22972: Esser: The Case of Haiti: Failed State or Failed Media (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

The Dominion
http://dominionpaper.ca/weblog/2004/08/
the_case_of_haiti_failed_state_or_failed_media.html

August 13, 2004

The Case of Haiti: Failed State or Failed Media
by Jared Ferrie*

"Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least
they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been
indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like
Pilate."
- Graham Greene, The Comedians

If Shakespeare were alive today, the recent events in Haiti could
have provided fodder for one of his tragedies. Consider the central
character: Jean Bertrand Aristide. He is a ruler who is lionised by
his people, but fails to meet their expectations, a man with many
enemies, forced to make unsavoury alliances in order to survive, sold
out in the end by his so-called friends. And of course, there is the
inevitable bloodbath.

One of Shakespeare's strengths was to portray the subtleties of power
politics. In a world of constantly shifting alliances, the leader who
triumphs is one who can play these forces off one another. If
Aristide were to have a fatal flaw, it would have to be his inability
to consolidate power. The tragedy of it all was that, given the array
of forces aligned against him, it was impossible to do so despite his
efforts.

If the Shakespearian Aristide seems like fiction, it is because he
was not present in most of the stories about the crisis. Aristide was
portrayed by most of the media as a one-dimensional character: a
leader who had forgotten his promises to the poor and lost their
support, who had become corrupt, cruel and despotic, willing to go to
any lengths to remain in power.

These arguments were used as justification for his removal and they
were repeated daily in countless news stories.
But Aristide, like Haiti itself, is a complex personality in a
complex world. And the more one digs into Haiti's recent history the
more obvious this becomes. The failure of journalists to do the
digging was not simply a disservice to the profession; the effects
were far more dangerous.

Democracy has been overrun once again in Haiti, and once more the
voices of the poor have been silenced. In this, the media were
complicit. The coverage was superficial, full of holes, and
Aristide's enemies filled those holes with their own version of the
story. In doing so, they were able to convince the media audience in
countries that played a pivotal role in the crisis - countries like
Canada - that it would be best for democracy in Haiti if Aristide
were to leave.

It was either a masterful public relations manoeuvre on the part of
Aristide's enemies or simply bad journalism. Either way, what was
missing in the coverage of Haiti was context.

Constructing Haiti
In failing to provide context, the journalists themselves became
actors in the unfolding tragedy: They played into the hands of
Aristide's enemies, turning international public opinion against him.
"I don't think it was an instrumental role in his downfall, but they
certainly contributed," says Claude Adams, who covered Haiti for the
CBC. "They contributed by re-enforcing the view that this man had
lost public support which I don't think is necessarily true."
Many stories were based on the assumption that Aristide was a morally
bankrupt and illegitimate leader. An early story in the Globe and
Mail by Estanislao Oziewicz begins, "Even long-standing friends and
influential supporters living abroad are abandoning Haiti's
Jean-Bertrand Aristide."
Oziewicz goes on to quote three disenchanted expatriate Haitians. The
first affirms that Aristide has indeed become "an oppressive figure
akin to an earlier dictator: Jean-Claude Duvalier". Another source
accuses him of "corruption, the lack of transparency, the lack of
concern for human rights, the total disregard for the rule of law,
the politicization of police."
A third source concedes that, "He's lost most of the expatriate
community, but not all." But none of the supposed minority of
pro-Aristide expats are given a chance for rebuttal. The only
pro-Aristide voice in the story is heard third-hand and re-enforces
the image of Aristide and his supporters as brutal and corrupt: A
Haitian-born Montreal radio host gets a call from an unidentified
"Aristide backer" who says, "Did you know we also burn our opponents
here in Montreal?"
The story is unbalanced, comparing Aristide to Duvalier is absurd,
and for all we know the mysterious caller could be an Aristide
opponent trying to bring bad press to the Aristide camp by
threatening a member of the media.

