\n<\/p>\n
Journalists from Radio Mart\u00ed, the U.S. federally-funded news outlet aimed at communist Cuba, were in the middle of interviewing a Cuban activist in Miami on a recent Saturday when bleak looks suddenly came over their faces.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old news agency, designed to send uncensored news in Spanish into Cuba, had just been ordered closed by the Trump administration, the crew learned in an email. The profile of the activist \u2014 Ram\u00f3n Sa\u00fal S\u00e1nchez, known for leading protest flotillas to Cuba \u2014 was scrapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were very confused,\u201d Mr. S\u00e1nchez said. \u201cThey said, \u2018We think we\u2019ve been terminated. We need to leave.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
President Trump did in a flash what the Castro brothers in Cuba couldn\u2019t do in four decades: he took a news station that had long drawn the communist regime\u2019s fury off the air.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Radio Mart\u00ed became the latest in dozens of programs and agencies in the U.S. government to fall to the massive cost-cutting carried out by Mr. Trump and his adviser, Elon Musk.<\/p>\n
The broadcaster had for years been dogged by a reputation as an outdated relic of the Cold War, a bloated boondoggle where politically influential people found jobs for their relatives.<\/p>\n
It spent tens of millions of dollars a year producing what critics called one-sided, right-wing screeds against the Cuban government, and was repeatedly mired in journalistic and corruption scandals that were the focus of Congressional reports.<\/p>\n
Its television station, TV Mart\u00ed, was so thoroughly blocked on the island that it was called \u201cNo See TV.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But in recent years, a leaner operation with a crop of fresh recruits under new management was making serious inroads on social media platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, the agency\u2019s data shows.<\/p>\n
Following budget cuts by the first Trump administration that trimmed its staff and funding by about 40 percent, veteran journalists and filmmakers were hired to revamp the newsroom for the digital age.<\/p>\n
With short video clips posted online, Radio Mart\u00ed was attracting millions of readers and viewers a year, the network\u2019s data shows, just as Cuba underwent the largest mass migration in its history, suffered days long power outages and an economic crisis unlike anything seen in decades.<\/p>\n
But the question remains: With Cuba cracking down on dissent and jailing its citizens for critical Facebook posts, and with the nation facing its most difficult period in 66 years under communism, has Radio Mart\u00ed put out its last broadcast?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe website was blocked in Cuba. The TV signal was blocked, the radio signal is blocked,\u201d said Abel Fern\u00e1ndez, the outlet\u2019s digital and social media director who lost his job last week. \u201cBut the people are reaching the content on social media. What we are doing is important, and it matters to people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mario D\u00edaz-Balart, one of the three Cuban American members of Congress, told Telemundo<\/a> that he would work with Mr. Trump to restore Mart\u00ed.<\/p>\n Asked whether Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is Cuban American, supported the broadcaster, the State Department said the president was elected to make tough decisions, and \u201cthe situation remains complex and fluid.\u201d<\/p>\n As a U.S. senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who signed a 2022 letter<\/a> demanding a \u201cthrough justification\u201d for planned layoffs.<\/p>\n The White House declined interview requests with Kari Lake, who is overseeing the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which includes Radio Mart\u00ed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mauricio Claver-Carone, President Trump\u2019s adviser on Latin America, said he believed some semblance of Radio Mart\u00ed would be saved.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you can appreciate the historic importance of something and the role it plays while recognizing it needs to be updated toward the world we live in \u2014 it\u2019s not the 80s anymore or the 90s or even early 2000s,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can look at this as the great Mart\u00ed reset.\u201d<\/p>\n Ronald Reagan created Radio Mart\u00ed in 1983, at the height of the Cold War, at the urging of a prominent Cuban American exile leader, Jorge Mas Canosa. It was meant to penetrate censorship on the island, where media is tightly controlled by the government and independent journalists generally wind up in prison or in exile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It went on the air in 1985, and later expanded to include television. But as recently as 2019, an internal audit<\/a> commissioned by the U.S. Agency for Global Media said it produced \u201cbad journalism\u201d and \u201cineffective propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The audit came months after a widely criticized piece calling billionaire philanthropist George Soros \u201ca nonbelieving Jew of flexible morals\u201d led to the firing of several journalists. Another top official was caught falsely claiming more than $35,000 in expenses.<\/p>\n The Castro brothers detested Radio Mart\u00ed\u2019s programming, and former President Ra\u00fal Castro famously demanded it be taken off the air. \u201cThe United States maintains programs that are harmful to Cuban sovereignty, such as projects to promote changes in our political, economic and social order,\u201d he said in 2015, after President Obama normalized relations between the two nations.<\/p>\n As the internet became widely available in Cuba, critics wondered whether Mart\u00ed was even necessary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Mart\u00ed had a distinction that set it apart from the other pro-democracy stations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe that were also silenced last week: the dictatorship it targets is still in power.<\/p>\n \u201cRadio Mart\u00ed was designed for a different time in the 1980s in Reagan\u2019s battle against the Soviet Union and communism, but the fact is that Cuba never transitioned, and now we live in a digital world,\u201d said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor who studies Cuba\u2019s media landscape. \u201cMart\u00ed has had to reinvent itself three or four times.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After several shake-ups and scandals, Mr. Henken said the operation, which he recently visited, appears to be leaner and more professional. It scrapped the TV station and although its annual budget was set at $25 million, it was spending $17 million, according to several employees who were not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n In the past two years, audiences started to surge. According to Tubular Labs, a video analytics firm, with six months left in the fiscal year, Mart\u00ed has already doubled its viewership with 14 million views on YouTube so far this fiscal year, and another 84 million on Facebook, where it has more than 1 million followers. About 80 percent of their audience is in Cuba, editors said.<\/p>\n Mario J. Pent\u00f3n, a Cuban journalist who moved to the United States a decade ago and began working at Mart\u00ed a year ago, was told his contract would end this month. He said he was proud of the work the outlet did, particularly in informing the public of approaching hurricanes during times of massive power outages that limited even the Cuban government\u2019s ability to issue storm warnings.<\/p>\n Mart\u00ed has won eight Emmy awards.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it has a future, because I think the mission is more important than ever,\u201d Mr. Pent\u00f3n said. \u201cCuba is going through its worst crisis, and in the middle of this crisis, this information blackout debacle only benefits the regime.\u201d<\/p>\n Mart\u00ed\u2019s top news editors said they were not authorized to speak publicly about the Trump administration\u2019s cuts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Lake, a former television journalist whom Mr. Trump chose as a special adviser to the United States Agency for Global Media<\/a>, last week called the agency rotten to the core. On X, she suggested that employees check their emails.<\/p>\n Shortly afterward, employees received emails saying they were on paid administrative leave until further notice, then they were locked out of their email accounts. New employees who were on probation had already received termination notices, and journalists who were on contract were also let go.<\/p>\n