Two Cuban "journalists" who cover the United Nations for the state-run media have been blocked from re-entering the United States after taking a vacation trip to the island.
As a journalist, this decision doesn't bother me too much, considering the two Cubans' roles as agents for the propaganda wing of the Castro dictatorship. They aren't real "journalists" — you know, speaking truth to power, and all that.
But there is reason to worry anytime the U.S. government blocks an otherwise legitimately credentialed journalist from doing their job. The Cubans, and other foreign journalists working in the United States, deserve an explanation of the U.S. decision, if only to protect American journalists working overseas.
Maybe the U.S. State Department can make a deal with the two Cubans, and more importantly their masters in Havana:
The two Prensa Latina "journalists" get to re-enter the United States the moment these 27 real journalists are freed from the Castro gulag.
UPDATED, Oct. 3, 2008
The U.S. State Department reversed course and has allowed the two "journalists" to re-enter the United States, apparently without making the deal I suggested.
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