The publisher of the Miami Herald newspaper has resigned amid a widening scandal involving journalists working for U.S. government-run radio stations that promote democracy in Cuba.

Jesus Diaz Jr. resigned after firing, then rehiring, two reporters at the Herald's Spanish-language sister paper El Nuevo Herald.
 
"I realize and regret that the events of the past three weeks have created an environment that no longer allows me to lead our newspapers in a manner most beneficial for our newspapers, our readers and our community," Diaz wrote in a letter of resignation published Tuesday.
 
 

Jesus Diaz Jr., right, who has resigned as publisher of the Miami Herald, is seen with Herald executive editor Tom Fiedler in 2005.
(Bill Cooke/Associated Press)
David Landsberg, a Herald employee who has served as general manager, was appointed immediately as company president and publisher of the two newspapers by The McClatchy Co., which bought the newspapers in June from Knight Ridder Inc.

Stories began emerging three weeks ago about reporters at El Nuevo Herald being paid by the U.S. government for broadcasts made on Radio Marti and TV Marti.

The Miami Herald itself combed government documents and uncovered 10 South Florida journalists who had been paid for work at the stations aimed at undermining Fidel Castro's communist regime.

The payments ranged from about $15,000 to $175,000 US over the past five years.

Diaz said he believed the acceptance of payments by the El Nuevo journalists "was a breach of widely accepted principles of journalistic ethics" and fired two of them.

Many journalists in the Miami Herald newsroom supported his decision, but Miami's Cuban community, many of whom are vehemently anti-Castro, was not happy. Readers threatened to boycott the newspaper and wrote angry letters.

Many Miami Cubans are vehemently anti-Castro.

Then it turned out that six more El Nuevo reporters also had worked for the U.S.-backed stations and did so with the blessing of Carlos Castaneda, a former executive editor and founder of the paper .

Diaz decided to give an amnesty to those reporters and offered the two fired journalists their jobs back. He said he still believed the journalists had behaved unethically and would prohibit future involvement with the stations.

In his letter of resignation, Diaz said he felt an amnesty was warranted because conflict of interest rules had never been spelled out.

"Our policies prohibiting such behaviour may have been ambiguously communicated, inconsistently applied and widely misunderstood over many years in the El Nuevo Herald newsroom," he said.