The News North Americans Don't See

[bcholmes]

Last night, two folks from New Jersey showed up at the guest house. I arrived very shortly after dinner had started, and I wandered in to find these two new guests at the dinner table. Sister Mary has gone back to the States (taking some kids with her for some medical treatment) and she'll be away for the rest of my trip.

So now the guest house is under the supervision of Pat and Vivian, a couple from Massachusetts who've been involved in Haiti activism for years and years, and Sister Mary Alban in here as well. Pat and Vivian appear to have known the two new guests for some time, and as I wandered into the kitchen, there was enthusiastic political talk going on around the table. This is one of the things I love about the guest house -- dinner conversation, hearing different people talk about programmes, events, politics, etc.

Conversation went in a lot of different directions. About what Haiti was like under Duvalier. About how there's still an odd admiration for Duvalier among some parts of Haitian society. One thing to be said for the brutality of the Tonton Makout: they certainly kept crime down. (If I were up for it, I'd make some snide comment about RNC policing. Meh.)

But ultimately we got into a conversation about news reporting about Haiti and how certain messages make it out and others don't. I'm feeling a bit demoralized about how important it is, on the blogs I read regularly, to talk about how horrible Ike appears. Hurricanes are more important to discuss when white folk are in danger, it seems. Hundreds of people dead in Gonayiv hasn't seemed to get any mention anywhere except for the Haiti-specific mailing lists I see. The mainstream news has had a bit more to say. But the blogosphere has pretty-much let me down, I must confess.

And we're talking about what news actually makes it out to the outside world, and how it's reported. Pat and Vivian actually had some of the mud cookies that were the topic of news reports that were forwarded to me endlessly. They had them stored in little plastic bags: yellow little disks. They'd gone to Site Soley and bought some around the time every news agency in the world decided to pick up the horrific story of people eating mud. Why that story, we wondered? Is it the grossness factor? Part of me can't help but wonder if it's also a "safe" story. As in, "Wow, that's just so horrible. Clearly things are so bad there that there's nothing useful that someone can do, so it's okay if I don't even try."

And we talked about Labadi, and how Royal Caribbean has a 99-year lease or something, and the cruise ships stop there and everybody disembarks. For years, travel companies were careful to leave you with the impression that Labadi is a private island, rather than merely a peninsula of Haiti. Pat and Vivian talked about conversations that they'd had with people: "Do you know what country Labadi is in?" Often the conversations would end with, "I don't want to think about the problems of a place like Haiti when I'm on vacation."

Then we were talking about the incident at the Hotel Montana. Shortly after the 2006 election, as the ballots were still being counted, news reports started to emerge that Préval was not going to get the necessary "50% plus one vote" majority to win the first ballot. Haitians began to suspect (probably correctly) that the vote was being tampered with (there were several reports of Préval-marked ballots appears in trash dumps that were helping to fuel these speculations). And so, one day, a bunch of Haitians decided to head on up to the Hotel Montana, where the foreigners who were in charge of coordinating the elections were staying. This was Monday, February 13th, 2006, and the election had taken place six days earlier. And when I say "a bunch of Haitians", I mean about 6,000.

(For the record, the Government of Canada is very proud of the $30 million dollars they spent coordinating the election.)

Pat and Vivian were in the country, then. They heard people talk about this incident. There was a mob. They shouted Préval's name. Some of them took swims in the hotel pool. I've heard that some people took food off of plates. But Haitians are quite pleased that the demonstration was civil, peaceful and successful. After this incident, Préval's standing in the vote count started improving.

But in the foreign press, this was repeatedly described as an angry, violent mob. The New York Times ran the headline, "Haitian Election Protest Grows in Size and Hostility." It helped the story that UN troops were flown on to the Montana's roof by helicopter, but unfortunately Bishop Desmond Tutu didn't read his script and he refused to be airlifted out, stating instead that he wanted to talk to the protesters.

News reporters love their little anecdotes. Here's the one I hear. Once the crowd decided it was time to leave, they filed out. One protester grabbed a towel off of a chair to take as a souvenir. Another protester confronted him: "Is that yours?" he demanded. "No," came the reply. "Then put it back!" Haitians are proud of this moment, and view it as part of the struggle to maintain democracy. Foreigners get to hear about an angry mob of black people. Surprise, surprise! That conjures up a very different impression of the event.

The recent food riots were portrayed in much the same way. Last February, when there were riots over food prices, the news media made a big deal about the chaos and violence. And surely some of that must have happened: a member of MINUSTAH apparently died in the conflict. Part of the local lore, though, that I don't hear about in the North American press, is that although a lot of Haitians took part in the protests, once it became clear that a segment of the protesters intended violence and property damage, the majority of the protest disengaged. As Pat says, the news shows you lines of MINUSTAH soldiers at the front of the protest, but don't show you kids playing several metres away. It ruins the image. And the image is always of a country out-of-control.

Comments

[sarah-dragon.livejournal.com]

But blogs are passe' now, though that does not mean people should stop blogging about what they see, but people are not paying as much attention to them as they once did.

Even so, that only affects a small minority of people. In the grand scheme, few people read blogs and sometimes we have to read them at work in between actual work. I mean heaven forbid we read the blog while watching Seinfeld re-runs. Also, the people who are the most are often those not in position to help. At least thats what we think. Its hard to be constructive sometimes when you have trouble paying your own bills.

