Journalists from Radio Martí, American-financial news with the aim of communist cubes, were in the midst of the interviewing of the Cuban activist in Miami on Saturday, when Bleak seemed to suddenly come over their faces.
The 40-year-old news agency, intended for salivation, has just ordered Trump administration Trump, has just ordered the crew in the email. Activist Profile – Ramón Saúl Sánchez, known for his leading protest flotillas in Cuba – was abolished.
“They were very confused,” Mr. Sánchez said. “They said,” We think we broke up. We have to leave. “
President Trump soon did what the Castro brothers in Cuba could not do in four decades: he took a news station that had long pulled the anger of the communist regime from the air.
Radio Martí became the latest in dozens of programs and agencies in the US government, which fell to a huge reduction in the costs made by Mr. Trump and his advisor Elon Musk.
Television has been proclaimed a reputation of the outdated relic of the Cold War, a swollen boondogle, where politically influential people have found a job for their relatives.
She spent tens of millions of dollars a year producing what critics called one -sided, right -wing screens against the Cuban government, and were repeatedly involved in journalistic and corruption scandals that were focus of congress reports.
His television station, TV Martí, was so thoroughly blocked on the island that they called her “don’t see TV”.
But in recent years, a leaner surgery with crops of fresh recruits under the new administration has been a serious intrusion on the social media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, the agency data show.
After reducing the budget from the first Trump administration that reduced the staff and funding by about 40 percent, veterans journalists and filmmakers were hired who renewed the Digital Age editorial office.
With short video clips posted online, Radio Martí has attracted millions of readers and viewers annually, the network data are displayed, just as Cuba has undergone the greatest mass migration in his history, he has suffered disappearances of days in days and the economic crisis, unlike everything seen in decades.
But the question remains: given that Cuba broke his disagreement and closed her citizens for critical Facebook posts, as a nation that was facing the most difficult period in 66 years under communism, did Radio Martí throw out his last broadcast?
“The website is blocked on Cuba. The TV signal is blocked, the radio signal is blocked,” said Abel Fernández, director of digital and social media who lost his job last week. “But people reach content on social media. What we do is important and that is important for people.”
Mario Díaz-Balart, one of the three Cuban Congress members, said Telemundo To cooperate with Mr. Trump to restore Marta.
Asked if the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a Cuban American, supported the Emirate, State Department said the president was elected to make difficult decisions, and “the situation remains complex and fluid.”
As an American Senator of Florida, Mr. Rubio was among the double -sided group of MPs who Signed letter 2022 demanding “through justification” for planned release.
The White House rejected the interviews for the Kara Lake, which oversees the removal of the US Global Media Agency, which includes Radio Martí.
Mauricio Claver-Carone, adviser to the President Trump in Latin America, said he believed that some illusion would be saved by Radio Martí.
“I think you can appreciate the historical importance of something and the role he plays as he recognizes that he has to update towards the world we live in -they are no longer in the 80s or 90s or even in the early 2000s,” he said. “We can look at it as a great Martí reset.”
Ronald Reagan created Radio March in 1983, at the height of the Cold War, at the urging of a prominent Cuban American exile leader, Jorge Mas Canos. It is thought to penetrate the censorship on the island, where the media is firmly controlled by the Government, and independent journalists are mostly ended in prison or exile.
He went into the air in 1985 and later spread to television. But as early as 2019, internal audit Organized by the US Global Media Agency said she had produced “bad journalism” and “ineffective propaganda”.
The audit followed a few months after a widely criticized piece, called by a billionaire Philanthropic by George Soros, “a distrustful Jew of flexible morality” led to shooting several journalists. The second top official caught falsely asked for more than $ 35,000 costs.
The Castro brothers distracted Radio Marta’s programming, and former President Raúl Castro famously demanded that he be removed from the air. “The United States maintain programs that are harmful to the Cuban sovereignty, such as projects for promoting changes in our political, economic and social order,” said 2015 after President Obama normalized relations between the two countries.
As the internet became widely available in Cuba, critics wondered if Martí was needed at all.
But Martí had a difference that set aside him from other pro-democratic stations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe that also silenced last week: Dictatorship IT is still in power.
“Radio Martí was designed for a different time in the 1980s in Reagan’s struggle against the Soviet Union and Communism, but the fact is that Cuba never crossed, and now we live in a digital world,” said Ted Henken, Professor Baruch College, who studies the media landscape of Cuba. “Martí had to be invented three or four times.”
After several earthquakes and scandals, Mr. Henken said he was an operation, which he recently visited, it seems to be lean and more professional. He abolished the TV station and although his annual budget was woven to $ 25 million, he spent $ 17 million, according to several employees who were not authorized to speak publicly.
In the last two years, the audience began to increase. According to Tubular Labs, a video analytics company, with six months in a fiscal year, Martí has already doubled the viewer with 14 million views on YouTube so far this fiscal year, and another 84 million on Facebook, where there are more than 1 million followers. About 80 percent of their audience is in Cuba, editors said.
Mario J. Pentón, a Kuban journalist who moved to the United States ten years ago and started working in March a year ago, said his contract would end this month. He said that he was proud of the work he did, especially in the public informed to approach the hurricane at the time of the massive disappearances of the authorities who have limited even the ability of the Cuban government to issue storm warnings.
Martí won eight Emmy awards.
“I think it has a future, because I think the mission is more important than ever,” Mr. Pentón said. “Cuba goes through his worst crisis, and in the midst of this crisis, this debacle information only uses the regime.”
Martini’s best news editors said they were not authorized to speak publicly about the decrease in Trump’s administration.
Mrs. Lake, a former television journalist Mr Trump chose as a special advisor United States Agency for Global MediaLast week he called the Rotten to Core agency. At X, she suggested that employees check their E -habit.
Shortly thereafter, the employees received the E -Kost, saying that they were on paid administrative leave until further notice, and then they were locked from their accounts of E -State. New employees who were on trial have already received a break notice, and journalists who were undergoing contract were also released.
Although she did not give examples, Mrs. Lake said In a statement that she found “mass violations of national security, including spies and terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters who infiltrated the agency.”
She added that “waste, fraud and abuse growing in this agency, and US taxpayers should not fund it.
Mariya Abdulkaf contributed to reporting.
