Update 11/15: Thanks to everyone spreading the word. The author of the articles in question, Steve Tuttle, can be reached at steve.tuttle@newsweek.com. Also don’t miss this petition directed at the editors that you can sign here. Tuttle emailed me defending the piece a “first-person column,” thanking me for the “thoughtful criticism,” but saying next to nothing of substance. He has not responded to my last message.

Newsweek’s article yesterday, “Haiti in a Time of Cholera,” is not worth reading. Unless you happen to be curious, more than anything, about how alien and depressing Haiti is to Steven Tuttle, the magazine’s staff reporter. He was sent here on a short trip to cover the cholera outbreak.

He followed my satirical guide for journalists parachuting in to Haiti absurdly well.

For him, Haiti’s street traffic “defies all rules of logic and physics.”

For him, UN peacekeepers who appeared to have run over an unnamed Haitian woman, killing her and attempting to hide what happened, don’t merit further investigation or explanation.

More interesting is the young boy who walks by the scene of the accident – an example of “the defining characteristic of Haitians.” They are the “most resilient people on the planet.”

His previous article concludes comparing the Haitian people to a gnarled tree. “That’s what Haitians are like. . .Beautiful and tough.”

But for Newsweek, Haitians are also scary.

Tuttle bravely ventures beyond his hotel, where he broke down in tears one night, to an area called Truitier. He’s frightened by a man he describes as “screaming.”

“I was really glad I didn’t understand Creole because I don’t think I want to know what he said.” He didn’t think to ask his translator, who was driving the vehicle. “I decided I would not get out of the car. This was because I was scared to death.”

I went to Truitier last week by tap-tap and found myself chatting with a group of young men and women. They explained how they postponed their demonstration against waste-dumping because of Hurricane Tomas. We laughed about how unusual it is for blan (foreigners) to be walking on foot. In an earlier trip to Truitier, I followed and talked with people scouring the dump pile itself, looking for things they could sell (see Al Jazeera English’s report yesterday for video of their protest).

I won’t rehash the rest of Tuttle’s sadly predictable yet highly sensational piece. Needless to say, between his two Haiti reports, not a single on-the-street Haitian is quoted.

Take action and write to Newsweek’s editors. Twittering your outrage or complaining to friends is not enough.

I happen to have email addresses for Newsweek’s editors. Andrew Bast is the articles editor: Andrew.Bast@newsweek.com, while Samuel Lennox is the web editor: lennox.samuels@newsweek.com.

Tell them you will not stand for this outdated brand of reporting in which Haiti is a frightening other-worldly place whose people scream and suffer, but do not speak for themselves. This is the trope of the “noble savage” at work. It smacks of colonialism and racism.

I recently tried pitching stories to them. A story based on a exclusive information I obtained about a recent prison break? Not broad enough in scope. Failure of UN peacekeepers to address widespread rapes in camps? The editor wanted to know more about the role of “gangs” and “thugs” in the crisis. How about a report on the spreading cholera outbreak, which at that time officials said was “stabilized”? I never heard back after that.

——

Newsweek has dishonorably distinguished itself among the pack of establishment media outlets who have turned their dollar-seeking gazes back upon Haiti. They all but ignored the stagnant, faltering humanitarian response to earthquake victims living in tent camps over the past ten months. Cholera and hurricanes, though, are fresh.

After the earthquake I wrote a similar post to this one condemning CNN for hyping the threat of widespread violence. It might have had an impact, because that element of their coverage seemed to fade afterwards.

In its limited cholera coverage, CNN could be doing so much better. What little I saw of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s reporting looked pretty poor – lots of close-ups on sick people, little in-depth context. Or take the following two passages, for example:

Still, even Port-au-Prince looks and smells like a dump — a caldron of water, garbage and human waste. “We get used to it,” said one resident. (Nov 10)

Humanitarian organizations are doing what they can. But with an estimated 1.3 million Haitians left homeless by the January 12 earthquake, the task before them is enormous. (Nov 5)

Port-au-Prince does not look and smell like a dump. There are places of beauty and relative cleanliness all over the city. Trash trucks are constantly picking up waste, though it does pile up. No mention of the spotlessness of most Haitians’ clothes, their frequent bathing and washing.

The claim that humanitarian groups “are doing what they can” is, to say the least, highly questionable (look at my own reporting over the past few weeks).