Flawed elections or flawed reporting?
When it became clear that Haiti was a story worth covering, the
journalists descended. But many journalists still based their stories
on flawed assumptions. When the Globe and Mail sent Paul Knox to
Port-au-Prince, the crisis began to come into focus for readers. Knox
was clearly one of the more informed journalists in Haiti, but he
still echoed many of the prevailing myths about Haiti and about
Aristide. For example: "He was elected again in 2000 to a six-year
term, but international observers said the vote was deeply flawed and
most international aid was cut off."
The idea that the 2000 elections were seriously flawed was one of the
myths that helped to undermine Aristide. "We kept seeing the word
flawed, but nobody explained to us exactly what it meant," says Adams.
The media, in repeating the flawed elections message over and over
again, gave credence to the idea that Aristide was an illegitimate
ruler. This lent legitimacy to the supposedly "democratic" opposition
that was trying to overthrow him. "We repeat these things like a
mantra, when in actual fact all it really was, in the final analysis,
was an immense power play. People who had been thrust out of power
were wanting to get back in," says Adams.

The missing Haiti
What emerges from the stories that actually explore the elections
controversy is that the irregularities were fairly minor and that
neither the Organisation of American States (which oversaw the
elections), the U.S. government, nor the opposition deny that the
vast majority of Haitians voted for Aristide's Lavalas party. Of the
over 7,000 positions filled, the dispute centres around the election
of seven senators.
Yet, the United States cited flawed elections as a reason to suspend
all aid to Haiti and block $500 million in loans from the World Bank
and the Inter-American Development Bank. (The irony of this policy
decision by Bush's administration, in light of the widely reported
irregularities during the election that brought him to power, seems
to have been lost on most journalists covering Haiti.) By blocking
aid and loans, the United States effectively crippled Aristide's
government, making it impossible to pursue any large-scale,
meaningful social and economic development program.
Despite formidable obstacles, however, Aristide's government did
manage to deliver on some of its promises, although, by and large,
these went unreported in the mainstream media. In an article entitled
"Media versus reality in Haiti" Anthony Fenton quotes U.S.
congresswoman, Maxine Waters, who points out that, among other
things, "more schools were built in Haiti between 1994 and 2000 than
between 1804 and 1994."

With friends like these
The United States had originally restored Aristide to power after he
had been overthrown in a 1991 coup. From this one might mistakenly
assume the U.S. to be an ally of Aristide. This simplistic view was
articulated in a Globe and Mail editorial: "He has been a bitter
disappointment to supporters, including the U.S. and other
governments, which restored him to power after a coup and have
propped him up through the years as Haiti's best hope for democratic
reform." In fact, the United States' decision to block aid to Haiti
undermined Aristide's government, and they funded opposition groups
throughout Aristide's time in office. But even at the time of the
invasion, U.S. policy toward Aristide was contradictory and
confusing. American journalist, Bob Shacochis, spent 18 months in
Haiti during 1994 invasion and subsequent occupation and he describes
the American position, or lack of one:
"The embassy was divided over whether negotiations were too hard on
the Haitian military or too hard on Aristide. The CIA, in collusion
with elements in the Defence and State Departments, Congress, the
INS, and the national press, was openly working to subvert the White
House's stated policy. Most damagingly, the agency functioned as a
behind the scenes architect of FRAPH, a paramilitary terrorist
organization."
Shacochis describes how the U.S. military came to view FRAPH as "a
legitimate opposition party." Many members of FRAPH had been members
of death squads under the previous regime of Cedras who overthrew
Aristide in 1991 (much evidence points to CIA involvement). Many of
them are the now in the rebel army that helped to oust Aristide. The
United States has intervened militarily in Haiti numerous times,
including an 18-year occupation beginning in 1915. It has given
military and economic aid to the both of the blood drenched Duvalier
dictatorships. Viewed in the historical context it is hard not to see
this latest overthrow of Haiti's government as anything but a coup.
The picture that emerges, if one digs deeper than the mainstream
media did, was that the coup was the result of years of economic and
political pressure on the Aristide government by elements of the U.S.
government in conjunction with business elites in Haiti.

