29998: Potemaksonje (News) Press Barons and the 2004 Haiti Coup (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Potemaksonje


The Freedom of the Press Barons
The media and the 2004 Haiti coup     by ISABEL MACDONALD

In February 2004, the US, Canadian and French governments supported an illegal 
coup d’etat that overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected government of the 
Lavalas party, led by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In late 2003, “civil society” 
groups--financed and supported through US and Canadian government-funded 
“democracy enhancement” programs--began calling for Aristide’s ouster. 
They were joined in early February 2004 by armed terror squads. In the pre-dawn 
hours of February 29, 2004, President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who had been 
elected with 92 per cent of the popular vote, was forcibly removed from Haiti 
on a US government airplane, while Canada’s Joint Task Force 2 secured the 
airport.


 Critics of the 2004 coup d’etat in Haiti have argued that biased 
international media coverage played a role in justifying the coup and 
Canada’s involvement. However, in interviews that I conducted as part of a 
research trip to Haiti in late 2005 and early 2006, many of the leaders of the 
US, Canadian and French government-backed movement that toppled Haiti’s 
elected government went much further in their assessment of the media’s role 
of the media in the coup.


 In the eyes of Guy Philippe, the US Special Forces-trained commander who led 
the armed movement against Aristide, the “international media, the media 
leaders helped us a lot. And thanks to them we were able to overthrow the 
dictator. And without them I don’t think that we could have.” Leaders of 
the aforementioned “civil society” groups also emphasized that the media 
were very important in their movement. The Association National des Medias 
Haitiens (ANMH), an association of the owners of the largest Haitian commercial 
media stations in Port-au-Prince, was formally a member of the anti-Aristide 
“civil society” coalition. In the lead-up to the coup, the ANMH, which 
meets weekly, acted as a space of “co-ordination, decision making, enabling 
the different commercial media outlets to forge agreements” and enabling a 
“very strong impact on public opinion,” according to one of its members. As 
the association’s vice president explained, “It was our own
 way as the media to combat the dictatorship”. She added that the ANMH media 
owners "made it our job to cover all the demonstrations" against Aristide.


                          Many anti-Aristide demonstration organizers report 
that they were able to advertise their events for free on these stations, and 
many of the 184-affiliated media organizations had a policy of refraining from 
identifying the anti-Aristide demonstrators’ numbers (particularly if they 
were not impressive). As one ANMH media owner explained, “we always support 
the pro-democracy demonstrations,” and “sometimes we advance fantastical 
numbers because we don’t want the public to draw the wrong conclusion.” He 
added that if a group has 10 people but they want you to say 2000 or 300,000, 
if you say 10…you can make enemies, you can damage the group and their 
credibility. It can create animosity, so it’s better not to talk about…if 
the media are interested in the greatest number of people coming out…they 
will talk about how [the demonstration] is just starting.


 In this context, one anti-Aristide demonstration organizer reports that at one 
demonstration in January 2003, “we were 20,” but when they called in to the 
radio, “we said we were thousands.”


 In contrast, many Haitian commercial media organizations did not cover the 
pro-Lavalas demonstrations that were taking place around the same time and 
which were, according to independent journalist Kevin Pina, often much larger 
in size. In fact, in the lead-up to the coup, they instituted an ANMH-wide ban 
barring Aristide, the president of Haiti, from speaking on the airwaves. When 
the ANMH stations did provide coverage of pro-Lavalas events, meaningful media 
access for Lavalas-affiliated organizers was completely precluded. The ANMH’s 
Radio Signal FM continued to report on Lavalas events; however, the goal of 
this coverage was, in the words of one of its journalists, “to be there at 
the chimere’s[an epithet commonly used to refer to Lavalas supporters as 
gangsters] demonstrations because [we] had to inform the population that there 
was a risk…Aristide’s partisans are known to be violent and we described 
their violence—that’s all.” ANMH journalists whom I
 interviewed reported heavy editorial pressures from their bosses.


 Several Canadian and international newswire journalists told me they relied on 
the ANMH radio stations, particularly the association’s Radio Metropole 
station, around the time of the coup. One deputy bureau chief at a major 
international newswire agency stated that the agency’s staff reporter in 
Haiti “relied heavily on Radio… Metropole, [sweatshop owner and coup leader 
André] Apaid’s radio stations;” it made him “wonder if we could trust 
any of what we’d been reporting.” However, many international journalists, 
including Canadian journalists, were relying on this wire service in the 
lead-up to the coup.


 Canadian journalists’ reliance on ANMH sources has a broader institutional 
dimension. The Haitian media owners’ association has a longstanding 
relationship with Reseau Liberté, an NGO whose staff includes CBC and Radio 
Canada journalists, and which is financed by the Canadian International 
Development Agency (CIDA). According to CIDA, this Canadian tax-payer funded 
alliance between Canadian journalists and the anti-Aristide media owners cartel 
is sowing the seeds for the development of “professional journalism,” which 
is a cornerstone of the Canadian government’s promotion of “democracy” in 
Haiti. US and Canadian government-sponsored “democracy promotion” is 
generally acknowledged by critical researchers to promote a model of rule by 
elites, in which popular participation is curbed. In other words, these 
programs seek to export the very same undemocratic systems that are a hallmark 
of political life in the US and Canada. It could be said that Canada
 promotes the “professional journalism” needed for “democracy” by 
supporting the Haitian equivalents of Conrad Black.


http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/976#comment-12


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