30038: Haiti4peace (news) U.S. Reporting on the Coup Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Haiti4peace@techemail.com




Weekend Edition Counterpunch

February 3/4, 2007

U.S. Reporting on the Coup Haiti

How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal

By Diana Barahona


When Haiti's wealthy elites removed President Jean Bertrand Aristide from
office in a February 2004 coup, they had the help of the Bush
administration, as well as that of the French and Canadian governments.
But they also had help from the U.S. press, which helped publicize a
carefully planned narrative to justify the overthrow.


I have always been interested in how a supposedly independent press so
often manages to report on foreign affairs from the point of view of the
State Department. What are the mechanisms by which the government's
narrative ends up being the frame for stories about U.S. military
interventions and CIA-backed coups in the Americas? Who are the foreign
correspondents and how do they learn the "correct" way to report on a
given crisis? Journalist Michael Deibert reported as a special
correspondent in Haiti during the crisis, contributing to or authoring 16
stories, which were first published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and
then in Newsday. I chose to look at the stories of just one foreign
correspondent because together they provide a perfect example of framing
techniques used by the press to create acquiescence towards the coup, or
at least to confuse the public


The Narrative


Every overthrow of a government begins with a narrative. Its purpose is
to justify the military removal of a president by telling the world that
he is bad and unpopular among the majority of the people. Another way of
presenting it is that the leader is the cause of a problem-a crisis-and
that the only solution is a change of government. Formulated by Stanley
Lucas, a Haitian-American employee of the International Republican
Institute, and Otto Reich, at the time a special envoy to the Western
Hemisphere for the NSA, the narrative was repeated by spokesmen for the
official foreign-financed political opposition as well as by NGOs funded
by the United States, France and Canada. All that was needed was for the
press to adopt the narrative as its own frame. Here is one version of the
narrative (March 4, Newsday): "Haiti's poor majority initially saw
Aristide as something of a savior, first electing him president in 1990.
In recent years, his popularity fell amid allegations that he tolerated
corruption and used armed gangs to suppress dissent."


Another variation on the theme of lost support was given while reporting
on Aristide's forced exile (March 1, Newsday): "Haiti's first
democratically elected president, who in recent years had been accused of
corruption, human rights abuses and ineptitude, apparently flew out of
the capital undetected about 6:45 a.m. in a U.S.-provided jet after
losing the support not only of many Haitians, but of his chief
international backers."


And finally, "Aristide, who was elected for a second time as Haiti's
president in December 2000, fled into exile Feb. 29 after months of large
street protests against what critics charged was his increasingly violent
and corrupt rule" (Mar. 8, Newsday).


The authors' repeated assertion that Aristide had lost popularity and
support is patently false. He won the 2000 election with 90 percent of
votes cast, and a 2002 USAID-commissioned Gallup poll showed that over
60% of the populace still supported the president. Even going by the
action in the streets, witnesses to the demonstrations say that for every
anti-Aristide protest there was a much larger pro-Aristide demonstration.


Questionable Legitimacy


Part of the process of undermining Aristide was to question the
legitimacy of his tenure as president. Implicit in the narratives cited
above is the idea that Aristide only wanted power; the idea that he felt
obligated to defend the country's fledgling constitutional democracy is
never mentioned. To the contrary, the authors of the articles use the
word "constitutional" to describe the manner in which Aristide was
replaced:


McClellan said Washington remains "committed to working with our
international partners toward a peaceful, constitutional and democratic
solution." That was an apparent reference to news reports that the
administration wants Aristide to resign in favor of his constitutionally
designated successor, Supreme Court Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre (Ken
Fireman, Newsday, Feb. 28).


After McClellan's quote, the authors go on to use the word constitutional
in every subsequent reference to Alexandre. In this way, Aristide is made
to be illegitimate, and his refusal to cede to the unconstitutional
demand that he resign is portrayed as the stubbornness of a dictator. The
authors reinforce this idea of illegitimate rule by twice referring to
Aristide's government as a "regime" (Jan. 1, Mar. 1), and by repeatedly
calling him "dictatorial." They use the expression, "corrupt and
dictatorial" four times and "despotic" once. Even people who fought
against the coup are delegitimized by calling them "Aristide's die-hard
supporters" (Feb. 28), as if their resistance were irrational. According
to Deibert, after the coup, supporters hoped he would "return to power,"
not "complete his term as president," as Haiti's 1987 constitution
required.


