Actor Sean Penn, who is helping manage a camp of displaced earthquake victims in Haiti, is making pointed criticisms of journalists for dropping the ball on coverage of Haiti. He’s wrong. I’ve been on the ground in Port-au-Prince working as an independent journalist for the past ten months. I’m an earthquake survivor who’s seen the big-time reporters come and go. They’re doing such a stellar job and I want to help out, so I’ve written this handy guide for when they come back on the one-year anniversary of the January quake! (Cross-published on the Huffington Post, inspired by this piece in Granta.)

For starters, always use the phrase ‘the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.’ Your audience must be reminded again of Haiti’s exceptional poverty. It’s doubtful that other articles have mentioned this fact.

You are struck by the ‘resilience’ of the Haitian people. They will survive no matter how poor they are. They are stoic, they rarely complain, and so they are admirable. The best poor person is one who suffers quietly. A two-sentence quote about their misery fitting neatly into your story is all that’s needed.

On your last visit you became enchanted with Haiti. You are in love with its colorful culture and feel compelled to return. You care so much about these hard-working people. You are here to help them. You are their voice. They cannot speak for themselves.

Don’t listen if the Haitians speak loudly or become unruly. You might be in danger, get out of there. Protests are not to be taken seriously. The participants were probably all paid to be there. All Haitian politicians are corrupt or incompetent. Find a foreign authority on Haiti to talk in stern terms about how they must shape up or cede power to incorruptible outsiders.

The US Embassy and United Nations always issue warnings that demonstrations are security threats. It is all social unrest. If protesters are beaten, gassed, or shot at by UN peacekeepers, they probably deserved it for getting out of control. Do not investigate their constant claims of being abused.

It was so violent right after the January 2010 earthquake. ‘Looters’ fought over goods ‘stolen’ from collapsed stores. Escaped prisoners were causing mayhem. It wasn’t necessary to be clear about how many people were actually hurt or died in fighting. The point is that it was scary.

Now many of those looters are ‘squatters’ in ‘squalid’ camps. Their tent cities are ‘teeming’ with people, like anthills. You saw your colleagues use these words over and over in their reports, so you should too. You do not have time to check a thesaurus before deadline.

Point out that Port-au-Prince is overcrowded. Do not mention large empty plots of green land around the city. Of course, it is not possible to explain that occupying US Marines forcibly initiated Haiti’s shift from distributed, rural growth to centralized governance in the capital city. It will not fit within your word count. Besides, it is ancient history.

If you must mention Haiti’s history, refer vaguely to Haiti’s long line of power-hungry, corrupt rulers. The ‘iron-fisted’ Duvaliers, for example. Don’t mention 35 years of US support for that dictatorship. The slave revolt on which Haiti was founded was ‘bloody’ and ‘brutal.’ These words do not apply to modern American offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, Cite Soleil is the most dangerous slum in the world. There is no need to back up this claim with evidence. It is ‘sprawling.’ Again, there’s no time for the thesaurus. Talk about ruthless gangs, bullet holes, pigs and trash. Filth everywhere. Desperate people are eating cookies made of dirt and mud! That always grabs the reader’s attention.

Stick close to your hired security or embed yourself with UN troops. You can’t walk out on your own to profile generous, regular folk living in tight-knit neighborhoods. They are helpless victims, grabbing whatever aid they can. You haven’t seen them calmly dividing food amongst themselves, even though it’s common practice.

Better to report on groups that periodically enter from outside to deliver food to starving kids (take photos!). Don’t talk to the youth of Cite Soleil about how proud they are of where they come from. Probably gang members. Almost everyone here supports ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But their views aren’t relevant. There is no need to bring politics into your story.

You can’t forget to do another story about restaveks. Child slaves. It’s so shocking. There is little new information about restaveks, so just recycle old statistics. Present it as a uniquely Haitian phenomenon. Enslaved Haitian farmworkers in southern Florida, for example, aren’t nearly as interesting.

When you come back here in six months, there will still be a lot of desperate poor people who have received little to no help. There are many big, inefficient foreign NGOs in Haiti. Clearly something is wrong. Breathless outrage is the appropriate tone.

