How The Herald covered the Pope's visit to Cuba

The photos were shot by one of four Herald photographers who gained access to the island on journalist visas issued to a newspaper friendly to our cause. The stories were the work of three Herald reporters posing as tourists from other countries. (One of the virtues of an internationally diverse staff is greater access to writers with foreign passports.)

Why the cloak and dagger stuff when it seemed the island was sinking under the weight of fully credentialed reporters with their run of the place? Because this is The Miami Herald and the Cuban government isn't happy with us.

As The New York Times put it:

``Among major American news organizations, only The Miami Herald, which Cuba's state security apparatus regards as a Cuban exile mouthpiece, has been denied all requests for visas for its reporters.''

In the almost seven years I have served as executive editor, we've been granted just a handful of visas. We've received none for almost two years. Four years ago I went to Havana to make a personal request for more regular visa awards. Upon my return I wrote a column about some of the things I'd seen. The Cuban government was not pleased.

A deep visa-freeze followed. Then a limited thaw. Then the latest freeze.

The Cubans say all they want is ``objective`` reporting, which, we argue, is what we strive for. My suspicion is that they want uncritical reporting about their country, not unlike people everywhere. (This is not a column about local politics, but I'm reminded of a certain elected official's demand that we be ``nice'' to him ``and my city.'' It's a good thing you don't need a visa to cover Miami.)

Mindful of the Cuban government's record with us, we began preparing contingency plans for the Pope's visit. We made a formal request for 12 journalist visas well in advance of the deadline. We followed all the rules -- to the letter. But we recognized the possibility that we would be denied.

Without going into too much detail, we came up with several strategies. None of the 12 journalists on the formal list could be a part of the contingency plan and no journalist who had been ejected on a prior ``undercover`` trip could be involved either.

As the date of the Pope's visit drew closer, we learned that various papers had been issued visas. Some even got them for logistical trips in advance of the Pope's arrival. We got only silence.

Day after day we learned that yet another paper had gotten its visas approved. Visas even went to former Herald staffers who had been denied them while at The Herald. The only difference was that now they worked for The New York Times.

In the end we were never officially denied our visas; we were simply unacknowledged.

So we sprung the contingency plans, which were quarterbacked here in Miami by Juan Tamayo, the veteran Cuba correspondent who had been refused a visa, Foreign Editor Maria Garcia and Director of Photography Dennis Copeland.

The stories that appeared beneath the stealth credit lines would have been the same had they been written by reporters with government-approved visas. I don't know what the Cuban government thought of our stories. And I don't care. I would rather they had been produced without the skullduggery and the deceit, but I'm immensely proud that we DID produce them and that they were fair, complete and, yes, objective.