22216: Esser: On Haiti and the newsmedia (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The American Observer
American University School of
Communcation's Graduate Program
http://observer.american.edu

Vol 9. No. 9

April 24, 2004


U.S. press learns lesson from Sept. 11
Appetite for foreign news increases
By Alba Lucero Villa

[excerpt]


These are places, he says, about which U.S. readers
want to know or “don’t want to know about but should.”

Press fails to provide context
In complicated foreign internal conflicts, it’s difficult to
“explain” the news, plainly and simply, but the episodic nature and
historical incongruence of international conflict coverage deeply
hurts the practice of journalism, communication experts say.

Getler acknowledges that coverage of Latin America is rare and sporadic.

For example, Haiti’s reemergence in the newspapers highlights some of
the difficulties and discrepancies of covering conflict abroad.

Despite the vast amount of recent news coverage of Haiti’s internal
conflict, media coverage has lacked context, says Bill Fletcher,
president of the lobbying organization TransAfrica Forum.

The fleeting nature of coverage has not been enough to explain to the
U.S. public what is really going on in the country, he says.

New York Times foreign correspondent Tim Weiner agrees that without
sufficient context, the reader is lost. He might, however, disagree
with Fletcher’s blanket statement.

“I’m a firm believer of getting as much history as possible in
stories,” he says.

For most of the articles Weiner wrote, the events of the day
determined what the coverage would be. Based in Mexico City, Weiner
was sent to Haiti to support other New York Times reporters assigned
to the story.

Before he arrived in Haiti, Weiner prepared by reading human rights
reports issued by organizations as well as the state department.

His first priority was to explain who the rebels were. Because he
covered the CIA when he was a Washington reporter, he knew of the
rebels’ connection with the CIA.

After filing stories from Port-au-Prince alongside his team of
reporters, Weiner went to Haiti’s countryside to write about how the
unrest was affecting the rest of the country.

“The political topography of the country has two sectors,” he says.
“There’s the capital and then there’s everything else.”

Coverage of Haiti uneven
Keeping a close eye on the front pages of major newspapers lately
might lead a reader to believe Haiti's crisis erupted overnight. But
in reality, experts say, the country has been in perpetual crisis.

Haiti is widely known as the poorest country in the Western
hemisphere and has witnessed only one formal democratic election, in
1991. Now-exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide won the 1991
election, but was overthrown by a military coup seven months later.

Despite its perpetual turmoil, the last time the mainstream U.S.
press focused on Haiti was in the mid 1990s.

The Clinton administration sent 23,000 U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994
to restore Aristide to power and invested $2.3 billion to help
establish a new police force and rebuild the country of 8 million.

That year, The New York Times had 157 stories on Haiti’s state of
affairs, according to a Lexis Nexis search of the terms “Haiti” and
“conflict.” That number went down to 68 in 1995, 29 in 1996 and seven
in 1997.

Last year, scholar Walter C. Soderlund published a book arguing that
the overall media coverage of Haiti in the mid 1990s was “thin and
neglected any in-depth treatment of Haitian society and the roots of
problems besetting it.” In “Mass Media and Foreign Policy: Post-Cold
War Crisis in the Caribbean,” Soderlund argues that it exceedingly
focused on personalities – particularly Aristide – and on violence.

Recent press coverage focuses on democracy
Fletcher says recent coverage of Haiti still focuses on
personalities, but compared to the ’90s coverage, the press is less
sympathetic to Aristide. The exiled leader’s popularity had been
waning for some time. By the time he was re-elected in 2000, Aristide
had lost support from foreign governments and international
organizations for his increasingly authoritarian rule.

A broad-based civic opposition, accusing Aristide of ruining the
economy as well as corruption and political intimidation, had also
called for his resignation. But he won with almost 92 percent of the
vote.

An overview of the stories published about the latest Haitian
conflict suggests that the dominant focus of the articles is violence
and the concern for democratic processes.

When news about Aristide’s departure hit the mainstream U.S. press,
the Bush administration was very vocal in asserting that Aristide
resigned and the United States, along with France, assisted merely in
the logistics of his departure to the Central African Republic.

Yet the next day, several people in the United States close to
Aristide were saying he called them saying he had been kidnapped.

Peter Eisner, Haiti desk editor at The Washington Post, wanted to get
Aristide’s side for balance.

Randall Robinson, of the lobbying organization TransAfrica Forum,
facilitated that when he telephoned the Post asking if a reporter was
available to accompany a delegation that was headed to the Central
African Republic to meet with Aristide. Eisner jumped at the
opportunity and met them in Miami. Only one other reporter was on the
plane.

“The purpose was to report what Aristide had to say. It was very
important to hear his version of the event,” Eisner says. Aristide
left on the plane with the group to Jamaica, where he is staying
temporarily.
The Post’s Haiti coverage has died down some since Aristide’s
departure. But Eisner says the paper is continuing to work on the
story.

Fletcher suggests the media should expand their narrow parameters by
offering different points of view. This would inherently require more
foreign correspondents not only in Haiti, but elsewhere.