Corral brought with him a carton of the materials his FOIA request had yielded. When he walked into the newsroom, by chance he caught the eye of reporter Cancio. “I just kind of shrugged,” remembers Corral. “At that point, I was there to meet with his boss. That was one of the toughest points of my entire career… He was definitely a colleague, and a guy that I respected.”

Castelló told the three from TMH that he knew nothing about his staff working for Radio Martí, and “speculated that maybe they had gotten approval from some previous editor or some previous publisher,” says Corral. At that juncture, Corral presumed that the reporters his story named would be reprimanded, or suspended while they took an ethics or other course. But at 5:30 p.m., Corral spoke with Publisher Díaz to find out what action the paper planned to take so he could include it in the story. To Corral’s surprise, Díaz reported that he had fired the Nuevo Herald writers. “Myriam [Marquez] came over to my desk and she hugged me,” says Corral.

I did not think they would be fired in that manner, especially not without some sort of more extensive review. And the [Miami] Herald knew that there were other people in our building that showed up on that list, but I hadn’t had the time to process all the names… So I was shocked.