I’ve done many interviews with the CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster, since the cholera outbreak began. I’m thankful for the opportunity to reach a wider audience beyond those already tuned into independent media. Some Canadians are appreciative.

Cholera kills by rapidly emptying the body of water. It’s a “disease of poverty” that thrives in countries whose people do not have ready access to clean water sources. Naturally, Haiti’s poor water infrastructure should a major focus of news reporting.

But the CBC was only interested in quick snapshots of the latest situation on the ground. So I was never given time to explain how the Bush administration denied loans to the Haitian government, on political grounds, for the development of water infrastructure in the zone where the outbreak began.

One anchor concluded our interview casually referring to Haiti’s “unluckiness,” and later relayed an apology to me off-air. Another began the interview claiming that “unlike in the tent camps, Cite Soleil has no access to water.” I said that’s misleading, because independent surveys have found that 30-40% of camps lack water and toilets. The Haitian government has organized distributions of water to some areas of Cite Soleil.

In the next interview she read the same introduction, so I tried to explain it more thoroughly. The anchor grew frustrated and cut me off.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Since the cholera outbreak began, behind the scenes I’ve caught and helped correct pieces of misinformation in reports by Reuters, Al Jazeera English, and AOL News. None of those outlets transparently amended corrections to their work. They simply changed the text.

Doctors Without Borders and a Dr. Coffee from Port-au-Prince’s general hospital have complained of unwelcome journalists inside wards of sick patients.

——

Another media is possible.

Bri Kouri Nouvel Gaye and Haiti Libre are both reporting projects by Haitian journalists worth following and supporting.

Haiti Liberte, a venerable newspaper that just published an exclusive interview with former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is raising funds.

A few days ago I was in Bel Air, following up on an internal report that a UN patrol recently pepper sprayed and fired rubber bullets on an upset crowd. I asked some men sitting on steps if they knew about it. They said no, but then asked me, “Why are you asking? You’re going to make money from your report, right?” I said yes, I probably would, but tried to explain that it wasn’t my main motivation for looking into this. They said, with some grins and laughter, that I should pay them if I wanted any more information. I said I couldn’t do that and thanked them for giving me the time of day.

Of course Haitians know that foreign journalists make money. When a crisis hits, they make good money. But is any of it invested in Haiti? Are foreign journalists helping Haiti or exploiting it?

I personally earned more since the cholera outbreak began, most of it coming from interviews with CBC and other outlets, than in the few preceding months when I barely made enough to cover expenses.

Some of that money will now go to re-develop and expand the Haiti Analysis project. There are plans in the works to fund a reporting trip to his home country for Wadner Pierre, an award-winning Haitian journalist from Gonaives who is currently studying in New Orleans, during the election. Some of it will finance my own long-delayed trip to northern city of Cap Haitien, where the possible murder of a boy by UN peacekeepers has gone totally uninvestigated by American journalists for over two months. I might finally buy a motorcycle so I can get around more easily.

Another media is not only possible, but vital if Haiti is to break from the cycle of disaster and cynical corporate media feeding off it. Let’s make it happen.

Hi Al and friends,

Excellent reply. I thought the open letter and response would be linked from the Narco News homepage. Also, why isn’t it open to comments? Is anyone actually going to see it, just sitting there in the lab section of the site?

My reaction to the letter was the same as yours: would have considered signing had it not been for the last paragraph. Even then, the questions seem premised on a guilt-by-association mode of thought, so I don’t think I’d have signed. Maybe if they were worded differently.

But I respect the desire to ask questions of a think tank that is not very transparent, that emanated condescension and indifference at the school, that made a grave mistake in 2005 for which its President did not apologize. One of the positive things I can imagine coming out of this is for the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) to respond with some new, useful level of detail and coherence about who they are and what they do.

I’ve had friendly conversations with some of the TeleSur reporters you mentioned. I disagree with them strongly. They are convinced the ICNC is a malevolent organization, likely a front for the US government, and I haven’t seen the evidence for that yet. They can’t stomach having anything to do with the group. To me the ICNC appears more disorganized and clueless, when it comes to Latin America, than anything else.

People should judge us journalists principally on our body of work. The notion that merely going to a school in Mexico for ten days where the ICNC gave some presentations irreparably taints me, or casts lasting doubt on my journalistic independence is repulsive. It’s an insult to the intelligence of the school’s participants and grassroots organizations in various countries that have listened to the group’s spiel.