Armed gangs


The slur that the press used most often against Aristide was that he used
"armed street gangs" to attack opponents in order to hold onto power,
implying that he had created the gangs and gave them orders. The authors
use variations on the expression, "pro-Aristide gangs" 14 times and
"pro-Aristide thugs" twice. Here is one way Deibert describes them:
"Behind the National Palace, pro-Aristide gang members known as chimeres
lounged with assault rifles and beer bottles."


Aristide supporters don't call themselves "chimeres;" the term is used by
lighter skinned and wealthy Haitians to dehumanize poor, dark and
insubordinate Haitians. Contrast the above description with this
description of the Group of 184, organized with help from the
International Republican Institute to force Aristide out of office: "a
coalition of private sector, civic, peasant and labor organizations and
university students." And here is the description of the Democratic
Platform: "a coalition representing a broad base of political, civic,
education and peasant organizations."


The many references to armed gangs leaves the impression that they are
Aristide's only supporters, especially when similar language is used to
describe pro-government demonstrators. For example, both gangs and
demonstrators are described as young males: "On Monday, several thousand
young, mostly male Aristide partisans staged a raucous protest in support
of the president throughout the capital" (Dec. 31, 2003, Sun-Sentinel).
The articles do not try to correct this confusion of supporters and
gangsters; for that matter, how does Deibert define a gang? The coup may
have been a surprise to the outside world, but the Haitian people knew
from bitter experience what the end game was, and had every legal and
moral right to defend their government and themselves from the bloodbath
they knew was coming. A quote from the Jan. 1 Sun-Sentinel article makes
this plain: "Groups of young men from shantytowns formed a noisy barrier
in front of the nation's National Palace to prevent what they said was an
imminent coup d'etat."


Here is a paragraph that reinforces the claim that Aristide "used armed
gangs" against his opponents, showing them as menacing:


On Sunday, pickup trucks were seen leaving the capital's Canape Vert
police station with their plates removed and full of armed men, and other
pickups with identification removed circled on the outskirts of the march
route carrying young male Aristide supporters (Jan. 12, Sun-Sentinel).


Deibert's vivid descriptions of Aristide supporters-"roam[ing] through
Haiti's capital," "bands of Aristide loyalists armed with clubs,"
"stopp[ing] motorists at blockades of flaming tires, robbing some,
hijacking cars and shooting suspected opponents"-seem calculated to play
on white fear, especially in the absence of reports on the attacks
against Lavalas that were occurring during that period. In fact, when
rebels took the city of Cap-Haitien, it was described not as a blow
against Haiti's democracy but a "rapid victory" (Feb. 24, Newsday). No
casualties are reported, implying that Haiti's second-largest city fell
without violence.


Deibert had nothing to do with the following black propaganda story, but
it fits into the theme of Aristide and his supporters as savages. On May
10, 2004, singer and political activist Annette Auguste "So Anne" was
violently arrested by U.S. marines, and in the following month was
publicly accused by a woman of having invited her to President Aristide's
house in 2000, where the woman said she witnessed the sacrifice of a
baby. According to the woman's story, this sacrifice was to ensure that
Aristide stayed in office for his full five year term (Aristide wasn't
even president at the time). This unusual charge brought out into the
open what until then had only been implied: that government supporters
were naked savages dancing around a boiling kettle, preparing to eat the
white men-with Aristide as their chief.


Use of sources


The easiest way for any journalist to express his own bias is through the
use of sources. By using some sources and not others, selecting quotes
that support a bias and presenting those quotes first, the journalist
speaks through his sources. In the articles examined, Aristide's
opponents are always quoted first, allowing them to make outrageous
charges such as this one: "He burns children in their homes; he destroys
human rights; he must go!" Through the uncritical repetition of charges,
the authors accuse Aristide of corruption no less than 14 times, and
political assassination twice. They quote unnamed "critics" accusing
Aristide of drug trafficking a total of four times: "Human rights groups
accused him of ordering killings of political opponents and of
involvement in drug trafficking, charges that Aristide denied" (Mar. 1,
Newsday). Deibert's preferred source is millionaire sweatshop owner Andy
Apaid, followed by sweatshop owner Charles Baker, never identified as
such in the press. Deibert uncritically quotes U.S.-trained paramilitary
leader Guy Philippe, who claimed that "Aristide supporters were
conducting alleged massacres in towns they hold." (Notice Philippe's use
of transference-Aristide supporters and the Haitian police "hold" towns,
as if they are the invaders and not Philippe's men.)


