Elián González Brotons is a Cuban industrial engineer and politician who, as a young child, became embroiled in an international custody and immigration controversy in 2000 involving the governments of Cuba and the United States, his father Juan Miguel González Quintana, his other relatives in Cuba and in Miami, and Miami's Cuban community.
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban retired politician and general who served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most senior position in the one-party communist state, from 2011 to 2021, and President of Cuba between 2008 and 2018, succeeding his brother Fidel Castro.
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University that offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It frequently ranks as the top school of journalism in the United States. Medill alumni include over 40 Pulitzer Prize laureates, numerous national correspondents for major networks, many well-known reporters, columnists and media executives.
Infotainment, also called soft news as a way to distinguish it from serious journalism or hard news, is a type of media, usually television or online, that provides a combination of information and entertainment. The term may be used disparagingly to devalue infotainment or soft news subjects in favor of more serious hard news subjects. Infotainment-based websites and social media apps gained traction due to their focused publishing of infotainment content, e.g. BuzzFeed.
Giselle Fernández is an American television journalist and anchor for Spectrum News 1. Her appearances on network television include reporting and guest anchoring for CBS Early Show, CBS Evening News, Today, and NBC Nightly News, regular host for Access Hollywood, and contestant on Dancing with the Stars.
Mirta Francisca de la Caridad Díaz-Balart y Gutiérrez is a Cuban who was the first wife of Fidel Castro. They married in 1948, had one son together, and divorced in 1955.
Herbert Lionel Matthews was a reporter and editorialist for The New York Times who, at the age of 57, won widespread attention after revealing that the 30-year-old Fidel Castro was still alive and living in the Sierra Maestra mountains. President Fulgencio Batista claimed publicly that the young guerilla leader had been killed during the landing of the yacht Granma, bringing him and others back to Cuba from Mexico in December 1956.
Ruby Hart Phillips was a New York Times correspondent in Cuba who covered the Batista regime and the rise of Fidel Castro. She reported from the island for 24 years, from 1937 to 1961. Her coverage, relatively favorable toward Batista, was often at odds with that of Herbert Matthews, the noted Times foreign correspondent who favored Castro. Personal animosity grew between them, and their contradictory coverage of the same events drew criticism from readers and media critics. Life became increasingly difficult for Phillips after the Cuban Revolution because of her anti-Castro temperament. She left Cuba for good in 1961, shortly after her home and office were raided and her Cuban colleagues were arrested. She died in Cocoa Beach, Florida at the age of 82.
The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is a constituent college of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, United States. Established in 1915, Grady College offers undergraduate degrees in journalism, advertising, public relations, and entertainment and media studies, and master's and doctoral programs of study. Grady has consistently been ranked among the top schools of journalism education and research in the U.S.
Liz Wickersham is an American television personality best known as the host of CNN's entertainment newsmagazine Showbiz Today and host of WTBS's Award-Winning Magazine Program, Good News.
José Díaz-Balart Caballero is a Cuban-American journalist and television anchorman. On September 7, 2021, Diaz-Balart stepped down as anchor of the weeknight editions of Noticias Telemundo. He is currently anchoring José Díaz-Balart Reports on MSNBC. He also continues to anchor NBC Nightly News Saturday, frequently substitutes for the weekday and Sunday broadcast, and will continue to anchor breaking news and special events coverage for Telemundo and host monthly specials.
Lisa Howard was an American journalist, writer, and television news anchor who previously had a career as an off-Broadway and soap opera actress. In the early 1960s, she became ABC News's first woman reporter, and was the first woman to have her own national network television news show. Howard developed a relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, whom she met to interview, and was a go-between for a time between Castro and the American White House. Her network career ended when she became openly involved in the 1964 United States Senate election in New York. In 1965, Howard suffered a miscarriage and depression, dying of an overdose of painkillers.
Ann Louise Bardach [A.L. Bardach] is an American journalist and non-fiction author. Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami," by the Columbia Journalism Review, having interviewed dozens of key players including Fidel Castro, sister Juanita Castro, anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, CIA and Watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt, anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was present for the assassination of Che Guevara.
Yoani María Sánchez Cordero is a Cuban blogger who has achieved international fame and multiple international awards for her critical portrayal of life in Cuba under its current government.
Debbie Cenziper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist and nonfiction author. As of November 2022 she writes for ProPublica and is the director of the Medill Investigative Lab at Northwestern University. She spent more than a decade as an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, and has written two nonfiction books.
The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made numerous unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. There were also attempts by Cuban exiles, sometimes in cooperation with the CIA. The 1975 Church Committee claimed eight proven CIA assassination attempts between 1960 and 1965. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an Executive Order banning political assassinations. In 2006, Fabián Escalante, former chief of Cuba's counterintelligence, stated that there had been 634 assassination schemes or attempts. The last known plot to assassinate Castro was by Cuban exiles in 2000.
Herbert Elias Kaplow was an American television news correspondent. His main focus was reporting out of Washington, D.C., covering presidential campaigns and those who were elected.
Joie Chen is a Chinese American television journalist as well as an Asian American broadcast journalist. She was the anchor of Al Jazeera America's flagship evening news show America Tonight, which was launched in August 2013. In January 2016, the channel announced it would close on 12 April 2016.
Anthony R. DePalma is an American author, journalist and educator who was a foreign correspondent and reporter for The New York Times for 22 years. He continues to work on books, magazine articles and other writing projects. He is also an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
María Elvira Salazar is an American journalist, author, and politician serving as the U.S. representative for Florida's 27th congressional district. She is a Republican assistant whip. Before entering politics, Salazar worked for the Spanish-language network Telemundo for three decades after serving as a news anchor for Miami-based WSBS TV. She has also worked for CNN Español and Univision.