There was a coup in Haiti. Where were the media?
The Economist looked into the U.S.'s role in Aristide's overthrow,
but only superficially. Their cover story asked, "Whose coup in
Haiti?" The magazine provided some historical context, including the
mention of "the coup that dislodged Aristide in 1991." But it did not
give the same depth of analysis to this more recent coup. It
concluded that "[t]he lasting question raised by this past month's
events is how to deal with elected presidents who start to rule
despotically."Again, it is assumed that Aristide is a despot.
On February 27, Colin Powell stated: "Whether or not he is able to
effectively continue as President is something he will have to
examine carefully in the interests of the Haitian people." Canadian
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said that it "is perhaps for Mr.
Aristide to look at his responsibilities toward his people and say:
'Look, it would be better that.I leave.'" The French Foreign Minister
Dominique de Villepin echoed these remarks.
There was no critical discussion in the major media of what was
clearly a consensus that Aristide should go. One can only assume that
reporters failed to ask Powell, Graham and Villepin why they thought
that Aristide should step down, considering that he was
democratically elected. Similarly, an enterprising reporter may have
asked why Canada and other countries did not respond to Aristide's
request for "a couple of dozen" peacekeepers to help restore order.
Why did Canada wait until it was too late for Aristide? Because the
government was still hoping for a negotiated settlement between
Aristide and the opposition, according to Patrick Riel of the
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade: "There were
hopes that things could be solved through a peaceful resolution."
"There was a CARICOM plan that was there before, which did not ask
for Mr. Aristide to resign and Canada fully supported that plan," he
adds.
He is referring to a proposed power sharing arrangement between
Aristide and the opposition. It was negotiated with Canadian support
by CARICOM and the Aristide government, and would have ceded
substantial power to the opposition. But, by February 23 the
opposition had flatly rejected the plan. One wonders why Canada, the
U.S. and France did not put more pressure on the opposition to sign
on. With no support from these powerful players, the plan had no
teeth and the opposition knew it.
Canada, along with France and the United States, allowed the
opposition to push Aristide out of office. And they did so with no
serious criticism from the mainstream media. Ironically, immediately
after Haiti's democratically elected leader was forced out, Canada
pledged 500 troops as part of a multinational force that includes the
U.S., France and Chile, to secure Haiti for democracy.
For its part, CARICOM has boycotted the multinational force, angry
that countries like Canada could not manage to scrape together even
100 peacekeepers to act as a buffer between Aristide's government and
the thugs in uniform that were threatening to take over the country.
The Jamaica Gleaner summed up the feelings of many in the region when
it printed an editorial unlike any that appeared in major Canadian
papers:
"And the new Canadians, who have mastered the art of the lulling old
speak-there is the same cadence of a shared empathy from living in
the shadow of a powerful neighbour-say they would have preferred the
power-sharing arrangement to work. Even though they helped to
undermine the plan. Now they say move on to help the Haitian people.
And they offer a bill of sale which purports to show that what is now
being implemented in Haiti is the CARICOM plan. Which it is not.
CARICOM's initiative called for a U.N.-backed peacekeeping force to
be sent to Haiti while the democratically elected leader was still in
place. Instead, those with power blocked approval until Aristide was
out of Haiti. Then it was immediately approved."
But perhaps Canada's actions and those of the U.S. and France should
not come as a surprise. As Amy Wilentz writes in The Nation, "The
groundwork for this coup was laid during the months when Aristide was
first re-establishing his government," back in 1994.