But do not try to get to the bottom of the issue. Be sure to mention that aid workers are doing the best they can. Their positive intentions matter more than the results. Don’t name names of individuals or groups who are performing poorly. Reports about food stocks sitting idly in individual warehouses are good. Investigations into why NGOs are failing to effect progress in Haiti are boring and too difficult. Do not explore Haitian-led alternatives to foreign development schemes. There are none. Basically, don’t do any reporting that could change the system.

On the other hand, everyone here loves Bill Clinton and Wyclef Jean. There are no dissenting views on this point. Never mind that neither lives here. Never mind that Clinton admitted to destroying Haiti’s domestic rice economy in the ’90s. Never mind that Jean’s organization has repeatedly mismanaged relief funds. That’s all in the past. They represent Haiti’s best hope for the future. Their voices matter, which means the media must pay close attention to them, which means their voices matter, which means the media must …

Finally, when you visit Haiti again: Stay in the same expensive hotels. Don’t live close to the people. Produce lots of stories and make money. Pull up in your rented SUV to a camp of people who lost their homes, still living under the wind and rain. Step out into the mud with your waterproof boots. Fresh notepad in hand. That ragged-looking woman is yelling at you that she needs help, not another foreigner taking her photo. Her 3-year-old boy is standing there, clinging to her leg. Her arms are raised, mouth agape, and you can’t understand her because you don’t speak Haitian Creole.

Remove the lens cap and snap away. And when you’ve captured enough of Haiti’s drama, fly away back home.

1. Haiti has fallen off the radar.

   When I was in the States last month I asked my friends if they saw Haiti in the news very much. The answer was no every time.

   Before the earthquake, I had some difficulty convincing editors – in the alternative media, mind you – that stories about mass protests on the streets of Port-au-Prince were newsworthy, relevant to their audiences. For now, that resistance is gone. Haiti still has a much higher profile now than it did last year.

   But how long will that interest and visibility last? Will it take another natural disaster (a “hyperactive” hurricane season starts in a few days) to keep Haiti in the headlines? The hundreds of journalists who descended on Haiti in January to capture images of people crawling out of the rubble, then mostly went home the following month – will they repeat the ritual once more? Does anyone else find that repulsive? How can they live with themselves? At what point do these media lose whatever credibility with the public they have left?

2. The reason I’m here is to help keep Haiti on the radar. But at times I feel invisible.

   To their credit, the The Associated Press, National Public Radio, the New York Times, and CNN still have correspondents or stringers on the ground here – maybe a few others. Just CNN covered Monday’s demonstrations while they were happening, managing only a short article saying little more than, “CNN crews heard gunshots and saw tear gas seen in the downtown area.”

   The UN published a terse apology the following day for its peacekeeping troops’ intrusion on university grounds. The official statement was reported by CNN, AP, and numerous other outlets.

   Hours later Inter-Press Service published my story based on eye-witness accounts, going into detail on the university incident and heavy use of tear gas and rubber bullets around displaced families. After their initial denials, UN officials confirmed the accuracy of much of my story on Thursday. No other media picked up the information or followed up with their own stories.

   That goes for other alternative media too. John Nichols, an editor for The Nation magazine and a fierce critic of the corporate media, is like many others unaware of my existence. Pointing to the decline in international news, he lamented in a recent speech how the Associated Press Haiti correspondent was the only American journalist based in-country at the time of the earthquake. Totally valid argument, but it’s based on a falsehood that’s been repeated on radio and in print. Pooja Bhatia is a journalist who’s been here for several years. There’s me. Maybe even a few others I don’t know about.

   To the readers of this blog, if you don’t mind, consider sharing your interest or involvement in Haiti in the comment section. Connect with each other. If Haiti is missing from your local news or favorite media outlet, contact the editors and request it. Tell them there’s a freelance multimedia journalist who’s interested in working with them, who can do interviews or file reports. I don’t like being invisible.

