25907: Simidor (comment): Reuters Revisited (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

Reuters has adjusted some of their arithmetic on
Lavalas while keeping intact the larger calculus of
their misconceptions about Haiti.  Delva?s July 28
report was evidently handed down for corrections to a
copy editor who redid the math and downgraded Lavalas
to the status of a mere ?movement,? which in turn only
?helped? in forcing Baby Doc from power.  Haiti is
just not that important to the Reuters editors, and
once Delva becomes too much of a liability, Haiti will
be handed over in all likelihood to their
correspondent in the Dominican Republic or some place
else in the region.  The choice here is between more
shoddy news and less news, between bad and worse,
which should surprise no one when it comes to Haiti.

Haitian reality is more complicated than what Reuters
is willing or able to handle.  For starters, there is
the dichotomy between the very wealthy, powerful and
corrupt Lavalas bosses, and ?the poor masses? they
purport to lead.  The affluent Reuters editors must
have a very low opinion of ?the poor masses? in
question, or else they would challenge a disparity so
glaring that it would defy common sense in any other
context.  What evidence is there, beyond the words of
a handful of Aristide lobbyists and foreign
supporters, that the poor Haitian masses in their
millions ever belonged ?to the largest political
party...of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide??
(Or is it that Reuters is more comfortable with mere
clichés, as is evident here?)

The news about Haiti this week and last week is not
about which of two Lavalas factions ? the ?Aristide or
Death? group, or the "moderate" pro-elections one ? is
doing what.  Both factions are equally discredited:
the former for using gang violence, rape, kidnappings
and other terrorist acts as the means to their end;
the latter for their lack of a constituency, and for
failing to denounce the corruption and the past and
current violence associated with the Lavalas regime.
How Delva got to file that story without his editors
demanding an accounting of Lavalas implication in the
brutal murder of the journalist Jacques Roche, or of
the persistent reports of alleged South African
mercenaries hired to wreck havoc during the upcoming
Haitian elections, is simply a mystery to me.

In a later story filed on Wed., Delva finally came to
grip, in his own peculiar way, with the recent
inquiries into Aristide?s corruption.  Without any
indication that he actually read the reports in
question, the Reuters correspondent interviewed the
head of one of the two commissions involved, former
opposition senator Paul Denis, and an obscure Lavalas
spokesman, Felito Doran.  Aside from his earlier
opposition to Aristide, Paul Denis is a respected
intellectual, known for his probity and his life-long
commitment to peace and social justice.  But
unsurprisingly and against the ethics of his
profession, Delva managed to give the last word in his
article to the Lavalas spokesman who attacked Denis,
without substantiation or fairness, for opposing
Aristide ?with the most illegal and violent means.?
Which makes liars out of both Doran and Delva.

Is it at all possible to get Delva to do his job
without getting his ass fired?