[R-G] CBC blind spots on Haiti

[Anthony Fenton]

http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/blog/bruce-wark/1420

Media April 16, 2009
CBC blind spots on Haiti
posted by Bruce Wark -

Poor Haiti. “It is a hard luck country with a glorious past,” host  
Anna Maria Tremonte declared on the Wednesday edition of The Current,  
CBC Radio’s national daily current affairs program. Yes, poor Haiti.  
Tremonte seemed oh so sympathetic as she delivered a rapid-fire  
history that began with Haiti’s “glorious past”.

“Haiti was born out of a successful slave rebellion that took place  
two centuries ago. It was the first, black-led republic in the western  
hemisphere.” But, according to the CBC host, things somehow turned  
sour for Haiti. “Today, it is one of the poorest countries in the  
world. Grinding poverty, hunger and violence fills its days and  
nights, corruption hampers development on the national level."

Except for her reference to “hard luck,” Tremonte gave no explanation  
for Haiti’s troubles. She did not mention the economic, political and  
military oppression visited on the tiny Caribbean country by the U.S  
and two of its allies, France and Canada. Yves Engler summarizes it in  
his recent article Haiti’s Harsh Realities on the website Counterpunch:

“Through isolation, economic asphyxiation, debt dependence, gunboat  
diplomacy, occupation, foreign supported dictatorships, structural  
adjustment programs and ‘democracy promotion’ Haiti is no stranger to  
the various forms of foreign political manipulation. Most recently,  
the elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was destabilized and  
then overthrown on February 29 2004 by the US, France and Canada,  
which ushered in a terrible wave of political repression and an  
ongoing UN occupation.”

The CBC rarely reports on Haiti and almost never mentions Canadian  
complicity in the overthrow of Aristide. CBC journalists prefer to  
look ahead and so, Anna Maria Tremonte went on to make it clear Haiti  
was in the news because of an international donors conference this  
week in Washington. She reported that donor countries had pledged $324  
million over the next two years partly to help rebuild the country  
after devastating hurricanes last year. She added that Canada is  
already contributing $555 million over five years, money that will  
keep flowing until the end of 2011.

Tremonte then spent nearly twelve-and-a-half minutes interviewing Paul  
Collier, an Oxford economist, author of a book on the world’s poor and  
special adviser to the UN Secretary-General. Collier claimed that a UN  
Brazilian peacekeeping force has brought security to Haiti. Now, he  
said, donor countries should create jobs in Haiti by helping to set up  
more low-wage factories to produce cheap clothing for export to rich  
countries such as the U.S. and Canada.

Collier rejected the word "sweatshops" for such factories preferring  
to characterize his plan, which he outlined earlier this month in a  
British newspaper, as a first step toward economic self-sufficiency.

After her leisurely interview with Collier, Tremonte introduced John  
Maxwell, a veteran Jamaican journalist and author of an article called  
Haiti: The Audacity of Hopelessness published this month on the  
website Black Agenda Report. During his nine minute interview, Maxwell  
angrily dismissed Collier’s plan as an unworkable one that would  
enrich Haiti’s business elites. "Haiti’s history is a history of  
abuse," Maxwell said. “It cannot be rescued by putting some slave- 
labour jobs in place.”

Maxwell went on to argue that the small group of rich families which  
control Haiti’s economy and that helped overthrow Aristide should be  
“tried and neutered” just as the rulers of Nazi Germany had been after  
the Second World War. "This is what needs to be done in Haiti where  
you have a tradition going back 200 years of abuse by the United  
States, France and Canada," Maxwell said. He added that although  
Canada started participating in this abuse only recently, its actions  
were “particularly awful.”

When Tremonte asked, “How so?” Maxwell referred to a diplomatic  
conference organized by Quebec Liberal MP Denis Paradis that plotted  
the removal of Aristide under the rubric of the Responsibility to  
Protect doctrine.

After Maxwell complained that the Canadian and American publics know  
nothing about their governments’ deliberate subversion and overthrow  
of Aristide, Tremonte tried repeatedly to steer him back to Collier’s  
ideas about creating low-paid textile jobs in Haiti. Their testy  
exchanges illustrated mainstream journalism’s habit of sticking to a  
narrow focus based on recent events rather a wider one that includes  
historical context. It also demonstrated the journalistic tendency not  
to challenge governments’ explanations for their international  
actions. Thus, the CBC routinely portrays Canada as a generous  
international donor anxious to improve living conditions for the  
desperately poor in Haiti.

“Aristide wants to bring poor people into power,” John Maxwell  
insisted. He noted however, that international donors are determined  
to impose their own economic plans. "We need to give the Haitians the  
power to decide what they want to do," Maxwell said. "They want to be  
able to farm their land. They want to be able to replant their trees.  
They want to be able to have their families in co-operative  
enterprises...The basic thing that they want is the freedom to make  
their own decisions not to be told by Bill Clinton and Paul Collier  
what they want."

After Tremonte warned that there was less than a minute left in their  
interview, Maxwell tried to tie everything together. "The Haitians are  
being deprived of the right to make their own decisions," he insisted.  
"The Haitians are a people of great genius, great heroism and they  
have the right to decide what the hell they want to be and who they  
want to be. And the world has been trying, the Americans, and the  
Canadians and the French have been trying to stop them for the last  
200 years. And it’s time that this wickedness stops!"

Maxwell got to speak his impassioned words, but also had to contend  
with Anna Maria Tremonte's repeated attempts to narrow the focus of  
their discussion to Paul Collier's proposal for more low-wage textile  
jobs. Collier was cast as a calm, sophisticated, forward-thinking  
optimist with constructive proposals for lifting Haitians out of their  
grim poverty. Maxwell, on the other hand, was forced to play the role  
of the angry critic, concerned about historical wrongs that the CBC  
rarely, if ever, reports. The producers' decision to conduct separate  
interviews prevented Maxwell from challenging Collier directly.

Under the circumstances, how could anyone rate the The Current's  
coverage as meeting the standards of fairness and balance that the CBC  
claims to uphold?