What you said about journalists’ willingness to be fired from their jobs is right-on. As I explained at the school, I’ve been approached by various corporate media since the earthquake in Haiti. I will use them to fund my work and reach wider audiences, with the expectation that I might choose to end the relationship or be fired at any moment because of their penchant for sensationalism, misinformation, and incompetence.

My integrity will never depend on a salary. I know that if I’m doing valuable work in today’s wired, increasingly diverse media economy, an audience will be there to support it. That’s why I came to Haiti, back when no one paid much attention to the place, full of hope and confidence.

One thing I agree with some critics on: it would have helped to invite and address all questions specifically about the ICNC’s role in the school in a prominent public form at the start – whether by blog post or in person. This was a brewing controversy already familiar to many involved with the school. I’m reminded of the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry’s 2004 run for US President, which his campaign ignored and thought other people would ignore. It was a mistake – even though the accusations had no basis in fact, they spread by various means and became a huge issue.

I wouldn’t have been distracted at times, wondering if a few long plenaries with Jim Lawson, Jack DuVall, et al. were a condition of the money, had it been crystal-clear that the ICNC’s participation in the school was strictly at your invitation from the beginning. And I have no doubts about that now.

I was hoping for more a little more hands-on journalism and civil resistance training from the school. The content of the ICNC’s lectures on non-violence didn’t strike me as groundbreaking (or manipulative) material. The dynamics of non-violent civil resistance are best understood in the midst of a movement, but an overview of its history and tactics can learned from books, films, and independent research.

The vital practice of authentic journalism cannot be learned this way. This is why the School for Authentic Journalism is so important, why it deserves the support of citizens and institutions the world over. I hope to return.

Those are my thoughts for today. I recorded audio of the multi-hour debate about the ICNC that took place on February 11 within the school. If anyone is interested in reviewing it, contact me by e-mail.

And now back to work. Hopefully no more aftershocks for a while!

Best,
Ansel

Jerry called me a few days after the quake, huddled with hundreds of people in a space without food and water. I was lining up a profile story with him before the catastrophe. But he’s already back at work, it appears. See some of his pre-disaster work here. He even tackled the problem of Haiti’s deforestation with his art, in an amusing way.

It’s unfortunate that the Young Lords are not as well known among the broader public as the Black Panthers. The group was arguably more progressive for its time. Patriarchy and other oppressions within the Young Lords started to break down quickly when members challenged those hierarchies inherited from society. The Lords had deep roots in and support from the “El Barrio” community.

Which makes the New York Lords’ sudden and swift decline all the more puzzling. Why did the group fall apart after just two years of success? What can radicals learn from the Young Lords?

I cannot find any audio or video from Sunday’s forum online, oddly, to help answer those questions. You can hear Democracy Now co-host and Lords co-founder Juan Gonzalez speak on his experience in this interview.

I attempted to answer the question posed above myself last year in a paper for a ‘Radical Social Movements’ class. I’m posting it online now, to share it with y’all and Google’s indexer. The paper is entitled “The Young Lords: Examining Its Deficit of Democracy and Decline. Read it here →

An opening summary paragraph is below, but consider reading the paper itself. It analyzes the Lords’ rise and fall in some detail.

The New York Young Lords broke under the weight of unrelenting police harassment and infiltration, compounded by a series of tactical missteps that ignored the main source of their strength – their support from the Puerto Rican urban poor. These communities were oppressed and ignored, rather than represented, by social institutions. The Young Lords stepped into that vacuum and restored a sense of pride and togetherness to “El Barrio” in East Harlem. But the leadership of the organization subsequently turned its focus away from the direct action campaigns that inspired unprecedented solidarity in the ghetto. The group’s paramilitary structure was over-dependent on the charisma and cooperation of a few leaders and failed to recognize the voices of the Young Lords’ rank and file members. An attempt to open a revolutionary front on the island of Puerto Rico proved to be a fatal mistake, spreading the organization too thin, diverting resources from community programs, and initiating an acrimonious factionalism in the leadership from which the Lords would not recover. With much of the original leadership resigned or exiled, a hardline Marxist clique took over the Lords and it disintegrated.