3. There are so many important stories here going unreported by the foreign press.

   I just want to make that clear. There are reports in the Haitian press every week of protests in cities throughout the rest of Haiti. There are stories around privatization, (un)accountability of NGOs, police and prisons, positive stories of community organizing and culture – in fact, almost every conceivable subject – that are ripe for documentation and dissemination. I have several stories in progress that I’m trying to finish, plus hours of video footage to edit and share.

   I’m glad the New York Times exposed the prison massacre in Les Cayes, but they’ve missed a lot of stories over the past six years and that continues. The paper’s story yesterday focuses on dissatisfaction with the government but doesn’t even discuss the ongoing opposition protests. It does mention anti-Preval graffiti several times. Fail.

   If you’re a (citizen) journalist, have the skills or want to learn, and you don’t want to follow the herd, you should be here.

4. Twitter is an indispensable part of my toolset.

   On March 4, a user-submitted report about an IDP camp that was dismantled in a single night was posted to the crisis-mapping website Ushahidi. It was tweeted by @BaybeDoll. @RAMHaiti re-tweeted it. I follow him, along with a few dozen others. I saw the Ushahidi report and left a comment asking the author to contact me. Within days I found the camp and published what I believe was the first report since the earthquake of a forcible eviction of displaced persons from private land. This is now a huge issue all over Port-au-Prince and I’ll be reporting on it more soon.

   I communicated with the Inter-Agency Shelter Cluster over Twitter this week and helped them coordinate the delivery of tents to a destitute camp of at least 60 families in Pernier.

   And it was Twitter that alerted me to Monday’s chaos in the downtown area. @DokteCoffee, an American doctor at the General Hospital, tweeted that she was hearing booms and seeing gas and that reached me through word-of-mouth via one of her followers.

   My Kreyol comprehension is still not good enough to follow Haitian radio well. Twitter is the next best way, if not a better one, to track breaking and other news in near real-time. It’s a decent social network too. I follow some of my friends from the States and favorite musicians. There’s been a lot of understandable concern over Facebook’s privacy policies lately (really, y’all just noticed this?). Unlike Facebook, Twitter is not a closed environment populated with tons of advertisements. If you’re not twittering, consider starting now. Stick with it and you might find it really useful.

5. There’s an overwhelming amount of data flowing from the authorities and NGOs in Haiti. People engaged on this issue should share skills, resources, and make sure nothing important slips unnoticed into the netherzones of cyberspace. Let’s open/crowd-source this up.

   When I meet Haitian government, UN, and NGO staff in the field, they tend to be absurdly tight-lipped about their work. They say they don’t want to make a politically incorrect remark, get in trouble with their bosses, or step on someone else’s turf. On Friday one aid worker told me I couldn’t mention his organization (one of the largest here) by name in my reporting, even though it’s public knowledge among everyone in the camp that the group is involved in the resettlement process. No dice, I told him.

   On the other hand, there’s a wealth of meeting notes, reports, assessments, and other documents constantly being posted to Oneresponse.info, ReliefWeb and Google Groups where anyone can view them. In almost every document there are nuggets of information that make me say, “Whoa, really?” I highlight those passages, save the documents to my hard drive, and make a mental note. But I can’t follow up on them all.

   So here’s the cool part. I’ve collected a bunch of these documents online using a website called crocodoc. When you view the document you can skip to the sections I’ve highlighted using the sidebar. Not only that, but you can add your own comments and annotations – without even registering for an account.

   

   That’s a screenshot of the May 24 JOTC security report (thanks to Alister Macintyre for referring me to it), a passage where it confirms MINUSTAH troops took the laptops and bags of university students on Monday. I’ll be following up with the students soon to see if they got their stuff back. The report also mentions that MINUSTAH peacekeepers conducted over 1,000 security operations in the prior 24 hours and only 5 humanitarian missions. Interesting, right? Another document reveals that the Canadian Red Cross pulled out of building transitional shelters for people at the last moment because its legal basis for construction on those lands was “less than watertight.”

   View the list of documents here. I plan to continue uploading and annotating documents as I find them and I’d encourage others to do the same – let me know so I can update the index. Sunshine is the best disinfectant!