'A psychological war'
What Adams saw in Haiti "was not civil war. It was theatre." The
media savvy rebels staged events and provided photo opportunities for
journalists in order to give the impression that they were more
powerful than they really were. In fact, the rebels only numbered
about 200 at any point in time, but when we turned on the television
or opened a newspaper, we were confronted with the images and
proclamations of a well-armed popular movement.
"We were enlisted in what Aristide called a psychological war," says
Adams. Along with sexy shots of men with guns, "we threw in the voice
of the opposition and we showed pictures of disorder and chaos on the
streets and the whole narrative became a society turning against the
president."
On the other hand, the voices of Aristide supporters were for the
most part absent from the narrative. "We didn't spend a whole lot of
time interviewing civic groups, union groups, or poverty groups,"
says Adams. "Those guys were basically disenfranchised as far as the
media was concerned. They didn't have an organized lobbying capacity,
they didn't have access to the media, they don't have consultants and
spin doctors telling us their message."
Another reason that Aristide supporters were given little chance to
speak is that many of them live in Cite Soliel, a vast slum that
sprawls along the waterfront of Port-au-Prince. It is a dangerous
place at the best of times and most reporters did not venture in.
There are other, structural reasons for the poor reporting. Funding
for international reporting has been cut back continuously over the
past decade or so. As is often the case when an area of the world
heats up, journalists were "parachuted in" to Haiti. They were sent
without being given the time to research the story they were about to
cover.
Another problem, says Adams, is that a news editor "looks at the
mainstream media and he decides 3000 miles away what the narrative
is, and he wants his reporter to reinforce that narrative."
The situation described by Adams contributes to a closed loop of
information. Not given the time, resources, or leeway to challenge
the mainstream version of events, journalists get their information
from other journalists, the result being that misconceptions and
myths are repeated over and over again. The "disinformation loop" is
easily exploited by those who support and are supported by the
narrative: they make themselves easily accessible to the journalists
who too often repeat their messages uncritically.

History repeating
Haiti's history is at once glorious and tragic. It is the site of the
only slave rebellion that ever succeeded. Once slaves in the most
profitable sugar producing island in the French Empire, Haitians
managed to throw off the yoke of their white oppressors. But the
dream of the first black republic - freedom from poverty and
oppression, a peaceful, educated and egalitarian society - became
mired in reality.
The reality was that Haiti was seen as a threat to its slave-owning
neighbours and was treated as such. The governments of the United
States and France, in particular, did their best to sabotage Haiti's
autonomy and economic and social development. In 1825, for example,
France forced Haiti, under threat of invasion, to pay "reparations,"
to the tune of 150 million francs ($21 billion U.S. today), for the
loss of their colony. Haiti finally managed to pay off the debt in
1947, but the payments greatly undermined Haiti's capacity for
development for the first 100 years of its existence as an
independent nation.
Haiti's poor are still paying for their stubborn independence. The
country has now suffered the 33rd coup in its 200-year history, a
coup motivated and orchestrated, it would seem, by foreign powers and
Haitian elites.
It is worth mentioning that Haiti had recently tried to reclaim some
of the money payed out to France. This move was referred to in the
Globe and Mail as "disingenuous" and proof that "Haiti's president
was at the root of the problem and should go" because it alienated
France. One would assume that, with Aristide out of the way and a
friendly government installed, the case will now be dropped.
It is also worth mentioning that Haiti's new government includes no
representatives from Lavalas. The party that represents the majority
of Haiti's population has been replaced by a government made up of
business leaders. So, the status quo has returned to Haiti.
Anthony Fenton, having completed a ten-day fact finding mission as
part of a human rights group, writes that "despite the silence of the
mainstream media, atrocities are taking place in Haiti on a scale
that is all too well-known, especially when we frame recent events
against the most horrendous of the 1980's."

The responsibility of the media
One result of the failure of journalists in Haiti was that the spotty
and inconsistent coverage allowed the Canadian government to
acquiesce to the demands of Aristide's enemies with no backlash from
the public. If the public had had a clearer understanding of events
in Haiti they may have held their politicians to account. If
journalists had pointed out the obvious fact that a democratically
elected leader was being overthrown with the blessing of the Canadian
government, Canadians may have demanded support for Aristide.

*This article originally appeared in Latin American Connexions:
Critical News and Analysis, Volume 15, Issue 6, printed in Vancouver,
B.C.
.