AMY GOODMAN: FL Journalists Talk About the Cuban-American Community

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This is an excerpt of the segment's transcript. If interested in the full segment, you can pick it up from the written transcript or watch the video segment -- URL at bottom of this excerpt.
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"AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the Cuban community, the changing Cuban community here in Florida.

PATRICK MANTEIGA: You know, when two Cubans meet on the street, they have to kind of determine what year their family came over in order to know how the conversation goes. You know, a lot of people feel that, you know, Miami Cuban exile community is the only Hispanic group in the state of Florida, and it’s not true. Even amongst Cubans, it’s not true.

Tampa Cubans generally got here earlier and did not come over for Castro, did not come over because of the Castro takeover. So they tend to be Democratic, vote Democrat. They tend to be a little more liberal on the Cuba issue. Then you have the exile community, the people who came over around 1960. They’re generally Republican and a lot more conservative. Then you have the people who came over—the Cubans who came over in the last ten, fifteen years. A lot of these people don’t vote, but if they were to vote, they would lean with whoever—whatever candidate would allow trade and travel to Cuba, because they have family there, and they are very passionate about it.

But our Hispanic community in the state of Florida very soon is going to become dominated by Puerto Ricans, and I think that’s a story that a lot of people miss and that the politicians need to keep an eye on. Florida is certainly a pivotal state in our national elections, and a lot of politicians come down here and try and target that Cuban exile community, and they’re missing out on the fact that Puerto Ricans have taken over the middle of the state, especially around Orlando, and that that is going to be the future vote that’s going to tip Florida one way or the other.

ROB LOREI: But, Patrick, the third rail in Florida politics has long been lifting the Cuba embargo, in that whether you’re Democrat or Republican in Florida, you could not advocate lifting the Cuban embargo. What’s the status of that third rail now? Is that changing? Could a politician win statewide office, or could Barack Obama win a second term, with the help of Florida, get the Florida vote, if he advocated lifting the embargo?

PATRICK MANTEIGA: There are some who believe so. We’ve yet to have a politician who has made that leap. Most of them, you know, privately would tell you they’re OK with it, but publicly they continue to beat that same drum, not only for votes, but also for money. And a lot of the media down in Miami is controlled by a group that really believes that they want to keep the status quo. So we believe there is that ability to make the change and get elected.

You know, it’s going to be very interesting what Obama does over the next few months. These recent changes that have allowed more liberal travel for people who have relatives over in Cuba, I think all those changes expire in September, so he has to quickly make a decision where we’re going to go. But there’s really going to be no fundamental change with American-Cuban relations until we take them off the list of terrorist nations. So that’s really the key to opening up the situation.

AMY GOODMAN: And hasn’t Vice President Joe Biden just said that they’re going to keep the embargo?

PATRICK MANTEIGA: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: Here in Tampa, the Port of Tampa, you have an interesting shift in political alliances, because a lot of owners here, a lot of businesspeople want that embargo lifted. Explain what it would mean for the Port of Tampa.

PATRICK MANTEIGA: Well, the Port of Tampa is actually the closest major port to Havana, and we’re closer even than Miami, as a ship goes. And historically, Tampa used to have daily passage between Havana and Tampa. It was just as—it was very easy to just to hop on a boat and go there, as it was to go anywhere in the United States. So you always had a strong relationship shipping cattle over there, workers coming up here for the cigar industry, Historically, there is this tie, and if you read Cuban history books, you will read about Tampa. Tampa was a cradle for a lot of revolution in Cuba. So there’s this emotional tie between the two cities—between Tampa and the country of Cuba.

But the Port really needs Cuba relations. You’ve got a cruise ship industry that would give us a three-day cruise that we currently don’t have. You’ve got a lot of shipping that could happen with phosphate going down there. A lot of relations. In fact, our congresswoman here, Kathy Castor, just asked President Obama to allow Tampa International Airport to have charter flights to Cuba, where there’s only three airports in the United States that currently is allowed this, and I think it’s by executive order, and she’s asked for that executive order to expand.

ROB LOREI: Have you editorialized in favor of lifting the embargo?

PATRICK MANTEIGA: We were the first Spanish-language newspaper in the state of Florida to do so, and we’re still here, so they didn’t burn us out. So—

ROB LOREI: But did you receive any threats or any repercussions?

PATRICK MANTEIGA: No. We had some people who called up and were very concerned about our position. We had some people call, crying on the phone, that they were upset that—you know, and explaining their past history with Cuba.