   Update: Also, here’s a list of all the Haiti blogs and websites to which I’m subscribed, along with links to their RSS feeds. This post was re-published on Haiti Rewired.

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

Here’s my story for yesterday’s Free Speech Radio News newscast, about Haitian radio broadcasters doing their best to stay on the air in the quake’s aftermath without any outside support. MP3. Video later.

Kudos to the BBC for making its broadcasts available in Creole for free. Didn’t get a chance to check out Signal FM, but the Committee to Protect Journalists has an interesting account of how they stayed on the air during the quake. MediaShift reports that only 10 out of 50 Port-Au-Prince radio stations are currently broadcasting.

A text version of this story was printed by Inter-Press Service.

I just checked the front page of CNN. The lead reads:

In the shadow of Haiti’s wrecked presidential palace lie the new homes of the capital’s 500,000 displaced residents. But with 4,000 convicted criminals on the loose, nothing and no one is safe.

They started pushing the violence meme the day after the earthquake. I was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer that evening via Skype. Part way through the interview, they cut to their correspondent for a live chat from the airport.

He spoke briefly with Mario Andreso, the chief of Haiti’s national police, who warned of out-of-control violence from all the prisoners who escaped the penitentiary the day of the quake. The CNN reporter repeated the claims uncritically.

When they came back to me, I began to explain that I had walked through the remains of the jail (here’s the video). That many of the prisoners were reportedly shot dead by police as they tried to escape. And that I had not seen or heard of violence so far.

The prison was a hellish place, with almost no medical facilities. Did it contain some genuine thugs? Yes. But it also contained many political prisoners and people who never received a fair trial from Haiti’s flawed courts. These are simple facts that CNN is too happy to overlook. I was quickly interrupted by Blitzer and they went to commercial break.

Haitians on the streets are not worried about the jail. Food, water, fuel, medicine, and shelter is all I hear. I received five calls yesterday from friends with 200 children here, 300 people there huddled in schools, with nothing to live on. I sent the info on to a few contacts in the aid community.

The linked CNN article describes no violence from eye-witnesses. It quotes the police chief again, warning of possible rape and murder in the tent camps.

To date, since arriving in Haiti in September – including the earthquake’s aftermath – I have not seen a single incidence of violence. The tent camps through the city, whether in Chanmas or near Delmas, are destitute but totally peaceful.

US Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said that while security is a concern he knows of very little ongoing violence, in an interview last night with PBS that I helped arrange. “I think people should be aware that the vast majority of Haitians here are behaving in a calm and peaceful manner.”

The images collected here show what look like scuffles. I’ve seen a few Haitian scuffles – they are not brawls, not like the vicious punches thrown by drunkards every night in the streets of Austin, Texas, my hometown. It’s shoving and grabbing what you can. You’d do the same if you were hungry.

As I ride around the city on a motorbike taxi, camera in hand, everyone is helpful. I exchanged $250 USD on the streets without incident. No Haitian I’ve spoken with has witnessed violence themselves. It may be happening but it is not widespread.

One picture shows a man killed by the National Police, not by an ordinary Haitian. What the captions describe as looting looks to me like the retrieval of life-saving resources going unused.

Tell CNN, the BBC, and other media to stop being alarmist fear-mongers. They are not reporting facts. They are not authentic journalists. They are not with the Haitian people.

Update 1/21: The few times I have checked the CNN front page since then, I have not seen articles hyping security fears. Liza McAlister, a professor at Wesleyan University who is writing essays about Haiti for CNN, said she forwarded this post to her editor. Maybe it had an effect. Thanks to everyone spreading the word, keep it up.

One of the biggest flaws in the major news media is its apparent allergy to important historical context. Past events that help explain complex present-day contours of wealth and power are either inconvenient or uninteresting to reporters and editors, often rushing to make deadline or publish something splashy that will grab readers and boost revenue.

