Cuban dissidents will not take part in Friday's formal ceremony opening the U.S. Embassy in Havana tomorrow, something that Secretary of State John Kerry is chalking up to a matter of respecting diplomatic protocol and a lack of space at the venue.
But the controversy over the matter was omitted entirely from an NBC News article posted Thursday night on the MSNBC.com home page.
Here's an excerpt from the August 12 story by the newswire's Bradley Klapper and Michael Weissenstein:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Cuban dissidents, so long the center of U.S. policy toward the island, won't be invited to Secretary of State John Kerry's historic flag-raising at the U.S. Embassy in Havana on Friday, vividly illustrating how U.S. policy is shifting focus to its single-party government. Kerry intends to meet more quietly with prominent activists later in the day, officials said.
The Cuban government labels its domestic opponents as traitorous U.S. mercenaries. As the two countries have moved to restore relations, Cuba has almost entirely stopped meeting with American politicians who visit dissidents during trips to Havana.
That presented a quandary for U.S. officials organizing the ceremony on Friday to mark the reopening of the embassy on Havana's historic waterfront. Inviting dissidents would risk a boycott by Cuban officials including those who negotiated with the U.S. after Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared detente on Dec. 17. Excluding dissidents would certainly provoke fierce criticism from opponents of Obama's new policy, including Cuban-American Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio.
Officials familiar with the plans for Kerry's visit, the first by a sitting U.S. secretary of state to Cuba since World War II, told The Associated Press that a compromise was in the works. The dissidents won't be invited to the embassy event, but a small group will meet with Kerry at the U.S. chief of mission's home in the afternoon, where a lower-key, flag-raising ceremony is scheduled.
"That is a government-to-government moment, with very limited space, by the way, which is why we're having the reception later in the day at which we can have a cross-section of civil society including some dissidents," Kerry told the Telemundo network Wednesday evening.
"The message is, No. 1, that we believe our engaging in direct diplomatic relations with the Cuban government being there, being able to interact with the people of Cuba, will in fact, help the people of Cuba," he said.
The dissidents' presence at the embassy would have risked setting back the new spirit of cooperation the U.S. hopes to engender, according to the officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly about internal planning and demanded anonymity. But not meeting them at all, they said, would send an equally bad signal.
Over at MSNBC.com, editors splashed the front page with a teaser headline, "Havana prepares for history."
"Secretary John Kerry will preside over a historic flag-raising ceremony on Friday," added the caption over a photograph of a car passing the U.S. embassy building in Havana.
Clicking on the photo brings readers to a 13-paragraph Sandra Lilley story posted Thursday evening at 7:37 p.m. Eastern. The story itself is a reprint of an August 12 story filed at 8:47 p.m. Eastern, some two hours after the AP exclusive.
For her part, Lilley did quote one Cuban citizen at the end of her story, but the individual in question was not a critic of the Castro regime (emphasis mine):
Cuban attorney Marlene Mendoza was taking her 7-year-old daughter to the movies on Wednesday. When asked about Friday’s events and its possible repercussions, she said “it’s possible [to have] a new opening, more economic developments for our families, for our country — for us.”
But she conceded that it was complicated.
“There needs to be good will from both parties,” she said, adding the U.S. needed to change its views of how they see Cuba. Moreover, she said, it was unclear what takes place next.
“There are a lot of expectations, but one has to [wait and] see what is going to happen,” said Mendoza.
