The Case of Haiti: Failed State or Failed Media?

Author: Jared Ferrie

First paragraph (Teaser):

CBC reporter Claude Adams reveals that the corporate media re-inforced Canadian, US, EU destabilization efforts in their coverage of Haiti.

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Rest of the text:

"Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate."

- Graham Greene, The Comedians

If Shakespeare were alive today, the recent events in Haiti could have provided fodder for one of his tragedies. Consider the central character: Jean Bertrand Aristide. He is a ruler who is lionised by his people, but fails to meet their expectations, a man with many enemies, forced to make unsavoury alliances in order to survive, sold out in the end by his so-called friends. And of course, there is the inevitable bloodbath.

One of Shakespeare's strengths was to portray the subtleties of power politics. In a world of constantly shifting alliances, the leader who triumphs is one who can play these forces off one another. If Aristide were to have a fatal flaw, it would have to be his inability to consolidate power. The tragedy of it all was that, given the array of forces aligned against him, it was impossible to do so despite his efforts.

If the Shakespearian Aristide seems like fiction, it is because he was not present in most of the stories about the crisis. Aristide was portrayed by most of the media as a one-dimensional character: a leader who had forgotten his promises to the poor and lost their support, who had become corrupt, cruel and despotic, willing to go to any lengths to remain in power.

These arguments were used as justification for his removal and they were repeated daily in countless news stories.
But Aristide, like Haiti itself, is a complex personality in a complex world. And the more one digs into Haiti's recent history the more obvious this becomes. The failure of journalists to do the digging was not simply a disservice to the profession; the effects were far more dangerous.

Democracy has been overrun once again in Haiti, and once more the voices of the poor have been silenced. In this, the media were complicit. The coverage was superficial, full of holes, and Aristide's enemies filled those holes with their own version of the story. In doing so, they were able to convince the media audience in countries that played a pivotal role in the crisis - countries like Canada - that it would be best for democracy in Haiti if Aristide were to leave.

It was either a masterful public relations manoeuvre on the part of Aristide's enemies or simply bad journalism. Either way, what was missing in the coverage of Haiti was context.

Constructing Haiti

In failing to provide context, the journalists themselves became actors in the unfolding tragedy: They played into the hands of Aristide's enemies, turning international public opinion against him.

"I don't think it was an instrumental role in his downfall, but they certainly contributed," says Claude Adams, who covered Haiti for the CBC. "They contributed by re-enforcing the view that this man had lost public support which I don't think is necessarily true."

Many stories were based on the assumption that Aristide was a morally bankrupt and illegitimate leader. An early story in the Globe and Mail by Estanislao Oziewicz begins, "Even long-standing friends and influential supporters living abroad are abandoning Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide."
Oziewicz goes on to quote three disenchanted expatriate Haitians. The first affirms that Aristide has indeed become "an oppressive figure akin to an earlier dictator: Jean-Claude Duvalier". Another source accuses him of "corruption, the lack of transparency, the lack of concern for human rights, the total disregard for the rule of law, the politicization of police."

A third source concedes that, "He's lost most of the expatriate community, but not all." But none of the supposed minority of pro-Aristide expats are given a chance for rebuttal. The only pro-Aristide voice in the story is heard third-hand and re-enforces the image of Aristide and his supporters as brutal and corrupt: A Haitian-born Montreal radio host gets a call from an unidentified "Aristide backer" who says, "Did you know we also burn our opponents here in Montreal?"

The story is unbalanced, comparing Aristide to Duvalier is absurd, and for all we know the mysterious caller could be an Aristide opponent trying to bring bad press to the Aristide camp by threatening a member of the media.

Flawed elections or flawed reporting?

When it became clear that Haiti was a story worth covering, the journalists descended. But many journalists still based their stories on flawed assumptions. When the Globe and Mail sent Paul Knox to Port-au-Prince, the crisis began to come into focus for readers. Knox was clearly one of the more informed journalists in Haiti, but he still echoed many of the prevailing myths about Haiti and about Aristide. For example: "He was elected again in 2000 to a six-year term, but international observers said the vote was deeply flawed and most international aid was cut off."

The idea that the 2000 elections were seriously flawed was one of the myths that helped to undermine Aristide. "We kept seeing the word flawed, but nobody explained to us exactly what it meant," says Adams.

The media, in repeating the flawed elections message over and over again, gave credence to the idea that Aristide was an illegitimate ruler. This lent legitimacy to the supposedly "democratic" opposition that was trying to overthrow him. "We repeat these things like a mantra, when in actual fact all it really was, in the final analysis, was an immense power play. People who had been thrust out of power were wanting to get back in," says Adams.

The missing Haiti

What emerges from the stories that actually explore the elections controversy is that the irregularities were fairly minor and that neither the Organisation of American States (which oversaw the elections), the U.S. government, nor the opposition deny that the vast majority of Haitians voted for Aristide's Lavalas party. Of the over 7,000 positions filled, the dispute centres around the election of seven senators.