Even the BBC, often seen as the premier international news channel, recently ran a series of stories along these lines. Correspondent Mike Thomson told the terrible story of child slavery in Haiti – told many times over in the Western media – with nary a mention of how slavery was established on this island. He embedded with UN peacekeeping patrols of Cite Soleil, portraying Haitians as uniformly grateful for their presence and neglecting to mention persistent accusations of abuse. His reporting focused on the arresting sights, smells, and personal stories of Haiti’s extreme poverty. Missing context, it’s hard to imagine his work informing viewers towards understanding and civic action more than simply depressing them.

Thankfully, it’s easier now more than ever to uncover and disseminate little known histories. I recently stumbled upon Vuvox.com, a free tool that allows anyone to construct a Flash-based collage of images. A few hours of Google Image searching, Photoshop work and re-reading later, here’s rudimentary pictoral outline of US policy towards Haiti in the past century – critical knowledge for anyone seeking a genuine understanding of Haiti’s problems and why the United States is entangled in them. I’d encourage folks to look through the books and articles cited below for more information. If you hear somebody ask, “What does the United States have to do with Haiti?” give them this link. It covers the basics.

Sources

For a succinct account of the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, I’d suggest Dr. Paul Farmer’s The Uses of Haiti, first published by Common Courage Press in 1994, pages 78-79. Farmer, now the UN Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti (see my interview with him here), also describes in the latter half of the book the extermination of the Creole pig, increasing investment in Haiti during the Duvalier dictatorships, and the conditions agreed to by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide when he returned in 1994 after the first coup.

More on the disparate and cruel treatment of Haitian refugees in Chapter 5 of Let Haiti Live: Unjust US Policies Towards Its Oldest Neighbor, by Melinda Miles and Eugenia Charles, published by Educa Vision in 2004.

Matthew J. Smith’s Red & Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change 1934-1957, out this year by University of North Carolina Press, includes detailed accounts of the failed SHADA rubber program during World War II and the ousting of Daniel Fignole that paved the way for Duvalier. The Eisenhower administration feared Fignole would be “another Arbenz,” the socialist-democrat President of Guatemala overthrown by the CIA just three years earlier. See Chapters 2 and 5.

The story of Aristide’s fall in 2004 is mired in a deep and bitter controversy. I find Dr. Farmer’s take on it, printed in the London Review of Books, to be generally persuasive; Peter Dailey’s letter in response outlines the opposing view. Also, Canadian journalist Claude Adams recently blogged about the minimum wage and textile industry in Haiti. My posts on Haiti over the past year are collected here.

Why associate your ground-breaking, independent blogging and reporting website with the stodgy, outdated newspaper model? Why not use a “new media” buzzword, something more attention-getting and edgy? “Online newspaper” sounds boring.

Boring-sounding they may be, those two words happen to describe this digital container for authentic journalism perfectly. The Narco News Bulletin is what a newspaper should be – online. For years newspaper publishers and journalists have complained that the Internet’s bloggers, news aggregators, and abundance of free content are destroying their industry – note the word “industry.” As this site’s publisher has noted, most newspapers fatally wounded themselves by becoming pieces of corporate conglomerates, reliant and partial to their advertisers, ready to downsize for greater profits at a moment’s notice. Blogs have not displaced the highly-valued, deep investigative pieces for which newspapers were known. It’s just that those articles have been increasingly crowded out by advertisements and rote establishment-view “objective” reporting. Newspapers made themselves boring.

Narco News is a high-strength concentration of the stuff that made some newspapers exciting. It’s appropriate that its writers don’t constantly use the “new media” buzzwords of which many high-profile bloggers, who remain inconsequential to offline real-world communities, are so fond. This site is chock full of concrete, investigative journalism with a critical focus on political struggles and the Drug War in Latin America. There isn’t a single advertisement and little question of its independence. Publisher Al Giordano’s blog, The Field, has for almost two years now combined a unique brand of righteous, incisive analysis with a relentless, experience-based insistence on the power of community organizing.

