Miami Herald apologizes for 'racist' insert column

MIAMI (AP) — The Miami Herald is investigating how it published a paid insert with what it called “racist and anti-Semitic commentary” and distributed to readers of its Spanish-language sister paper.

The Florida daily’s publisher Aminda Marqués González earlier this week said it will no longer publish or distribute the content of the weekly supplement LIBRE.

Marqués González and the managing editor of El Nuevo Herald Nancy San Martín apologized to readers in a letter saying they had not previously read the advertising insert until a column was widely shared on social media with commentary berating Jews for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement while comparing violent demonstrators to Nazis.

“The fact that no one in leadership, beginning with us, had previously read this advertising insert until this issue was surfaced by a reader is distressing,” Marqués González said, adding that the paper did not have a process in place to review the content for that and other similar supplements.

LIBRE accused the newspaper of censorship in an online statement posted on its website Wednesday while saying it provided advance copies and right to revoke content.

The column that was flagged was written by Cuban exile Roberto Luque Escalona, who arrived in the U.S. in 1992. While still in Havana, he was once profiled in The New York Times and said to be “Cuba’s only declared leader of an opposition party active in the country.”

In his column, Luque Escalona was reacting to a full-page ad published by The New York Times in late August signed by hundreds of Jewish groups backing the Black Lives Matter movement.

“What kind of people are these Jews? They’re always talking about the Holocaust, but have they already forgotten about Kristallnacht, when Nazi...