Yet, the United States cited flawed elections as a reason to suspend all aid to Haiti and block $500 million in loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. (The irony of this policy decision by Bush's administration, in light of the widely reported irregularities during the election that brought him to power, seems to have been lost on most journalists covering Haiti.) By blocking aid and loans, the United States effectively crippled Aristide's government, making it impossible to pursue any large-scale, meaningful social and economic development program.

Despite formidable obstacles, however, Aristide's government did manage to deliver on some of its promises, although, by and large, these went unreported in the mainstream media. In an article entitled "Media versus reality in Haiti" Anthony Fenton quotes U.S. congresswoman, Maxine Waters, who points out that, among other things, "more schools were built in Haiti between 1994 and 2000 than between 1804 and 1994."

With friends like these

The United States had originally restored Aristide to power after he had been overthrown in a 1991 coup. From this one might mistakenly assume the U.S. to be an ally of Aristide. This simplistic view was articulated in a Globe and Mail editorial: "He has been a bitter disappointment to supporters, including the U.S. and other governments, which restored him to power after a coup and have propped him up through the years as Haiti's best hope for democratic reform." In fact, the United States' decision to block aid to Haiti undermined Aristide's government, and they funded opposition groups throughout Aristide's time in office. But even at the time of the invasion, U.S. policy toward Aristide was contradictory and confusing. American journalist, Bob Shacochis, spent 18 months in Haiti during 1994 invasion and subsequent occupation and he describes the American position, or lack of one:

"The embassy was divided over whether negotiations were too hard on the Haitian military or too hard on Aristide. The CIA, in collusion with elements in the Defence and State Departments, Congress, the INS, and the national press, was openly working to subvert the White House's stated policy. Most damagingly, the agency functioned as a behind the scenes architect of FRAPH, a paramilitary terrorist organization."

Shacochis describes how the U.S. military came to view FRAPH as "a legitimate opposition party." Many members of FRAPH had been members of death squads under the previous regime of Cedras who overthrew Aristide in 1991 (much evidence points to CIA involvement). Many of them are the now in the rebel army that helped to oust Aristide. The United States has intervened militarily in Haiti numerous times, including an 18-year occupation beginning in 1915. It has given military and economic aid to the both of the blood drenched Duvalier dictatorships. Viewed in the historical context it is hard not to see this latest overthrow of Haiti's government as anything but a coup. The picture that emerges, if one digs deeper than the mainstream media did, was that the coup was the result of years of economic and political pressure on the Aristide government by elements of the U.S. government in conjunction with business elites in Haiti.

There was a coup in Haiti. Where were the media?

The Economist looked into the U.S.'s role in Aristide's overthrow, but only superficially. Their cover story asked, "Whose coup in Haiti?" The magazine provided some historical context, including the mention of "the coup that dislodged Aristide in 1991." But it did not give the same depth of analysis to this more recent coup. It concluded that "[t]he lasting question raised by this past month's events is how to deal with elected presidents who start to rule despotically."Again, it is assumed that Aristide is a despot.

On February 27, Colin Powell stated: "Whether or not he is able to effectively continue as President is something he will have to examine carefully in the interests of the Haitian people." Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said that it "is perhaps for Mr. Aristide to look at his responsibilities toward his people and say: 'Look, it would be better that.I leave.'" The French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin echoed these remarks.

There was no critical discussion in the major media of what
was clearly a consensus that Aristide should go. One can only assume that reporters failed to ask Powell, Graham and Villepin why they thought that Aristide should step down, considering that he was democratically elected. Similarly, an enterprising reporter may have asked why Canada and other countries did not respond to Aristide's request for "a couple of dozen" peacekeepers to help restore order.

Why did Canada wait until it was too late for Aristide? Because the government was still hoping for a negotiated settlement between Aristide and the opposition, according to Patrick Riel of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade: "There were hopes that things could be solved through a peaceful resolution."

"There was a CARICOM plan that was there before, which did not ask for Mr. Aristide to resign and Canada fully supported that plan," he adds.

He is referring to a proposed power sharing arrangement between Aristide and the opposition. It was negotiated with Canadian support by CARICOM and the Aristide government, and would have ceded substantial power to the opposition. But, by February 23 the opposition had flatly rejected the plan. One wonders why Canada, the U.S. and France did not put more pressure on the opposition to sign on. With no support from these powerful players, the plan had no teeth and the opposition knew it.

Canada, along with France and the United States, allowed the opposition to push Aristide out of office. And they did so with no serious criticism from the mainstream media. Ironically, immediately after Haiti's democratically elected leader was forced out, Canada pledged 500 troops as part of a multinational force that includes the U.S., France and Chile, to secure Haiti for democracy.

For its part, CARICOM has boycotted the multinational force, angry that countries like Canada could not manage to scrape together even 100 peacekeepers to act as a buffer between Aristide's government and the thugs in uniform that were threatening to take over the country.

