What journalists expose isn’t fake news
Imagine if your daughter has been wrongfully convicted of murder, and no one cares. Your wife died during childbirth, and the experts now blame her medical condition. Or your dad, a decorated military veteran, is rotting in a nursing home, and the owners pay you lip service — because your dad is really a monthly paycheck to them.
These are the stories that our investigative journalists quietly expose. They aren’t fake news. The reporters aren’t the enemy of the people. They pursue real stories intended to right wrongs and help the least among us.
Journalism is mission work, an honest cause beyond our eyes. Like nursing, teaching and police work, it’s built on a foundation of accuracy, trust, wisdom and character.
I’ve been a witness to the power of journalism for 28 years, and I am honored to be the next standards editor for the USA TODAY Network. I’ll use this space to share with you, truthfully and transparently, the good we do, as well as when we fall short.
First, let me tell you a little about me.
My American journey
I live the American dream. My family fled communist Cuba in the early 1960s. My family rarely talked about their pain, except to say it was better to die free than slaves to a dictatorship. I was 17 months old when we arrived in Florida.
I was raised by a godly grandmother, while my amazing mother, Eulalia — who had been in medical school in Havana — learned English, worked by day as a store clerk and as a lab technician at night. She saved her money to finish medical school in Spain and became a child psychiatrist in the United States. She’s 82 years old today, and my hero.
I wanted to be a doctor, but I’m a journalist because it was meant to be.
My grades stunk in high school and I dropped out of college, so I installed wallpaper, loaded trucks for UPS and became an emergency medical technician. I made a lot of cash selling beauty supplies. Sales taught me how to schmooze, solve problems and serve people — and how reputation was your currency.
Sales was great, but I was miserable. At age 27, I begged back into Florida International University. In 1990, I graduated with a journalism degree from FIU.
But here is what my instructors never taught me: how to persuade a stoned drug dealer not to shoot you, or how to check for explosives under your car. Yes, those things happened.
This much I have learned:
for middle and low-income people?
Or the outrageous proposal by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to strip away deductions for child care, medical expenses and the like for families that qualify for low-income housing?
What ideas do they have for solving the problem? Do they favor relaxing the rules for land banks – collections of vacant, abandoned or tax-delinquent properties held by local governments and nonprofits that can be designated for low-cost housing?
Do they favor shared-equity programs such as community land trusts that provide below-marketrate mortgages? Or legislation creating tax incentives for private developers?
With elections for state and federal offices just around the corner, it is not too late for candidates to speak out on affordable housing.
It’s one of the state’s most basic public policy questions.