29133: Holmstead (media analysis) The Dominion on the Lancet Study Controversy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

FROM: John Holmstead

The Dominion
media analysis
http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/09/08/on_the_glo.html


September 08, 2006
On the Globe and Mail's High Standards

The Lancet, Haiti and the manufacture of controversy

by Dru Oja Jay

On occasion, a study or report will appear that
significantly embarrasses--or even shames--people in
positions of power. In such cases, one can expect
those who see themselves as being slighted to mobilize
their resources to attack those whose findings caused
them to suffer. The result is an open battle over who
has the ability to state facts without becoming the
centre of "controversy".

This is the case with UK-based medical journal The
Lancet's recent study that suggests that after the US-
and Canadian-backed overthrow of Haiti's government,
an estimated 8 000 people were killed, and 35 000
women were sexually assaulted in Port-au-Prince. The
study, which was peer-reviewed by four advisors,
interviewed a random sample of residents of Haiti's
capitol.

[A similar case involving Human Rights Watch and
Lebanon was recently explored in an article by
Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook.]

Because Canadian officials have repeatedly claimed
that Canada's intervention was conducted in order to
improve the human rights situation, and because Canada
is responsible for training and vetting the police
officers who are named as a significant source of
political violence (along with UN soldiers), the
report qualifies as embarassing.

At least two similarly high-profile human rights
reports--from teams from the University of Miami and
Harvard University--long ago reached very similar
conclusions about the coup and the attendant increase
in political violence. Despite their thorough
documentation, the Canadian media almost entirely
ignored both reports.

The Lancet report, perhaps in part due to the
publication's high profile, proved harder to ignore.
In its last weekend edition, the Montreal Gazette
published a front-page story on the findings. The next
day, a followup story reported that Canadian soldiers
had made death threats during house raids and sexually
threatened women while off-duty. The report attracted
interest from CBC's The Current and As It Happens.

The response to the report, which emerged a few days
later, has been characterized by its attempts to
discredit the author by raising the standards by which
such reports are judged to comical levels of purity.

The Globe and Mail broke from its long-standing de
facto policy of not reporting on human rights reports
that implicate Canadian operation in Haiti with a
report by Marina Jimenez with the headline "Author of
Lancet article on Haiti investigated: Writer critical
of Canadian peacekeepers worked at orphanage founded
by Aristide."

The report raises two concerns. First that nine years
ago Athena Kolbe, one of the report's authors, worked
for an orphanage started by Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Second, that she once wrote articles under the name
Lyn Duff. There, the substance ends.

Jimenez quotes a letter by Charles Arthur as claiming
that the study could have been "skewed or biased in
order to exonerate Fanmi Lavalas/Aristide supporters
from accusation of involvement in human-rights
violations." Jimenez and others do not mention that
Arthur and his Haiti Support Group are affiliated with
numerous organizations that receive funding directly
from the Canadian government and Rights and Democracy.

The Guardian, a newspaper with a more progressive
reputation than the Globe, also opted to avoid
covering the story until the "investigation" became
news. The sub-headline reads "Report appeared to clear
Aristide camp of blame," and the story opens with "The
Lancet medical journal is investigating complaints
that it published a misleading account of violence in
Haiti that appears to exonerate the supporters of
[Aristide]."

Attentive readers, however, may be confused when they
read the actual Lancet report and find the statements
like the following: "Political groups on both sides of
the spectrum were named as responsible for violent and
criminal acts... Lavalas members and partisans of the
Lavalas movement were also named as having committed
such acts."

But the reason for a story's importance, such as it
is, is always in the headlines: the author is being
"investigated". It is only through close reading that
one determines that the only source cited for the fact
of the "investigation" is Kolbe herself and her
editors at The Lancet. The patient reader of the
Guardian will reach the fourteenth paragraph and
discover Lancet publisher Richard Horton stating that
"The Lancet is checking that all the correct
procedures for the research were followed."

He adds: "It is not suggested that the Lancet report
had misreported its findings or that Ms Kolbe had any
other agenda than the welfare of ordinary Haitians at
heart."

Investigation, indeed. "Checking" doesn't have quite
the same ring to it. (Jimenez, in the end, only cites
Kolbe herself to establish the fact of an
"investigation"; Kolbe has said she is in fact not
being "investigated" and said that Jimenez falsely
attributed her statement to that effect.)

In their enthusiasm for objectivity, however, the
Globe, the Guardian and the Associated Press, which
ran a similar story, may have lost some perspective.
The Globe's Jimenez cites Rights and Democracy's
Nicholas Galletti, who complains of the "author's
background" calling into question a "study 'based on
flawed methodology' whereby responsibility for crimes
is attributed to groups without a proper criminal
investigation or trial."

The question is, to whom does the standard that
"responsibility" should not be delegated "without a
proper investigation or trial" apply? Rights and
Democracy receives millions in annual funding from the
Federal Government (the "majority" of its funding, by
its own account) and its President is appointed by the
Prime Minister's Office. One has only to visit the
falsely-named "Non-Governmental Organization's" web
site to find numerous reports on human rights which do
not adhere to this standard. If it did operate by the
same standard, it's not clear how it is possible to
keep track of human rights abuses in countries (Haiti,
for example) where such crimes go unprosecuted.

Rights and Democracy's reports do differ in one
significant respect: they almost uniformly do not
inspire front-page articles that embarrass those in
positions of power in Canada.

* * *

Postscript: This is not the first time that the Lancet
has been attacked for a study examining the impact of
a military invasion on human rights. An analyst at the
UK's MediaLens pointed out some of the inconsistencies
in the media's coverage of various Lancet reports.

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