Herald editor discusses Guantanamo Bay coverage

Students are engaged, as Dave Wilson explains the inner workings of Guantanamo, and the recent limitations Miami Herald reporters had to deal with while reporting from there. Marisol Medina

By Amanda Rabines / South Florida News Service

It takes a certain kind of journalist to cover Guantanamo Bay, an area in Cuba where the United States has a naval base and detention camp.

Its security measures and protocol dampen media coverage and make all the harder for journalists to do what they do best: report the news.

Last week, Florida International University students of journalism and mass communications got a taste of these kinds of limitations, when Dave Wilson, senior editor for the Miami Herald, paid a visit to share the newspaper’s experience in covering the highly restrictive detention center.

About 30 students attended the presentation, sponsored by FIU chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

“I’m here to talk about access,” Wilson said. “As journalists, our jobs are to cover stories, situations and circumstances that are of unique value to the public.”

The stories that unravel under Guantanamo Bay’s thick security measures include reports of its living conditions and court proceedings, but only if it is not classified.

For that reason, Wilson emphasizes the significance of accessing important trials and recommends using First Amendment Foundation of Florida’s website floridafaf.org as a tool in knowing a journalist’s rights.

“It doesn’t matter if it is a seat in the federal court or access to the coach of a team,” Wilson said. “These are the kind of things that we, as journalists, have, that the general public doesn’t, and we are their voice.”

The voice for Guantanamo Bay is Carol Rosenberg’s, Miami Herald’s beat journalist for the detention center and one of the reporters Wilson edits.

Rosenberg has been covering Guantanamo Bay for 12 years, and she would have normally accompanied Wilson to FIU’s presentation, but at the time, the reporter was in Washington covering a case about the hunger strikes in Guantanamo Bay.

Through Rosenberg’s experience, Wilson discussed the challenges, difficulties and benefits that come from covering the camp.

He played a video that showed glimpses of actual day-to-day life at Guantanamo Bay for its detainees, soldiers and the press.

Restricted by military regulation, video footage of soldiers was shot from the shoulders down and detainees were only seen facing backwards.

“We went in knowing it wouldn’t be easy,” Wilson said, as he reflected over his experience visiting the camp.

But no matter the odds against access, Wilson remains eager for more of Rosenberg’s work.

“That commitment hasn’t wavered, I’m glad to say, at our newspaper, at our company, through four publishers, three executive editors and two corporate owners and through all of that just one Carol Rosenberg, and that’s been pretty good.”

You can follow Wilson on twitter @davewilson13 and Rosenberg on twitter @carolrosenberg.

To follow Guantanamo coverage at the Miami Herald, visit miamiherald.com/guantanamo.

Here is Miami Herald’s video of Dave Wilson’s experience, along with three other Miami Herald journalists, in Guantanamo Bay: