With approval from the Cuban government secured, CNN now must get State Department permission to open a bureau in Cuba, the first for a U.S.-based news organization since 1969.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry announced Thursday that the Cable News Network had won permission to open a bureau in Havana."We've been working on it for a while," CNN spokesman David Talley said. The next step is to win approval from the State Department, and "we have no idea how long that will be."
The Associated Press, which is negotiating to open its own bureau in Havana, was the last American news outlet in Cuba. The Communist government expelled U.S. reporters in 1969.
In recent years, U.S. journalists have been allowed to make reporting trips to Cuba. But the U.S. trade embargo had prevented news organizations from opening bureaus on the island.