But we’ve always had repercussions from the fact that originally, back in the 1960s, we supported—before, in the ’50s, we supported the Castro takeover. And we’ve been blacklisted by corporations in Miami for years and years. In fact, recently, three Miami congressmen blocked the naming of a post office for my father here in Tampa, because in 1960 he didn’t condemn Castro fast enough for them. So, you know, we’re talking about a long time where these things still happen. In fact, I don’t even know if the congressmen were born at the time.

ROB LOREI: Marty, I want to ask you—go back and ask one more question about newspapers, and that is, are we—the Nichols-McChesney article in The Nation suggested that we’re on the verge of seeing a lot of newspapers disappear. How optimistic or pessimistic are you about the future of the newspaper industry in the US?

MARTY PETTY: Well, I remain optimistic, for some reasons that I stated a few minutes ago. Some of the challenges aren’t as clearly understood. I mean, a lot of the large newspapers, the metro newspapers, particularly, were most severely hurt by the downturn in the economy with advertising. Simultaneous to that, we had a lot of acquisition activity and a lot of consolidation activity and a lot of debt taken on by the publicly held companies, which, prior to the recession, their very high profits were able to service the debt. So, in some ways, the collision of these two events has accelerated the beat of the drum by those who want to believe that newspapers are dead or dying in this flight to the internet.

There is no question people’s media habits are changing. There’s absolutely no question about that, and we need to change with them. But I believe that newspapers—we believe that newspapers remain viable in their ability to serve their local communities, gather and edit local content, hold local officials responsible in ways that, to date, are unmatched. So, if we can stay the course on how we deliver that news in ways that people want to receive it—TBT, for example, our free daily, which has circulation, distribution of 70,000 Monday through Thursday and 100,000 on Friday, and is growing—

AMY GOODMAN: Stands for?

MARTY PETTY: Tampa Bay Times—and is growing, it’s a newspaper, yet it delivers the news in a package in a way that somebody who’s twenty-five to forty-nine wants to get it. That tells us that there are solutions.

AMY GOODMAN: Rob, I don’t want to end this segment without talking about WMNF. Last night, we had a big fundraiser for WMNF Community Radio. You’re one of the founders of it, and you do a broadcast here every week on Florida politics at WEDU.

ROB LOREI: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about community radio and television.

ROB LOREI: Well, I think, frankly, we’re in a lot of trouble. And whether you call this a recession or a depression, our revenue, both at WEDU public television and at WMNF, has fallen. There have been layoffs here at the PBS station, very sad. At the radio station, the community radio station that I work at, we have had no layoffs, but we’ve had something like on the order of $80,000 in budget cuts. I think that just as our audience is in pain, so is the revenue for our radio and TV stations in pain.

The interesting thing about MNF is that since we started, we were kind of riding on the housing boom here in Florida. So, for thirty years—we started back in 1979—for thirty years, our revenue went up, our audience went up, everything was rosy. And then, suddenly, when we reached this housing and this mortgage crisis, things are hurting. So, you know, frankly, I wonder about the model of public broadcasting, whether or not, you know, relying on those local donations, relying on CPB funding for a small fraction of the funding, whether or not that’s a good model. I often look over at England and look at those licenses that people pay for radio and television and think, wouldn’t that be a better way to fund broadcasting? We wouldn’t have to go hat in hand to Congress every year and ask for a small appropriation. We wouldn’t—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that, though, how the BBC works, that everyone is taxed.

ROB LOREI: Well, everybody is taxed. When you buy a television, when you buy a radio, you pay a tax on it. And that funds the BBC. And the money is safe from government intrusion. The BBC has, I think, a lot more freedom in England than they do here in the US.

You know, at some public television stations, they will spend maybe as much as two months trying to raise money on the air. And I think that that’s a burden on the audience. It’s a burden on the program producers. It’s a burden on the staff. At public radio, we try to keep it down, as you know, Amy. But still, it is hard, and sometimes, in these hard times, you have to extend these fund drives. So I think that—I think Marty’s right. We’ve got to look at new models. We’ve got to look at new ways to fund media and broadcasting. And I think one of the ways, we should look to the BBC as a possible model in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you very much, all, for being with us, though I did want to ask one last question to Patrick Manteiga, and that is, a congressional black delegation is in Cuba right now meeting with Raul Castro, led by Barbara Lee of California, the Congress member. How significant is this?

PATRICK MANTEIGA: We’ve had a lot of Congress people go over there, a lot of congressmen, congresswomen go over there over the years. It’s really not going to be significant until the administration, until the Obama administration sends somebody over for a discussion. We’ve had these junkets over there, and we continue these discussions. It certainly is a positive situation, and we need to continue positive relations, but the executive branch is the one who’s going to have to make a move here.

AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. I want to thank you, Marty Petty, for joining us— "

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/7/a_roundtable_of_local_florida_journalists