Link to full paper. Also see Vivirlatino’s reflection on the Young Lords Party and Democracy Now’s coverage.

What are the lessons of the Young Lords’ history in your opinion? Critiques of the paper? Hit me up in the comments.

This started out as a story for Free Speech Radio News but didn’t make it into today’s newscast. I’ve heard of the Flash player not working for a few folks. Listen to the MP3 if that’s the case for you. Cross-posted to Houston Indymedia, now featured on Indymedia.us.

A Fort Hood soldier faced a military trial today for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, one week after another member of his unit was sentenced to 30 days in jail for refusing to go to war. Sergeant Travis Bishop was convicted on all charges and sentenced to one year in prison, loss of pay, and reduction in rank.

Unlike Victor Agosto, who resisted deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that the war is unconstitutional, Bishop is a conscientious objector. He opposes all wars because of his Christian faith. I spoke with Bishop on Friday evening before he was sentenced.

“Jesus is very vocal about non-violent conflict resolution. Jesus is very, very anti-war. You can tell from all his sermons. As far as my state of mind I feel good. I feel better about facing prison because of that belief than going to Afghanistan and coming back a quote unquote ‘American hero.’”

Bishop says he realized he could file for conscientious objector status only days before his scheduled deployment to Afghanistan in March. He left the sprawling Killeen base for one week and is now charged with going AWOL and disobeying orders.

Desertion rates among the Army ranks rose 80 percent between 2003 and 2007. With tens of thousands more troops now headed to Afghanistan, anti-war activist Cynthia Thomas says G.I. support networks are crucial. She co-founded the Under the Hood Outreach Center and Cafe in Killeen.

“Our soldiers know here at Fort Hood that if they choose to be a soldier of conscience and resist orders to deploy that we are here, that they have the support, that we have this network here in Killeen. It’s really amazing sometimes when you have all these boys in here, sometimes they just come into sleep, to get away from the base…”

Bishop said he wouldn’t be able to resist deployment orders without the support from the local coffeehouse.

“Under the Hood has been incredibly good to me. They said no matter what my decision, deploy or not deploy, they were going to support me. I don’t think I’d have been able to do this at all, just by my lonesome. I don’t.”

Bishop said he hopes his decision will inspire other troops to question their service in the military. Last week supporters of Victor Agosto from across Texas gathered at Under the Hood cafe and rallied across from Fort Hood. [Chants from rally]

They’ll rally outside the base again for Travis Bishop this evening. Ansel Herz, Austin.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia.

Yesterday the 10-week-long occupation of the Ssangyong automotive plant in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, by striking workers was broken by a final, violent police assault. When Ssangyong went bankrupt and announced the firings of thousands of assembly-line workers, they armed and barricaded themselves inside the plant. I spoke with Loren Goldner, an author writing a book on the Korean working class who visited the factory in June, on Friday about the situation. The workers’ struggle has received stunningly little attention in the US corporate and alternative press. He was speaking to me from New York City. Please share and re-broadcast.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia and libcom.

Update: The podcast does not convey the “epic,” in the BBC’s words, nature of the final four-day fight the workers put up against the police. Below are pictures and videos collected from Youtube and libcom.org.

Protests coordinated by United4Iran were held in over 150 cities yesterday around the world in solidarity with the movement against the Khameini and Ahmadinejad government.

Update: Thanks again to Pouya (Flickr) for sharing his photos of the event. I’ve packaged some of Pouya’s pictures together with my audio report in the video above .

MP3. Feel free to share and re-broadcast. Transcript with links and more information below the jump.

This is a Mediahacker.org podcast recorded on July 26, 2009.

Thousands of people around the world hit the streets yesterday to say, “We have not forgotten Iran.” In June allegations of widespread fraud in the presidential election triggered a grassroots Iranian uprising in Tehran and other cities. The Iranian government unleashed a torrent of violent repression on the movement. While cell phone-images of dying and injured Iranians have faded from television screens, Iranian-Americans here in Austin, Texas, say the crisis is not over.

[Audio]

Most of Faye Amanifar’s family lives in Iran. She’s lived in Austin for the past twenty years. She said the Iranian protests are not about the election itself or the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

[Audio]

About 200 [maybe 300?] people joined Faye in marching from City Hall over the bridge to Auditorium Shores at dusk. [Audio] Snehal Shingavi, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, said democracy in Iran could only come from a grassroots movement.