So long live newspapers! Let the paper- and ad-based ones go by the wayside. Narco News represents a sustainable, next-generation newspaper. That might sound tacky, but people all over the world – even we famously newspaper-hostile youth – recognize that hugely important fact. That’s why applications from across the continents are pouring into the 2010 School for Authentic Journalism. That’s why I sent my application in last month from my new place here in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The ten-day intensive training by authentic journalists from around the hemisphere is designed to produce reporters well-versed in social media, online reporting, documentary filmmaking, and investigative journalism. Independent and Spanish-speaking journalists who produced videos delving beneath the surface of the crisis in Honduras, worth more in the truths they impart than a dozen mainstream newspaper articles, for example, will share their knowledge with students.

Speaking of which, if there’s one thing Narco News is severely lacking in its reporting, it’s audio-visual multimedia. I’d bet on that changing once the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism graduates start reporting for the site. But for the moment, it’s okay. After all, Narco News is just an “online newspaper” – one that relies entirely on the goodwill and robust financial support of its readers, not advertisers.

You can donate online to support Narco News, the Narcosphere, and the School of Authentic Journalism at the following link. As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, your contributions to The Fund for Authentic Journalism are tax-deductible in the US, and right now every dollar you donate will be doubled by matching support from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Or you can send a check to:
The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 241
Natick, MA 01760 USA
Thank you,

Ansel Herz
School of Authentic Journalism, Class of 2010
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
http://mediahacker.org

Re-published from Narco News.

I ran into Al Jazeera English Fault Lines correspondent Josh Rushing in the Dallas Fort-Worth airport a few hours ago. He lives in Austin now, apparently. The U.S. military spokesman-turned-journalist said he’s been touring the country speaking to journalism students, telling them to choose a place or subject area upon graduation and dive into it as a reporter. He said too many of them are following the beaten path of traveling to New York City or some other media hub, hoping to work their way up the ladder in a (probably dying) news company.

So he was glad to hear that I’m on my way to Haiti, not the Big Apple. Later today I arrive in Haiti’s capitol city, Port-Au-Prince. I’ve been studying Haitian Creole all summer, but haven’t had a chance to practice speaking it. If I can pick up the language, I’ll be in Haiti working as a freelance multimedia journalist for a number of the coming months.

Why Haiti?

The American people are woefully misinformed on the historical and ongoing impact of U.S. foreign policy on Haiti. That’s partly because there is little to no in-depth feature reporting by U.S. journalists working in Haiti. When Haiti does receive attention on occasion, it is too often with sensational stories of extreme poverty (or success). In that sense, I’m “going to where the silence is.”

Haiti is constantly described as the “poorest country in the Western hemisphere,” which it is, but the phrase obscures that Haiti is an important player on the world stage and not a failed state. That the country’s founding slave revolution was truly “a giant step for mankind” is not recognized in our history books. Bill Clinton, now U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, said in an interview on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show last week that “they [Haitians] have the best chance to escape their history in my lifetime.” What that means is anyone’s guess, but his words matter because the ex-president is leading public-private philanthropic partnership intent on integrating Haiti into the modern global economy.

Where does the average Haitian family fit in to development schemes concocted in Oxford or New York? What say do they have in the process? The United States, Canada, France, Brazil and other major powers are politically invested in Haiti’s growth. There are more international NGOs per capita in Haiti than any other country. Readers of this site know that journalism is a democratized two-way street now more than ever, with the establishment media’s gate-keeping and agenda-setting functions increasingly usurped by technology-equipped citizens. Is there a two-way street between Haiti and the West? Are Haitian women artisans, or the farmers’ konbit, recognized as pillars of the global economy?

These are some of the questions I’ll have in mind in Haiti. I’ve got a long list of story ideas to begin working on once I’ve settled in. What are you interested in learning about Haiti? Story ideas for me? Tips or connections that I’m missing? Please share your comments below.

Trip Notes

This trip is not financed or supported by any grant, scholarship, or institution. It is based entirely on my own savings (thanks to Capital Pedicab for the gainful employment over the past few years). I’ll be accepting donations online soon. I’m prepared to produce video, image, and audio reports with a Panasonic AG-HMC150 HD video camera, Panasonic FZ-35 digital camera, Zoom H2 flash audio recorder, Macbook Pro, 1.5TB in external hard drives, and 40GB in SDHC cards. I’m grateful to journalist Reed Lindsay for helping with the arrangements – this wouldn’t be happening, at least not now, without his guidance.

