[R-G] "NOT VERY INTERESTING" - Haiti, New Orleans And Media Hypocrisy - MediaLens

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

September 16, 2008"NOT VERY INTERESTING" - Haiti, New Orleans And  
Media Hypocrisy
On September 1, the press began warning that "the storm of the  
century" was about to hit New Orleans as Hurricane Gustav "bore down  
nearly three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the  
city". ('It's the storm of the century,' Daily Mirror, September 1,  
2008)

A comparable storm of media coverage was to follow, with continuous  
live broadcasts from the city. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin heightened  
the sense of drama:

"For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for  
you - that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your  
life." (Paul Thompson, 'Storm of the century,' Daily Mail, September  
1, 2008)

But Nagin's worst fears were not realised. In fact weather forecasters  
had warned at the time that it was "too early to know whether New  
Orleans will take another direct hit". (Daily Mirror, op.cit)

By September 3, the reality was apparent. Hurricane Gustav had swept  
through Louisiana, causing eight deaths and widespread damage, but  
"had not produced any significant flooding," the Independent reported.  
US officials "faced charges of over-reacting" as they were "forced to  
defend the decision to evacuate more than two million people". (Guy  
Adams, 'Officials deny threat of Gustav was exaggerated,' The  
Independent, September 3, 2008)

Saturation media coverage had been devoted to a disaster that had  
simply not happened.

The following day, a senior BBC journalist leaked an email from his  
editor to media analyst David Miller at Strathclyde University. The  
whistleblower's editor had listed several stories which he described  
as "not that interesting", followed by the comment: "Dull stories -  
every one of them, don't you think?" These were the stories:

"The leading anti-drugs judge in Afghanistan has been assassinated.
"There's been an angry reaction in France following the magazine  
publication of photos of Taleban fighters displaying trophies they'd  
stripped from French soldiers killed in an ambush.
"The authorities in Haiti say the number of those killed in the wake  
of Tropical Storm Hanna has risen to more than sixty.
"A United Nations report says the world's wealthiest countries are  
failing to deliver on their promises to boost development aid."

The anonymous BBC journalist expressed his feelings:

"I'm sure once that Hurricane gets to Florida we'll have live coverage  
of the telephone polls falling over, but sixty dead people in Haiti.  
Not that interesting."

Hell In Haiti
Indeed, initial early estimates that more than 500 people had died in  
Haiti's floods received barely half a dozen mentions in British  
newspapers. It is now thought that as many as 1,000 people have died  
so far, with one million made homeless out of a population of 8.7  
million (http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/10/  
haiti_struggles_with_humanitarian_disaster_in). Rescue groups were  
last week reported to be unable to reach many villages across the  
southern region or to Gonaives, Haiti's third-largest city, which was  
cut off with 300,000 homeless residents. The city's population has  
been stranded for days without food or drinking water.

Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, a group that  
provides free medical care in central Haiti, wrote:

"After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida,  
I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what  
I just witnessed in Gonaives." (http://www.pih.org/inforesources/ news/ 
PEF_hurricane_letter.html)

Hedi Annabi, a United Nations envoy, touring Gonaives commented:

"What I saw in this city today is close to hell on earth." (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/ 
  08/world/americas/08ike.html)

The New York Times reported how crowds of children had chased UN food  
trucks shouting "Hungry, hungry" while families climbed on to rooftops  
and floating cars to escape floodwaters.

The figure of 1,000 dead in Haiti compares with eight dead reported  
for Louisiana. And yet a media database search (September 15) showed  
that the words 'New Orleans' and 'hurricane' appeared in 265 UK  
newspaper articles over the last three weeks. Over the same period,  
the words 'Haiti' and 'hurricane' appeared in 113 articles. There were  
67 mentions of Haiti's 'floods'.

