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Date: Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 4:08 AM
Subject: Permaculture TV - USA corporate media activism in Haiti - more harm
than good
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   Permaculture TV - USA corporate media activism in Haiti - more harm than
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USA corporate media activism in Haiti - more harm than
good<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/DZzBAMc-8BA/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 25 Jan 2010 10:19 PM PST

*This is great television, but it’s not great journalism. In fact, it’s
irresponsible journalism.*

CNN’s star anchor Anderson Cooper narrates a chaotic street scene in
Port-au-Prince. A boy is struck in the head by a rock thrown by a looter
from a roof. Cooper helps him to the side of the road, and then realizes the
boy is disoriented and unable to get away. Laying down his digital camera
(but still being filmed by another CNN camera), Cooper picks up the boy and
lifts him over a barricade to safety, we hope.
*“We don’t know what happened to that little boy,” Cooper says in his
report. “All we know now is, there’s blood in the streets.”*

[image: cnn-hero-anderson]

Cooper goes on to point out* there is no widespread looting in the city* and
that the violence in the scene that viewers have just witnessed appears to
be idiosyncratic. The obvious question: *If it’s not representative of
what’s happening, why did CNN put it on the air?* Given that *Haitians
generally have been organizing themselves into neighborhood committees to
take care of each other in the absence a functioning central government*,
isn’t that violent scene an isolated incident that distorts the larger
reality?

 Cooper tries to rescue the piece by pointing out that while such violence
is not common, if it were to become common, well, that would be bad — “it is
a fear of what might come.” But people are more likely to remember the
dramatic images than his fumbling attempt to put the images in context.

*Unfortunately, CNN and Cooper’s combination of great TV and bad journalism
are not idiosyncratic; television news routinely falls into the trap of
emphasizing visually compelling and dramatic stories at the expense of
important information that is crucial but more complex.*

The *absence of crucial historical and political context* describes the
print coverage as well; the facts, analysis, and opinion that U.S. citizens
need to understand these events are rarely provided. For example, in the
past week we’ve heard journalists repeat endlessly the observation that
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Did it ever occur to
editors to assign reporters to ask why?

*The immediate suffering in Haiti is the result of a natural disaster, but
that suffering is compounded by political disasters of the past two
centuries, and considerable responsibility for those disasters lies not only
with Haitian elites but also with U.S. policymakers.*

Journalists have noted that a slave revolt led to the founding of an
independent Haiti in 1804 and have made passing reference to how France’s
subsequent demand for “reparations” (to compensate the French for their lost
property, the slaves) crippled Haiti economically for more than a century.
Some journalists have even pointed out that while it was a slave society,
the United States backed France in that cruel policy and didn’t recognize
Haitian independence until the Civil War. Occasional references also have
been made to the 1915 U.S. invasion under the “liberal” Woodrow Wilson and
an occupation that lasted until 1934, and to the support the U.S. government
gave to the two brutal Duvalier dictatorships (the infamous “Papa Doc” and
“Baby Doc”) that ravaged the country from 1957-86. But there’s little
discussion of how the problems of contemporary Haiti can be traced to those
policies.

Even more glaring is the absence of discussion of more recent Haiti-U.S.
relations, especially U.S. support for the two coups (1991 and 2004) against
a democratically elected president. Jean-Bertrand Aristide won a stunning
victory in 1990 by articulating the aspirations of Haiti’s poorest citizens,
and his populist economic program irritated both Haitian elites and U.S.
policy-makers. The first Bush administration nominally condemned the 1991
military coup but gave tacit support to the generals. President Clinton
eventually helped Artistide return to power Haiti in 1994, but not until the
Haitian leader had been forced to capitulate to business-friendly economic
policies demanded by the United States. When Aristide won another election
in 2000 and continued to advocate for ordinary Haitians, the second Bush
administration blocked crucial loans to his government and supported the
violent reactionary forces attacking Aristide’s party. The sad conclusion to
that policy came in 2004, when the U.S. military effectively kidnapped
Aristide and flew him out of the country. Aristide today lives in South
Africa, blocked by the United States from returning to his country, where he
still has many supporters and could help with relief efforts.

How many people watching Cooper’s mass-mediated heroism on CNN know that
U.S. policy makers have actively undermined Haitian democracy and opposed
that country’s most successful grassroots political movement? During the
first days of coverage of the earthquake, it’s understandable that news
organizations focused on the immediate crisis. But more than a week later,
what excuse do journalists have?

Shouldn’t TV pundits demand that the United States accept responsibility for
our contribution to this state of affairs? As politicians express concern
about Haitian poverty and bemoan the lack of a competent Haitian government
to mobilize during the disaster, shouldn’t journalists ask why they have not
supported the Haitian people in the past? When Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush are appointed to head up the humanitarian effort, should not
journalists ask the obvious, if impolite, questions about those former
presidents’ contributions to Haitian suffering?

When mainstream journalists dare to mention this political history, they
tend to scrub clean the uglier aspects of U.S. policy, absolving U.S.
policymakers of responsibility in “the star-crossed relationship” between
the two nations, as a Washington Post reporter put it. When news reporters
explain away Haiti’s problems as a result of some kind of intrinsic
“political dysfunction,” as the Post reporter termed it, then readers are
more likely to accept the overtly reactionary arguments of op/ed writers who
blame Haiti’s problems of its “poverty culture” (Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles
Times) or “progress-resistant cultural influences” rooted in voodoo (David
Brooks, New York Times).

One can learn more by monitoring the independent media in the United States
(”Democracy Now <http://www.democracynow.org>,” for example, has done
extensive reporting) or reading the foreign press (such as this political
analysis by Peter Hallward in the British daily “The
Guardian<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-plight>,”
). When will journalists in the U.S. corporate commercial media provide the
same kind of honest accounting?

The news media, of course, have a right to make their own choices about what
to cover. But we citizens have a right to expect more.

Source: Robert Jensen, 
ZNET<http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/robertjensen>
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