On September 9, El Nuevo Herald started a campaign to reverse the decision to fire the three journalists. “We did the battle in a very professional way,” asserts Castelló. He held daily staff meetings to discuss the firings. The paper solicited views from the community, and ran article after article on its opinion and news pages.

And VOA? ENH reporters also set out to discover whether parallels existed to the Radio Martí situation. On September 14, ENH published a report on Washington journalists who had done work for Voice of America—and been paid for it. Hugh Sidey of Time , Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News , Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News and David Lightman from the Hartford Courant had all been paid from $100 to $150 per appearance on VOA’s “Issues in the News” program. The ENH story posed the implicit question: was there some definable difference between Radio/TV Martí and VOA, both funded with taxpayer dollars? If not, why pick exclusively on Radio Martí contributors? [1] Broadcasting Board of Governors spokesman Larry Hart said:

For decades, for many, many years, some of the most respected journalists in the country have received payments for participating in Voice of America programs. The [ Miami Herald ] article makes it seem like this is something that only Radio or TV Martí has done, and like they are having to pay the reporters to say certain things or to have certain points of view. [2]

The article sparked divided views on how and whether Martí’s product differed from that of Voice of America. A writer in the Columbia Journalism Review observed on September 20 that Martí programs were “funded by the federal government to broadcast explicitly political propaganda.” [3] On the other hand, Executive Director Frank Calzon of the Center for a Free Cuba wrote September 19 in the Miami Herald that “Radio and TV Martí deliver uncensored news to people who could otherwise have little or no access to information. Radio Martí is required to follow the same standards as Voice of America.” He continued:

If it has become professionally unethical in this country to oppose tyranny and to support freedom, then the First Amendment has been stood on its head. It is simply false to suggest that "real" journalists turn into propaganda hacks if they write or broadcast for government-funded stations.

Open letter . On September 17, a group of journalists, academics, artists and others—most, but far from all, Hispanic—calling themselves Support for the Journalists of Nuevo Herald , posted online an [4] The letter asked McClatchy to reconsider the firing of Alfonso, Cancio and Connor. Calling Corral’s article “yellow journalism,” it said the article “creates the false impression that the professional work of these colleagues was a clandestine political operation.” It drew the equation with VOA contributors, and continued:

Their collaboration with Radio and TV Martí was a continuation of their professional duties and wasn’t subordinate to government agendas… None of the professionals mentioned had kept secret his or her participation on Radio and TV Martí, which had been consulted with their supervisors.

But others at Latino publications applauded the firings. “We’ve fired people here for less than that,” said Editor Pedro Rojas of the Spanish-language La Opinión in Los Angeles. [5] “My main concern is that people will see this (conflict of interest) as a trend in ethnic media, and draw the conclusion that all ethnic media does this. This is an exception to the rule.”

For the "Anglo" journalists, their Cuban colleagues had conflicts. In contrast, the journalists at ENH felt their corporate brothers had ambushed them. To Miami’s Cuban-Americans, this was a display of double-standards.

He pointed to the VOA parallel, and noted that “[p]rofessors at public universities get paid by the government; yet they don’t submit to their paymaster for that reason.” Montaner demanded a public apology from McClatchy.