Tom Walsh's extraordinary series on his visit to Cuba, which appeared the past two weeks in the newspaper Private Eye Weekly, resulted from his taking a number of calculated risks.
The $1,400 in expenses it cost Walsh and his paper was not only hefty for a small paper but also a price that might have deterred even a mainline daily from attempting the trip. The foreign story is not exactly usual for the alternative weekly, whose cover pieces typically are local investigative reports.But the biggest risk was that Walsh traveled, by way of Cancun, Mexico, on a Soviet-built Cubana plane, with a group of 150 Americans who were demanding an end to U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba. They regard these as illegitimate, obsolete and inane. They admittedly broke the law, the federal "Trading With the Enemy Act," in order to challenge it.
The possible penalties, Walsh notes, are 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Though such severe penalties have not been invoked, the possibility of prosecution for some of the travelers is real. The government confiscated the passports of 60 who advertised they were protesters by getting their passports stamped in Cuba and is investigating them.
And by becoming closely identified with people pushing a cause, Walsh could easily have been labeled a propagandist for them and an activist rather than a newsman, a serious conflict of interest.
- WALSH'S STORY came off as a first-rate piece of journalism nonetheless, descriptive and full of background and fresh views of Cuba and its deprived people, a rare close look at our embattled island neighbor. It was a tribute to Walsh's skill as a reporter, and to his ability to toe a line between explanation and falling off into the polemicism of his co-travelers.
"Don't Break the Law" comes about as close to a solid rule as you can get in news work these days. When newspeople do so - say, for example, if they were to trespass in order to get a look at airline safety precautions - it has to be for a defensible higher good. They always need to be aware of the dangers to all the players, including themselves. And they must be up front with their readers on how and why they courted peril. Walsh comes off well on all those counts.
His first article, "Fidel, Commanding Over Crisis," was about what he learned in Cuba, where he had an opportunity to put a few questions to Fidel Castro himself at a reception and even got Castro's autograph on a capitalist $10 bill. He would not have had such access had he not been in a group Castro was wooing. The second, "Cuba Yes, Blockade No," was a discussion of the U.S. embargo, which no other country has joined, and its effects on Cuba after three decades of U.S. animosity.
- A FORMER KSL REPORTER who edits Private Eye, Walsh likely could have gone to Cuba by himself as a news worker, since they are among a few classes of people allowed to spend money there. He chose to go on the week's tour with the Freedom to Travel Campaign, and as it turned out the protest was as much the story as conditions in Cuba. "This idealistic group believes any law that prevents citizens from harmonizing in the global village should itself be outlawed."
Walsh got interested in the trip through Bob Goff, a Salt Lake peace activist who helped outfit a Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba last summer and is himself the subject of a sidebar article. Walsh says, however, that he told the group he was going as a journalist and not as a protester and did not depart from that role.
He distanced himself from the activities that would have labeled him a protester. When the group volunteered to help build a "peace park" in Havana he politely refused to join in.
And he worked hard for balance. Walsh says he tried to find any foreign visitor who supported the blockade but gave up after talking to 20 Canadians, Britons, Scandinavians and others who are free to travel to Cuba.
He sought out and interviewed a Cuban dissident, a man who had spent eight of the past 12 years in prison for speaking out. (He writes that "only state owned and controlled media can operate. For insulting Fidel Castro in print, writers are imprisoned for up to three years.") The dissident says there are several thousand political prisoners in Cuba and that in the past three years 200 human rights monitors and political rights activists have been arrested.
- IT DOES NOT BOTHER Walsh that the tour group had a viewpoint, that it is at variance with that of many Cuban exiles in the United States, or that he participated in a University of Utah forum last week that was clearly anti-embargo.
The anti-embargo people at the U. forum also criticized Cuba's human rights abuses. But they believe that by opening up contacts with Cuba, and demanding concessions on human rights in return, changes can be made; that confrontation won't accomplish that, since most of Cubans support Castro, despite the privations they are now enduring, and want gradual change. Walsh writes that many Cubans regard Castro as a devil, others as a savior, but that in any case, "El Commandante" retains control.
Walsh's advise to anyone going to Cuba on what in some respects is a show tour: "Take in the tour but also spend to get a rental car or a cab. Talk to as many people as possible to get a decent perspective."
He told one student at the forum that Private Eye believes a community should have many newspapers with differing viewpoints - and the more liberal view that his articles carry certainly is congruent with the aims of an alternative newspaper. Walsh says he thinks the articles were good for Private Eye, but, more importantly good for his readership. He also clearly saw it as good for himself. He was as moved by the experience as the other travelers, who, he says, got not "the CNN version" but saw for themselves.
Though the two articles ran a total of about 16,000 words, Walsh says he had enough material to extend it to a couple of more installments. Getting a surfeit of information, more than you can use, is one mark of good reporting, for it lends solidity to the piece and allows the writer to reach conclusions more safely.
If you haven't had a chance to read the articles, you can still pick up the latest, in the Nov. 17 issue, free at several dozen cafes, clubs and public buildings around town.