The truth is Media are entertainment, not journalism and certainly not the truth or the facts. As a young Catholic school student when we learned what little we learned on journalism, the one thing bolted into our little heads was "just facts, keep your opinion out of it". Well it does not take a genius to figure out somewhere along the lines that went right out the window. People and advertisers pay for the sensational, not the truthful.

So how do we get the word out consistently to societies locked into the kind of traditions North American societies are often locked into? Especially in light of partisan beliefs. Two people who truly care about Haiti may have different views on how it should be fixed. Odds are instead of working together they will work at cross purposes because of their ideologies. Ideology as much as anything has been the bane of third world nations in need of help for years. Everyone wants to fix them "their way". Instead of doing what's best for country X, they assume they know what's best and will refuse another path out of pure ideological concerns.

Ideological battles keep the status quo in power, because the people below who if united would oust them, can't get their shit together to make change.

I often thought maybe the Jevoh's Witness were onto something, maybe going door to door and asking if you can come in and talk politics for an hour might work.

[dunhamdancer.livejournal.com]

Well said! Haiti will always hold a special place in my heart. I try to follow what is going on there but I do take news reports with a grain of salt.I am one who truely wants to help but have been stalling. I don't know what to do. My family & I struggle to get by daily, but in comparison I know I am lucky and can find the means to help!

AP I'm getting off my rump & I'm asking now. What can we do to help.my husband & I have a small scout group & I would like to teach them about what is going on & invite them to help. I know it is not much from this distance & the comfort of our homes but I would still like to offer what we can. Also, do you have any pointers on what to tell our littlest members? They are 3 years old. U look forward to hearing from you!

[redbird]

FWIW, which may not be much, the coverage I've been seeing (including in Newsday, has talked about the deaths and destruction in Gonayiv (which they render as Gonaives) and elsewhere in Haiti.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

*nod*

As I've come to understand more about the relationship between kreyòl and French down here, it's become more and more important to me to use kreyòl spellings for things. Thus, unless I'm quoting, I tend to use "Gonayiv" or "Pòtoprens."

[redbird]

I have no argument with that, was just noting that they did it the other way. Oddly, their spellings give me some not-really-useful etymology (on portoprenz, for example), because French looks more like Spanish that kreyòl does, but I think I'm getting a better idea on pronunciation from the kreyòl spellings. On the other hand, I may be achieving certainty rather than accuracy. (I know that my French accent is abysmal, on the level of having trouble making myself understood in Montreal.)

[mathbabe.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this.

Re: The News North Americans Don't See

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

one of the driving factors is tribalism -- it's not so much that it matters more when white people are in danger (though i agree, it is a factor, as we've seen in NOLA). but it's that north americans pay more attention to other north americans. it's closer to home; one might have friends down texas way.

i know people in galveston, houston, austin, dallas, corpus christi, and so i've been watching coverage of ike much more closely post-cuba. i relate to it more when people i know might be affected. and i don't know anyone in haiti or cuba (or the florida keys). i know i pay better attention to haiti because you post about it; without you i would know even less about it, and have no personal connection at all.

another factor is technology -- i couldn't watch much coverage from haiti and cuba, but i could basically watch ike hit texas, online, while it was happening. and pictures really _are_ worth thousands of words. that, too is part of north american privilege of course, because US TV networks send people to galveston, but not to gonaives.

but i did pay attention to ike from the time it got close to haiti, and then when it hit cuba. and my charity money went to haiti and cuba, not to texas.

in the laugh or scream category

[ardasiril.livejournal.com]

When I read this I thought immediately of:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_something_happening

Media is indeed entertainment; I can say that pretty securely having worked in it over the first decade or so of my adult life and that's a big reason why I am no longer in the media. If it's not interesting to the average individual or if it does not impact them personally it is not something the vast majority of people can find empathy for, whether they're models in LA or farmers in Tibet. Perhaps it's a leftover quirk from our early days as homo sapiens that says "the problems of my family are top priority," but there it is.

These days, with the world becoming smaller and smaller and many of us realizing that our "family" is more than the group of people we share a house or a flag or a hemisphere with, the paradigm changes. How to define "us" and "them"? Are we helping "others" when we help Haitians, or are we helping ourselves as human beings? How DOES one get the news out about the real suffering in any place? Is a drowned child in one city more important than one in another? How do you crack that "this doesn't concern me" bubble open and get people to care?

I'm not sure there is any one answer beyond that you have to do it one person and one idea at a time. You have to find what it is that someone cares about and can understand, and then you get the empathy you need to make things happen. So many things are wrong in Haiti it's hard to find the right one to start with or to push to get the right responses from the people who need to be involved.

Keep talking, BC. What you are doing is making a difference even if you aren't seeing splashed all over the internet. Each person who knows you and hears your story is able to empathize, and then they can tell another who can empathize, and so on and so forth. We need more truth to share, not just in Haiti, but everywhere, but for my people down there, I am grateful for what you do simply by speaking out.

And a big wave at Dunhamdancer - I think you and I shared a guest room in Jacmel once :) Glad to see you're doing well. -T

Re: in the laugh or scream category

[dunhamdancer.livejournal.com]

That's me! Good to see you! We are happy. Barely scraping by sometimes, but happy!

[firecat]

although a lot of Haitians took part in the protests, once it became clear that a segment of the protesters intended violence and property damage, the majority of the protest disengaged. As Pat says, the news shows you lines of MINUSTAH soldiers at the front of the protest, but don't show you kids playing several metres away. It ruins the image. And the image is always of a country out-of-control.

I think this is the tendency of news everywhere about everything. Of course, it hurts more in cases where everyone is desperately ignorant about the situation and there are no other sources for information.