Most of these allegations are libelous, and they would never have been
published if they had been about a U.S. citizen. A journalist who quotes
a person making an unsubstantiated charge is just as responsible for the
libel as the person quoted, and you don't get out of it by saying that
the object of the allegation denies it, or by using the word, "alleged."
Only in foreign reporting do reporters get away with these journalistic
crimes.


In the same way a journalist can present a source sympathetically, thus
making him more credible, he can also discredit a source by presenting
the person as uneducated or belonging to a radical group. In two
instances the stories follow up on anti-Aristide statements by quoting
supporters from radical organizations, providing a contrast to the
respectable-sounding names of the opposition groups:


At a gate of the palace, hundreds of people noisily demonstrated their
support for Aristide. "We chose Aristide for five years!" shouted Freline
Zephirin, an activist with a group called Radical Women in Action. "We
will defend him to the death!" (Feb. 25, Newsday)


"All were not pleased, [about the coup] however. Watching from a street
corner as marchers filtered downtown, David Oxygene, an electrician and
spokesman for the Young Revolutionaries of Haiti, a left-wing
pro-Aristide group, said he was disturbed to see foreign troops in his
country" (Mar. 8, Newsday).


Transference

On Jan. 1, in an article about Haiti's bicentennial celebrations, Deibert
employs the technique of transference to impute the opposition's methods
and motives to the president. Even though it was the opposition that was
engaged in a campaign to the finish to take power, by naming him first in
the following sentence, Deibert implies that Aristide was the aggressor:
"Jean Bertrand Aristide is locked in a take-no-prisoners struggle with
his domestic political opposition." The opposition wasn't above launching
an armed assault to seize power, but the articles convey the impression
that the only attacks are carried out by "pro-Aristide gangs." As
mentioned above, paramilitaries who were taking towns and who had
committed atrocities in the past accused Aristide supporters of the
same.


Civil society


The government attempted to mark the bicentennial of Haiti's independence
in the midst of protests and rebel attacks. In the article about the
celebrations (Jan. 1, Sun-Sentinel), Deibert expands on the theme of
Aristide's alleged loss of support. He makes the patently false claim
that Aristide has lost support of his poor base as well as introducing
outrageous allegations to explain why the poor have turned against him:


Combined with a deepening poverty among the poor majority, as well as a
political class increasingly bloated on drug money, segments that had
formed Aristide's base during his first tenure in office, peasants,
women's organizations, the urban poor and students, have found themselves
increasingly at odds with what they see is the government's corruption
and thuggery.


In the listing of groups that have turned against Aristide, we see a
classic formula, perfected from decades of CIA-backed interventions going
back to post-WWII Italy: the civic opposition. Composed of business
groups, the clergy, student groups, labor unions and "human rights"
groups, the civic opposition is a theater show put on for the
international audience through the medium of the foreign press. Look at
these diverse organizations, says the press: everybody wants the
president to step down. But look behind all of the civic-sounding names
and you have organizations, such as the labor group Batay Ouvriye, which
received generous funding from the U.S. government, and the National
Coalition for Haitian Rights, generously funded by the Canadians.


The numbers game


Deibert makes use of the quantifier, "thousands," as well as metaphors
and adjectives to convey the idea that the Aristide opposition is large.
Opposition protests are "huge." The opposition is a "swelling tide of
protests around the country" and a "groundswell of popular discontent."
The invasion of a few hundred mercenaries is transformed into an
"uprising" and a "popular rebellion," as if the population itself had
joined in the campaign. Supporters of the president, although they make
up the vast majority of the population, are reduced through minimizing
language to isolated groups or individuals: "Despite those accusations,
Aristide still had the support of many." This last statement is backed up
by quoting a barber. After the coup the only supporters visible to the
press were "die-hard supporters," "gunmen" and "chimeres."


