`CUBAN SPIES'

It was almost inevitable that the circus atmosphere in the coverage would commit a serious error, and it did Thursday with a skybox headline on Page One in The Herald that read: Did Cuban Spies Take Cutié Photos? Priest says he has his suspicions. Online readers understandably skewered Cutié for seeming ridiculous.

The story was based on a Univisíon interview, but in it Father Cutié never, in fact, says ''Cuban spy.'' The article took less leeway but still said: ``Cutié intimated it may have been Cuban spies who followed him and taped him getting frisky with his lover on a beach in Miami.''

As reporter Lydia Martin recounted to me in an e-mail, the interview and her story unfolded this way:

He said, and this is the quote we ran, ''I knew that during some time, I was being followed,'' Cutié said. ''I think that being Cuban American, we have that paranoia that perhaps it could be someone from another government, from another place.'' . . .

Right here, the Univisión interviewer, Teresa Rodriguez, says, ''Un espia Cubano.'' She doesn't so much ask as assert. And he continued talking, not correcting her but adding, ``I had experiences at Radio Paz of seeing strange cars when I would leave work late or arrive early. I would see things and I would say, I wonder who would be following me?''

But Cutié never, in fact, says that he thinks a Cuban spy took the pictures. It's the interviewer who worked that angle, and it is not enough to say in the heat of a television interview that he didn't correct her. He seems as much to be saying that he was often paranoid in general about being followed.

Cutié was one of three church figures that the Cuban government several years ago wouldn't allow to accompany Pope John Paul II into the country, suggesting that they, at least, have a file on him.

Martin said she tried to call Cutié but couldn't get through. She was right to publish his comments, but she should have added context and questions about the clarity of what he was saying.

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