[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
29998: Potemaksonje (News) Press Barons and the 2004 Haiti Coup (fwd)
From: Potemaksonje
The Freedom of the Press Barons
The media and the 2004 Haiti coup by ISABEL MACDONALD
In February 2004, the US, Canadian and French governments supported an illegal
coup d’etat that overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected government of the
Lavalas party, led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In late 2003, “civil society”
groups--financed and supported through US and Canadian government-funded
“democracy enhancement” programs--began calling for Aristide’s ouster.
They were joined in early February 2004 by armed terror squads. In the pre-dawn
hours of February 29, 2004, President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who had been
elected with 92 per cent of the popular vote, was forcibly removed from Haiti
on a US government airplane, while Canada’s Joint Task Force 2 secured the
airport.
Critics of the 2004 coup d’etat in Haiti have argued that biased
international media coverage played a role in justifying the coup and
Canada’s involvement. However, in interviews that I conducted as part of a
research trip to Haiti in late 2005 and early 2006, many of the leaders of the
US, Canadian and French government-backed movement that toppled Haiti’s
elected government went much further in their assessment of the media’s role
of the media in the coup.
In the eyes of Guy Philippe, the US Special Forces-trained commander who led
the armed movement against Aristide, the “international media, the media
leaders helped us a lot. And thanks to them we were able to overthrow the
dictator. And without them I don’t think that we could have.” Leaders of
the aforementioned “civil society” groups also emphasized that the media
were very important in their movement. The Association National des Medias
Haitiens (ANMH), an association of the owners of the largest Haitian commercial
media stations in Port-au-Prince, was formally a member of the anti-Aristide
“civil society” coalition. In the lead-up to the coup, the ANMH, which
meets weekly, acted as a space of “co-ordination, decision making, enabling
the different commercial media outlets to forge agreements” and enabling a
“very strong impact on public opinion,” according to one of its members. As
the association’s vice president explained, “It was our own
way as the media to combat the dictatorship”. She added that the ANMH media
owners "made it our job to cover all the demonstrations" against Aristide.
Many anti-Aristide demonstration organizers report
that they were able to advertise their events for free on these stations, and
many of the 184-affiliated media organizations had a policy of refraining from
identifying the anti-Aristide demonstrators’ numbers (particularly if they
were not impressive). As one ANMH media owner explained, “we always support
the pro-democracy demonstrations,” and “sometimes we advance fantastical
numbers because we don’t want the public to draw the wrong conclusion.” He
added that if a group has 10 people but they want you to say 2000 or 300,000,
if you say 10…you can make enemies, you can damage the group and their
credibility. It can create animosity, so it’s better not to talk about…if
the media are interested in the greatest number of people coming out…they
will talk about how [the demonstration] is just starting.
In this context, one anti-Aristide demonstration organizer reports that at one
demonstration in January 2003, “we were 20,” but when they called in to the
radio, “we said we were thousands.”
In contrast, many Haitian commercial media organizations did not cover the
pro-Lavalas demonstrations that were taking place around the same time and
which were, according to independent journalist Kevin Pina, often much larger
in size. In fact, in the lead-up to the coup, they instituted an ANMH-wide ban
barring Aristide, the president of Haiti, from speaking on the airwaves. When
the ANMH stations did provide coverage of pro-Lavalas events, meaningful media
access for Lavalas-affiliated organizers was completely precluded. The ANMH’s
Radio Signal FM continued to report on Lavalas events; however, the goal of
this coverage was, in the words of one of its journalists, “to be there at
the chimere’s[an epithet commonly used to refer to Lavalas supporters as
gangsters] demonstrations because [we] had to inform the population that there
was a risk…Aristide’s partisans are known to be violent and we described
their violence—that’s all.” ANMH journalists whom I
interviewed reported heavy editorial pressures from their bosses.
Several Canadian and international newswire journalists told me they relied on
the ANMH radio stations, particularly the association’s Radio Metropole
station, around the time of the coup. One deputy bureau chief at a major
international newswire agency stated that the agency’s staff reporter in
Haiti “relied heavily on Radio… Metropole, [sweatshop owner and coup leader
André] Apaid’s radio stations;” it made him “wonder if we could trust
any of what we’d been reporting.” However, many international journalists,
including Canadian journalists, were relying on this wire service in the
lead-up to the coup.
Canadian journalists’ reliance on ANMH sources has a broader institutional
dimension. The Haitian media owners’ association has a longstanding
relationship with Reseau Liberté, an NGO whose staff includes CBC and Radio
Canada journalists, and which is financed by the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA). According to CIDA, this Canadian tax-payer funded
alliance between Canadian journalists and the anti-Aristide media owners cartel
is sowing the seeds for the development of “professional journalism,” which
is a cornerstone of the Canadian government’s promotion of “democracy” in
Haiti. US and Canadian government-sponsored “democracy promotion” is
generally acknowledged by critical researchers to promote a model of rule by
elites, in which popular participation is curbed. In other words, these
programs seek to export the very same undemocratic systems that are a hallmark
of political life in the US and Canada. It could be said that Canada
promotes the “professional journalism” needed for “democracy” by
supporting the Haitian equivalents of Conrad Black.
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/976#comment-12
---------------------------------
Never miss an email again!
Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. Check it out.