[Audio]

When the now-disputed president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was last in the United States, he famously said this:

[Audio]

W. H. and his partner drove three hours from Houston to attend the rally.

[Audio] [More information at http://www.irqr.net.]

Darkness fell shortly after the green-colored mass of marchers crossed the bridge. With just one light illuminating a makeshift stage, two young men played traditional Persian music for the crowd. [Music]

This has been a Mediahacker.org podcast, I’m Ansel Herz in Austin.

Extended video on Youtube and more photos at Pouya’s photostream.

This was my second time traveling out to Hutto. Transcript and more information below.

[Chanting]

“I’ve known about this place, this is just my first time coming here. When I first got here, I actually felt like crying because I felt so angry that they would do this to people. Everybody talks about peace in the world and stuff, but this has nothing to do with it…”

18-year-old Yvette Garza joined about a hundred people from around Texas on Saturday afternoon in Taylor, a forty-minute drive from Austin. For the third year in a row, activists marked World Refugee Day with a march across town to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an immigrant detention center holding undocumented families, including at least 100 women and young children. Jose Orta, a Taylor resident, said the corporate-run facility should be shut down.

“They are incarcerated. And those children have done nothing, nothing wrong. They are non-criminals. Yet they are in a medium-security prison. No matter what you call it – you can call it a detention facility or a residential facility, whatever. It is a medium-security prison, and T. Don Hutto’s got to go!”

[Marching]

“People started making profits for people wanting to make money off of people’s misery.”

Conrado Acevedo, an activist with the indigenous coalition ‘Defense of Our Mother,’ traveled from Houston.

“They used to let ‘em go and then they would show up in court, which was the more humane way. But now when you put people in jail, especially a mother with kids, I mean that’s totally uncomprehensible in a supposedly democratic society. So we’ve been coming here for two years…”

[Sound]

The march eventually spilled onto an field alongside the facility. Marchers raised their voices, hoping the kids inside would hear them.

The group rallied for another few hours with music and speeches in the blazing sun across from the detention center. They vowed to continue protesting until the facility is closed and the families are released.

It’s June 22, 2009, this has been a Mediahacker.org podcast, and I’m Ansel Herz.

Cross-posted to Youtube and to HIMC. Learn more:

• T. Don Hutto blog
• America’s Family prison short film by Matt Gossage
• “The Least of These” film
• More pictures at Houston Indymedia

2000: A tight presidential election is decided by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, cutting short a ballot recount process in Florida. The winner of the popular vote and probable winner in Florida, Al Gore, promptly concedes.

2004: In Ohio the Secretary of State chairs the state campaign of the incumbent President Bush. Lower-income communities and people of color complain of long lines in polling stations. Kerry quickly concedes. Karl Rove denied having anything to do with the death by plane crash of Michael Connell, a Republican “tech guru,” before his scheduled testimony about alleged manipulation of electronic voting machines in Ohio. His family wants the truth..

But hey, no election is perfect. The United States is the greatest democracy in the world, after all. No big deal.

Unlike, say, that country over there we didn’t invade. That fundamentalist theocracy run by that crazy guy who wants to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ (actually a mistranslation) with nukes, Iran (say ‘eee-ron’ not ‘I-ran’). When an American journalist was recently jailed by the Iranian regime on bogus charges for weeks, big media were all over the story.

Now the incumbent Ahmadinejad has claimed victory in Iran’s presidential election, but supporters of the opposition candidate have alleged electoral fraud.

See, in a mature democracy like ours, we’d agree to put an end to the bitter election season. The opposition concedes, and America moves on.

But Iran is so backward and authoritarian. The opposition candidate is still contesting the results! Even the U.S. government is concerned with the integrity of the election.

Oh, and Iranians – women, men, young and old – are taking to the streets in huge numbers in mostly non-violent protest. As you can see in this video, Iran is severely lacking in modern democracy.

Thankfully, the corporate media isn’t showing much of this trivial news. There’s nothing for us to learn from or about Iran. Even as a close follower of the press, I didn’t grasp the scope of these protests until today. Darn those blogs and alternative news outlets.

Previously on Mediahacker: Media oblivious to police attack on Iraq vets. Because veterans come home to be honored with rhetoric, not to protest and be heard.

Update: Cartoonist Matt Bors nails it below.