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25958: Koleva (reply) Fwd: (Comment) Simidor, Delva, and the crucifix of "objective" journalism (fwd)
From: Gergana Koleva <gergana@journalist.com>
Last week I returned from a monthlong reporting fellowship in Haiti.
On July 20th, barely into my second week there, I was kidnapped in
Bel Air on my way back from the house of a woman whose son had been
executed by police a few days prior and whom I had just interviewed.
I was taken to a bare room in my kidnappers’ cinderblock shack,
which had apparently seen others like me before, for there was a rope
on the floor and a heavy bolt across the door of another room further
down the lakou. For the three hours that I was held there (I was
extremely lucky to walk out in one piece and unharmed), I went back
and forth between a complete denial of what was happening to a firm
conviction that I was headed for a reenactment of Jacques
Roche’s savage and sad end.
I am recounting briefly this experience to show that I harbor not the
least bit of sympathy for Haiti’s roaming gangs of violent
chimeres and criminals. Though considering the political context of
the Lavalas’ rebellion (but “rebellion” is a noble
word; referring to it as “Operation Baghdad” may be more
accurate), it is perhaps necessary to distinguish between the two, in
my eyes they are equally culpable of treating human life as having no
more value than that of a scavenging goat.
That said, I strongly disagree with Daniel Simidor’s comment
regarding Joseph Guyler Delva and his thinly disguised appeal to
Reuters to “get his ass fired” based on his July 28th
story headlined “Aristide’s party split over Haiti
elections.” While in Haiti, I met Delva on several occasions,
one of which was on July 27 in Cap Haitien, where he had flown to
interview former president Leslie Manigat, and I to meet and talk
with workers at a nearby orange plantation. Later that evening we
convened at the seaside bistro Les Cayes where he showed me an email
on his laptop that he had received a few hours earlier from his
editor in Miami. In the email, which included an attachment with an
edited “Aristide’s party split” story, the editor
asked Delva whether he was ok with a sentence that he had inserted,
which he essentially claimed “put the story into greater
perspective.” The sentence in question read “It [Haiti]
faces the possibility of dong so without the Lavalas party that has
dominated politics for 20 years.” Delva had not been able to
check his email immediately and proofread the editor’s
correction, and the story had already gone online without his
consent.
While Simidor busies himself making snug sarcastic comments about
Reuters’ arithmetic and “calculus of
misconceptions,” I would recommend that he refrain from
crucifying hard-working journalists who in addition to being
perilously visible by the mere nature of working in the perpetually
distorted, physically volatile political reality of Haiti, have had
for years to endure alternating accusations of being pro- and
anti-Aristide, depending on the sway of the current at any given
moment. The uniquely American notion of squeaky clean,
“objective” journalism hardly applies to Haiti at
present, though it may well do so in the future, and testing the
purity and fair-handedness of Delva’s reporting by weighing the
connotations of the words “party” vs.
“movement” hardly makes the case for his being fired.
Note to Kathleen, who offers another neatly self-righteous comment:
“a ‘journalist’ who doesn't get his/her facts
straight is incompetent and should be sanctioned, watched, and fired
if there is no improvement.” There are several reasons why
journalists sometimes fail to get their facts straight. In the case
of reporting from a war zone, one reason could be the not-so-smart
intervention of an editor bravely browsing the Internet away from the
line of action in his air-conditioned office. Another (not in
Delva’s case, but I bring it up by way of showing that I am not
addressing his issue only) is an obstruction of justice and/or truth.
The journalistic profession is on the same if not higher plane of
scrutiny as politics and a reader’s potential disagreement with
a piece of information by no means renders the author of the story
incompetent.
It seems to me that both Simidor and Kathleen need to revise their
purist notions of unflinchingly PC journalism as practiced in times
of severe international conflict, and specifically in Haiti.
Regards,
Gergana
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