Blame the victims


The authors report the economic crisis caused by a U.S.-led aid embargo
in the passive voice, as if it were an unfortunate weather event:
"Following the disputed May 2000 elections, $500 million in international
aid was suspended." The suffering of Haiti's people, intentionally
brought on by the aid embargo, must therefore be Aristide's fault because
of his "ineptitude," or because he squandered what little money the
government did receive: "Aristide's critics counter that any resources he
did receive - and they accuse him of getting some money from drug
trafficking - were squandered and used to pay high-priced lobbyists to
sell his image as a man of the people" (Feb. 29, Newsday). The president
is also held responsible for political killings, as well as the general
climate of violence that was in fact created by the opposition.


Omission: Reporting one side of the story


While the authors dutifully report every accusation the opposition makes
against Aristide, the government is seldom given the opportunity to
respond to them. Except for this quote from a Lavalas spokesman at the
end of an article, there is no other direct quote from a government
source:


'Where do these rebels come from? Who is the principal architect of this
situation? That is the principal question everyone in Haiti is asking,'
said Jonas Petit, spokesman for Aristide's Lavalas party. 'We are
observing hundreds of people coming from the Dominican Republic with
arms. This question is an international question.'


For balance, Deibert quotes human rights lawyer Brian Concannon (Jan. 1,
Sun-Sentinel), but this is in the context of the cutoff of international
aid, not the crisis at hand. Concannon is talking about Haiti's long-term
needs when it would have been more relevant for Deibert to ask him
whether demands for Arisitide's resignation were legal or justified by
any crimes committed by the president. Nowhere in the 16 articles does
Deibert quote a government official regarding the serious charges against
Aristide that the authors repeat in the articles-that he is "corrupt and
dictatorial," attacks political opponents and deals in drugs.


Another omission is the scant coverage of the paramilitary invasion force
that drove Aristide out of the country. Led by Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel
Chamblain, and Jean Tatoune, the well-armed group included former members
of the disbanded Haitian army. To their credit, the authors twice mention
Chamblain's participation in a 1994 massacre, but we don't read a lot
about Philippe, an admirer of Augusto Pinochet who had carried out
multiple deadly attacks over the past two years. Deibert doesn't mention
the fact that the mercenaries have U.S.-made weapons even though he was
present at a press conference by Philippe, nor does he seem to be asking
the obvious question: Who is behind the invasion?


An interesting side story was a January 1, 2004 report about a "formerly
pro-Aristide" gang based in Gonaives called the Cannibal Army, which
joined up with Philippe's forces and changed its name to the Artibonite
Resistance Front. This information is true, but the way it is presented
may have given the impression that Aristide was connected to the Cannibal
Army, of which there is no more evidence than there is for the other
allegations made about him.


In spite of relatively mild treatment of the rebels in the press
(reporter Jane Regan eulogized them) it was impossible to completely
sanitize these groups led by gross human rights violators, and the civic
opposition denied any links to them. Andy Apaid disingenuously claimed,
"We feel trapped between two [groups], an armed movement coming from the
north, and an armed movement coming from the terrorizing and criminal
government in the National Palace." Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Walt
Bogdanich actually investigated how the invasion had been planned and
executed, and to nobody's surprise, both the U.S. government and the
Democratic Convergence/Group of 184 were behind it.


The rebels quickly disappeared from the news, but they didn't disappear
from Haiti. Their murder of thousands of Lavalas supporters (estimated in
a study at 4,000) was the most thoroughly censored story of 2004.


Regarding support for the civic opposition and the rebels, who reportedly
were welcomed with "euphoria" by thousands of Haitians filling the
streets, here are the results of the February 2006 elections, according
to AP: "The businessman Charles Henri Baker was third with 7.8 percent.
Guy Philippe, who helped lead the armed uprising against Aristide, won
only 1.7 percent." Did anybody call for a recount?


It is impossible to say whether any establishment reporter intentionally
promotes the State Department line, or whether he has internalized the
world view of the ruling class. But it doesn't matter in the end because
a reporter is not independent of his publication. According to filmmaker
Kevin Pina, working in Haiti for seven years, a prominent journalist who
was reporting in Haiti at the time said about his editors, "Hey, I am
sorry but they are not interested in positive stories about Lavalas. I
wrote it, submitted it and they told me they were not interested." So it
appears that the editors, who answer to their publishers, know in advance
what kind of story the publisher wants. Even if they don't have a Michael
Deibert to file that story, they will find someone else to do it.







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