The Jamaica Gleaner summed up the feelings of many in the region when it printed an editorial unlike any that appeared in major Canadian papers:

"And the new Canadians, who have mastered the art of the lulling old speak - there is the same cadence of a shared empathy from living in the shadow of a powerful neighbour - say they would have preferred the power-sharing arrangement to work. Even though they helped to undermine the plan. Now they say move on to help the Haitian people. And they offer a bill of sale which purports to show that what is now being implemented in Haiti is the CARICOM plan. Which it is not.
CARICOM's initiative called for a U.N.-backed peacekeeping force to be sent to Haiti while the democratically elected leader was still in place. Instead, those with power blocked approval until Aristide was out of Haiti. Then it was immediately approved."

But perhaps Canada's actions and those of the U.S. and France should not come as a surprise. As Amy Wilentz writes in The Nation, "The groundwork for this coup was laid during the months when Aristide was first re-establishing his government," back in 1994.

'A psychological war'

What Adams saw in Haiti "was not civil war. It was theatre." The media savvy rebels staged events and provided photo opportunities for journalists in order to give the impression that they were more powerful than they really were. In fact, the rebels only numbered about 200 at any point in time, but when we turned on the television or opened a newspaper, we were confronted with the images and proclamations of a well-armed popular movement.

"We were enlisted in what Aristide called a psychological war," says Adams. Along with sexy shots of men with guns, "we threw in the voice of the opposition and we showed pictures of disorder and chaos on the streets and the whole narrative became a society turning against the president."
On the other hand, the voices of Aristide supporters were for the most part absent from the narrative. "We didn't spend a whole lot of time interviewing civic groups, union groups, or poverty groups," says Adams. "Those guys were basically disenfranchised as far as the media was concerned. They didn't have an organized lobbying capacity, they didn't have access to the media, they don't have consultants and spin doctors telling us their message."

Another reason that Aristide supporters were given little chance to speak is that many of them live in Cite Soliel, a vast slum that sprawls along the waterfront of Port-au-Prince. It is a dangerous place at the best of times and most reporters did not venture in.

There are other, structural reasons for the poor reporting. Funding for international reporting has been cut back continuously over the past decade or so. As is often the case when an area of the world heats up, journalists were "parachuted in" to Haiti. They were sent without being given the time to research the story they were about to cover.
Another problem, says Adams, is that a news editor "looks at the mainstream media and he decides 3000 miles away what the narrative is, and he wants his reporter to reinforce that narrative."

The situation described by Adams contributes to a closed loop of information. Not given the time, resources, or leeway to challenge the mainstream version of events, journalists get their information from other journalists, the result being that misconceptions and myths are repeated over and over again. The "disinformation loop" is easily exploited by those who support and are supported by the narrative: they make themselves easily accessible to the journalists who too often repeat their messages uncritically.

History repeating

Haiti's history is at once glorious and tragic. It is the site of the only slave rebellion that ever succeeded. Once slaves in the most profitable sugar producing island in the French Empire, Haitians managed to throw off the yoke of their white oppressors. But the dream of the first black republic - freedom from poverty and oppression, a peaceful, educated and egalitarian society - became mired in reality.
The reality was that Haiti was seen as a threat to its slave-owning neighbours and was treated as such. The governments of the United States and France, in particular, did their best to sabotage Haiti's autonomy and economic and social development. In 1825, for example, France forced Haiti, under threat of invasion, to pay "reparations," to the tune of 150 million francs ($21 billion U.S. today), for the loss of their colony. Haiti finally managed to pay off the debt in 1947, but the payments greatly undermined Haiti's capacity for development for the first 100 years of its existence as an independent nation.

Haiti's poor are still paying for their stubborn independence. The country has now suffered the 33rd coup in its 200-year history, a coup motivated and orchestrated, it would seem, by foreign powers and Haitian elites.

It is worth mentioning that Haiti had recently tried to reclaim some of the money payed out to France. This move was referred to in the Globe and Mail as "disingenuous" and proof that "Haiti's president was at the root of the problem and should go" because it alienated France. One would assume that, with Aristide out of the way and a friendly government installed, the case will now be dropped.

It is also worth mentioning that Haiti's new government includes no representatives from Lavalas. The party that represents the majority of Haiti's population has been replaced by a government made up of business leaders. So, the status quo has returned to Haiti.

Anthony Fenton, having completed a ten-day fact finding mission as part of a human rights group, writes that "despite the silence of the mainstream media, atrocities are taking place in Haiti on a scale that is all too well-known, especially when we frame recent events against the most horrendous of the 1980's."

The responsibility of the media

One result of the failure of journalists in Haiti was that the spotty and inconsistent coverage allowed the Canadian government to acquiesce to the demands of Aristide's enemies with no backlash from the public. If the public had had a clearer understanding of events in Haiti they may have held their politicians to account. If journalists had pointed out the obvious fact that a democratically elected leader was being overthrown with the blessing of the Canadian government, Canadians may have demanded support for Aristide.

This article originally appeared in Latin American Connexions: Critical News and Analysis, Volume 15, Issue 6"An alternative media project produced by a volunteer-run collective including Latin Americans and Canadians."