro’s regime.

American reporters have been permitted to take brief trips to Cuba, but visas for such travel usually have been restricted, as has movement of the journalists once they were in the country.

CNN lobbied heavily for a permanent presence there, taking its case to Castro; his government gave its approval in August. But U.S. permission remained an obstacle.

Last week, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to President Clinton, urging him to let CNN establish its bureau. “I am persuaded that the spotlight of a free press focused on Castro’s tropical gulag will only hasten the day when the Cuban people are free of his brutal Communist tyranny,” Helms wrote Clinton, urging him to drop the ban on U.S. news organizations opening bureaus in Cuba.

Helms argued that a permanent U.S. media presence in Cuba could also provide protection for Cuban dissidents by recording and making public government attempts to repress them.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry echoed Helms’ sentiments. “We in some measure expect that the reporting of truth about the conditions in Cuba would further our policy, which seeks to bring about peaceful democratic change in Cuba,” McCurry said.

He added that one condition imposed by the United States is that the news organizations “be allowed to operate in an unrestricted environment so that they could freely and impartially report the news.”

“It’s important for us to be there because there’s intense interest in the United States and around the world in Cuba,” said Eason Jordan, executive vice president of CNN International.

Cuba remains one of the few countries that prevents foreign reporters from setting up bureaus, said Thomas Kent, Associated Press’ international editor. Vietnam had long banned foreign media, but now some organizations, including AP, have been allowed to open bureaus there.

The organizations that have applied for U.S. permission to open bureaus in Cuba are: CNN, AP, the Miami Herald, Dow Jones, the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., ABC, CBS, Univision and the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, which publishes a Cuban newsletter.