20387: (Chamberlain) 20366: Antoine: Thank you to Esser and Chamberlain! (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

I'm astonished at Guy Antoine's insouciant equation of the mainstream and
the ideological media over Haiti.  While you could make a perfectly good
armchair argument about their theoretical similarity, without bothering
what actually goes on in real life, the only test is what they produce.


The mainstream media go to Haiti and make attempts, sometimes pretty good
ones, to report, describe and convey what's happening.  Sometimes they get
it wrong.  Mostly they don't.  They believe they should keep an open mind.
They have doubts.

The "rent-a-radical" press is nearly always written by people who are
outside Haiti, usually have never been there and are usually quite
unfamiliar with what's going on.  So they reach for their political bibles
and their Chomskys and their Randall Robinsons who serve them up with
ringing "analyses" and opinions to parrot in the name of a specious
solidarity.  They're ripe for the plucking by any Haitian politician who
mouths a few "correct" slogans.  They are simply "believers."  Which is why
they believe Aristide when he tells them the chimères are simply
infiltrated by his enemies and he's the purest of democrats (much as
Saddam, Castro and Kim Jong-il would)

To these "rent-a-radicals" you can add some of the major US syndicated
columnists who are also called on to write trenchantly about Haiti when
they only heard of it five minutes before.  They too use strong and abusive
language, but nowhere near the deafening level we see in the articles
posted by Esser and a few others.

I don't want to know what should've happened yesterday, should be going on
today, and what ought to happen tomorrow, from someone who's spouting
ideological claptrap telling me what I should think about a situation they
haven't a personal clue about.

Take your pick.

The "corporate media" tag is a product of that tired old fantasy that
reporters everywhere have to write exactly what their bosses tell them.
This is nursery-level understanding of a simple public institution, the
media.  Other accuse reporters of writing their own headlines.  The
rent-a-radicals need to believe this stuff, these endless conspiracies to
keep their beliefs intacts, so they can continue telling Haitians how to
run their lives and their country.  They're simply not interested in going
to Haiti without their mind 100% made up, closed.  It's an illness.

Perhaps it's something to do with the difference between Europe and the US.
 In Europe we have mainstream left media, but there is none at all in the
US.  So Americans and those living in the US are left by default in the
hands of the Maoist and the Trots and assorted loonies, which they take as
the real thing.  In Europe, the ultra media take their (minor) place on the
European media spectrum along with the rest.


        Greg Chamberlain