Montaner Reacts to Conflict of Interest Accusation

There's plenty of fallout from yesterday's story regarding the firing of 3 Nuevo Herald reporters. Conductor wrote a piece at Babalu yesterday which deserves to be read and contemplated as it brings up some valid points about reporters vs. columnists. I plan on posting something later today as well.

In the meantime, Cuban-exile syndicated columnist-extraordinaire Carlos Alberto Montaner, one of the 10 journalists mentioned in the story, wrote a letter to the director of El Nuevo Herald in which he expresses his lack of understand as to why he would be mentioned as one of the 10.

I won't translate the entire letter, but here's the money quote:

Why has my name been included in this information? I don't live in Miami (ed. Montaner lives in Madrid), I don't work for the Miami Herald nor for El Nuevo Herald, nor am I subject to their regulations. I'm not even a freelancer for those companies. The Herald, like sixty other publications in Europe, the United States and Latin America, among them several radio stations, purchase my column from Firmas Press, the agency which distributes my columns.

I must admit, Montaner's inclusion in the list puzzled me when I first saw it because I didn't recall him being an official columnist for the paper, but I didn't pursue this further.

It's pretty obvious to me that Oscar Corral's anxiousness to net the big fish in what he probably hopes is his big journalistic break led him to overlook some not-so-subtle and important details. Sloppy journalism all for the sake of breaking the big story, if you ask me.