• Submitted by: manso
• United States
• Politics and Government
• 08 / 23 / 2010

---

Charges of nepotism have dogged the two stations since they moved from Washington to Miami in 1996, the article says, highlighting the case of program director Christina Sanson, daughter of a director of the Cuban-American National Foundation. She got her job in the 1990s at the recommendation of Jorge Mas Canosa, the Foundation's powerful chairman.

RTV-Martí director Pedro Roig hired his wife's nephew on a $100,000 annual salary, the article says. And "Roig also hired Luis Zúñiga, a politically connected human rights activist, to handle 'special projects.'"

Niurka Fernández Arteaga, a production specialist at TV Martí, told Poder 360 that the system of cronyism that exists at the station is called "the Circle of Friends, people who were hired because of personal connections with management."

RTV-Martí has received about $500 million of taxpayer money in the past 25 years, drawing the attention of not a few legislators, the article says. Its programming "is a relic of the Cold War, falls short of journalistic standards and is a prime example of wasteful government spending," Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) said in a letter to President Obama quoted in the article.

The stations' professional shortcomings have made them "the target of Congressional investigations [and] the butt of jokes in the media profession," Poder 360 contends.

Posted by Renato Perez at 07:03 PM

MIAMI HERALD
August 20, 2010

Read more: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/cuban_colada/#ixzz0xDVZnNAM

Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/117205