But the devil is in the detail. Many references to Haiti were limited  
to one or two sentences. On September 9, the Daily Mail reported  
merely: "Hurricane Hanna killed hundreds of people and caused  
widespread destruction when it struck the island of Haiti last  
week." (Helen Bruce, 'Here comes a hurricane to soak us again,' Daily  
Mail, September 9, 2008)

On the same day, the Mirror wrote: "Hanna, which caused widespread  
destruction and killed more than 500 people when it hit Haiti, is now  
on its way across the Atlantic towards Ireland." (Maeve Quigley, 'Hit  
by Hanna,' Mirror, September 9, 2003)

The most substantial report was a 530-word section in an article in  
the Guardian on September 7. The Times devoted 150 words to the story  
on September 8. The Independent has this month devoted a total of 153  
words to Haiti's crisis. By contrast, a single Independent article on  
the threat to New Orleans on September 1 took up 1,269 words.

The irony is striking. Earlier this month, an Independent leader noted  
the "stark contrast" between the massive attention given to the plight  
of New Orleans while "the catastrophic floods in the Indian state of  
Bihar have barely registered on the international radar". The editors  
added:

"What makes the discrepancy even starker is that the Bihar disaster  
has so far been considerably more destructive, killing hundreds and  
leaving more than a million people in this desperately poor region  
homeless." (Leader, 'A flood of sympathy, sometimes,' The Independent,  
September 2, 2008; http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion /leading- 
articles/leading-article-a-flood- of-sympathy-sometimes-915628.html)

There were practical reasons for the difference, we were told - it was  
harder for journalists to travel to Bihar than to New Orleans. But  
there was more:

"[I]t would be dishonest to ignore some of the darker reasons for the  
discrepancy in the media coverage of these two disasters. One is a  
failure of empathy in the West. People can envisage themselves  
stranded in New Orleans, but not a village in Bihar. And then there is  
the sad reality that, even in our globalised age, lives lost in the  
developing world are regarded as less newsworthy than lives lost in  
the rich world. Even when subject to the undiscriminating violence of  
nature, it would appear that all men and women are nothing like equal."

At time of writing, the Independent has not mentioned Haiti since  
September 5. But the paper has at least helped explain its own  
prejudice.

Inconvenient News
Recent performance fits as part of a consistent bias in media  
reporting. In the latest NACLA Report on the Americas, Dan Beeton of  
the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research interviewed  
several US journalists who have reported from Haiti. Speaking on  
condition of anonymity, one described a common view among editors:

"Everyone knows the place [Haiti] is a mess, so what are you going to  
tell me that's new? What goes on there does not affect people in the  
US." (Beeton, 'Bad News From Haiti: U.S. Press Misses the Story,'  
September/October 2008, NACLA. See the full article here: http://www.medialens.org/ 
  forum/viewtopic.php?t=2846)

This indifference has led to an appalling level of non-reporting, not  
just of the latest floods, but also of the killing of unarmed  
civilians by United Nations forces (Minustah), the Haitian National  
Police, and death squads.

On July 6, 2005, the UN's Minustah force launched an assault into  
Haiti's Cité Soleil. According to declassified messages sent that day  
from the US Embassy in the Haitian capital to the State Department, UN  
troops fired 22,000 shots in seven hours in a neighbourhood where most  
people live in flimsy metal structures. As many as 30 people were  
killed, including a number of  children.

Although a freelance journalist was on hand to document the shootings  
and take video statements from victims' relatives, only a few US  
newspapers mentioned the incident. These mostly portrayed the incident  
as a successful UN attempt to eliminate gang members - reports of  
civilian deaths were ignored.

