13808: Chamberlain comments on 13862: Pina and demonstration (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

> Pina wrote:

> The event  AP and Reuters don’t want you to know about.

> On Monday, November 25, 2002 etc.
> The Associated Press and Reuters under reported the
> event [the pro-govt demo] only mentioning it in passing.
> Instead, all the lead stories focused on much smaller
> demonstrations against President Aristide's government.


Odd, then, that we can all read in the Reuters and AP stories posted on
this list at the time that:

-- the Reuters story led with the PauP pro-govt. demo, which occupied six
of the story's 13 paragraphs.  Hardly "under-reporting" and "only mentioned
in passing."  Four of the remaining seven paragraphs recorded a
pro-Aristide demonstration in Gonaives whose participants shot and wounded
five people in an opposition protest.

-- the AP that day chose to lead on what it considered the more newsworthy
fact of anti-govt. demos in Gonaives and Petit-Goave (where violence and
injuries occurred in both towns).  Three paras of the nine-para story
mentioned the pro-govt. demos and recorded the govt's statement that three
Lavalas protesters were shot in PauP.

As ever, Pina is long on tirades and short on hard facts.


> I find it interesting how Reporters Without Borders has conveniently
> made it nearly impossible to criticize biases within the Haitian press
> without being accused of supporting violence against them

Well, you are criticising that bias yourself and nobody is saying you
support violence against the Haitian press.  Though your dismissive
comments in past posts here about the government's failure to make any more
than token gestures to investigate the brutal murders of Jean Dominique and
Brignol Lindor and your evident lack of interest in these events might
raise doubts in the minds of some people.


        Greg Chamberlain