Previous Mediahacker Haiti coverage here.

I’ve been a regular viewer of DN! for about four years, starting when I was 17. I saw Amy when she spoke in Austin earlier this year and interviewed Juan Gonzalez for a community radio program when he was in town. Thank you for all your hard-work, your program is fantastic, I salute the whole team. It is vital independent media.

Still, I believe DN! could be better. Please consider the following as constructive criticism. I will keep this as short as possible; I know you’re busy.

1. On your blog you note that the Guardian credited DN! with the Olympia informant story, but the New York Times did not. But DN! did not credit either of the independent media outlets where the story first appeared – Seattle Indymedia and Infoshop News. As a former member of Austin Indymedia and an independent journalist, it is frustrating to see how infrequently DN! acknowledges other progressive media or convergences like the Allied Media Conference. At minimum, if DN! is serious about promoting independent media, why not have a list on your website linking to other sources for your audience to check out?

2. I’m glad DN! is on Twitter now. Why not further extend the buzz and reach of your material through YouTube? Open an official DN! channel. Al Jazeera English has one. I don’t know if every program/interview could be uploaded there, but surely notable excerpts and exclusive interviews could be made available. Barring that, at least include embed codes for the Flash videos on your website so that others can easily post DN! videos on their websites.

You asked viewers to e-mail questions for the Rep. Henry Waxman interview, but you did not identify any questions as viewer-submitted. Consider opening an account on Reddit.com, a popular news/social site used by many progressives where they can vote responses up and down. Ask for questions there. You’ll receive a large set of quality questions, and the best ones will be voted to the top of the thread by users.

3. When Amy was last in Austin on her book tour, I asked her about the Washington Stakeout. Sam Husseini started the project out of frustration with the alternative media’s failure to directly confront the political class when they take press questions in Washington D.C.. Amy was rushed at the time, but she heard my question and only said, “I think what Sam is doing is great.” It’s been difficult for Sam to sustain the project himself – his point was that established outlets like DN!, seemingly satisfied with only occasional access to power-brokers, are ignoring an opportunity to regularly ask serious questions of politicians. Will DN! support this project, or send a reporter to Washington?

4. This leads to the next point. I’ve noticed a pattern recently wherein DN! does not challenge the assertions of Democrats and other powerful mainstream figures in the way Amy did in her notoriously combative interview with Bill Clinton. There are too many prepared questions, instead of needed follow-ups to interviewees’ weak or dishonest arguments. Sonali Kolhatkar of Uprising Radio on KPFK, in contrast, often conducts more fluid and critical interviews.

Amy and Sharif Abdel Kouddous did not ask a single detailed follow-up question challenging Representative Waxman, for example, on his defense of cap-and-trade or his politican-speak defense of Senator Max Baucus. No wonder he said, “I’m not worried” about continuing the interview after the break when Amy suggested he was worried about tough questions. Howard Dean’s dismissal of single payer was not meaningfully challenged. When Dennis Kucinich implied that Obama’s healthcare plan might be worse than what we have now, Amy did not ask him to explain!

5. Last comment. Play more hip-hop. Interview more young artists. So much of the music played during the breaks is old folk music, so many of the cultural and artistic figures you interview are elderly and past their prime. My generation is not well represented on Democracy Now!. There should be a balance, perhaps even a bias, towards promoting and interviewing new artists like K’Naan (thank for that, by the way). Invincible, Blu, Rebel Diaz, Blue Scholars, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, The Roots, Raashan Ahmad, Jean Grae, Joell Ortiz, Aloe Blacc, Apani B, Silent Knight, Bun B…

That’s a small selection of the artists my friends and I enjoy. Many of them are based in your city! Please give hip-hop and other under-represented genres an airing on your program – along with an issue that hip-hop helped put on the map: police brutality, and resistance to it. DN! only covers police brutality when a major shooting hits the national press, even though there are incidents every day all across the country.

I’d appreciate it if you could acknowledge receipt of this letter. Keep up the great work!

Best,
Ansel