The US press has given similar treatment to atrocities committed by  
the Haitian National Police. By contrast, at the time of President  
Aristide's second term in power (2001-2004), there were numerous  
articles, editorials, and opinion pieces in US and British papers  
denouncing violence. The Times, for example, did not grieve Aristide's  
overthrow by armed thugs in 2004, but instead denounced his "despotic  
and erratic rule". (Leader, 'Au revoir Aristide,' The Times, March 1,  
2004)

The Independent's Andrew Gumbel wrote a piece titled, "The little  
priest [Aristide] who became a bloody dictator like the one he once  
despised." (Gumbel, The Independent, February 21, 2004)

And yet, Beeton reports:

"Reasonable estimates put the number of political killings - by the  
police or groups supporting his government - during Aristide's two  
terms in office at between 10 and 30. This contrasts with the more  
than 3,000 political killings that took place under the 2004-06  
interim government (and the estimated 50,000 under the Duvalier  
dictatorships)."

So why has so little attention been paid to Haiti after Aristide, when  
there has been far more political turmoil and violence? One reporter  
told Beeton:

"If the United States has spent millions of dollars funding the  
training of police officers, who then terrorize people or become drug  
traffickers, the U.S. would not be eager to have this information  
broadcast to American taxpayers."

Another reporter described how his editor had turned down an  
investigative piece on Rudolph Boulos, one of the wealthiest men in  
Haiti and a board member of the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington- 
based lobby group. The editor explained: "Boulos is a very well-known  
figure in Washington."

The deeper reasons were indicated by The Washington-based Council on  
Hemispheric Affairs, which observed after the initial, US-backed coup  
to overthrow Aristide in September 1991:

"Under Aristide, for the first time in the republic's tortured  
history, Haiti seemed to be on the verge of tearing free from the  
fabric of despotism and tyranny which had smothered all previous  
attempts at democratic expression and self-determination." Aristide's  
victory "represented more than a decade of civic engagement and  
education on his part," in "a textbook example of participatory,  
'bottom-up' and democratic political development". (Quoted, Noam  
Chomsky, Year 501, Verso, 1993, p.209)

Howard French wrote in the New York Times in 1992:

"Despite much blood on the army's hands, United States diplomats  
consider it a vital counterweight to Father Aristide, whose class- 
struggle rhetoric... threatened or antagonized traditional power  
centres at home and abroad." (French, 'Aristide seeks more than moral  
support,' New York Times, September 27, 1992)

We asked Beeton what he thought of media coverage of the latest  
flooding. He explained that the crisis is made far worse by the fact  
that so many of Haiti's trees have been cut down by desperate people  
for sale or use:

"Media coverage of floods and other natural disasters in Haiti  
consistently overlooks the human-made contribution to those disasters.  
In Haiti's case, this is the endemic poverty, the lack of  
infrastructure, lack of adequate health care, and lack of social  
spending that has resulted in so many people living in shacks and make- 
shift housing, and most of the population in poverty. But Haiti's  
poverty is a legacy of impoverishment, a result of centuries of  
economic looting of the country by France, the U.S., and of odious  
debt owed to creditors like the Inter-American Development Bank and  
World Bank. Haiti has never been allowed to pursue an economic  
development strategy of its own choosing, and recent decades of IMF- 
mandated policies have left the country more impoverished than ever.

"This is why the country is denuded of trees, after desperate Haitians  
cut them down to make charcoal to use or sell. Without vegetation, the  
country is more prone to flooding.

"Until Haiti is able to develop, free of foreign interference and the  
dictates of foreign creditors, it's impoverishment is likely to  
continue and even to worsen.

"The international community can help mitigate future disasters by  
canceling Haiti's debt - much of it accrued under the Duvalier  
dictatorships - and giving Haiti the policy space it needs to promote  
real, sustainable, development." (Email to Media Lens, September 9,  
2008)

This honest analysis of the root causes of Haitian misery, like the  
misery itself, is unlikely to trouble the pages of our newspapers any  
time soon.

SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and  
respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge  
you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Ask the Independent why it has had so little to say about the crisis  
in Haiti.

Write to the Independent's foreign news editor, Katherine Butler
Email: k.butler at independent.co.uk

Write to Roger Alton, editor of the Independent
Email: rogermalton at googlemail.com

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor at medialens.org

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originated. Please instead email us:
Email: editor at medialens.org

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