Haiti and the Media

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For the past month a group of friends and I have been attempting to raise awareness of the crisis in Haiti. Like Iraq, Haiti is a country in which the U.S. has been meddling for years, and like Iraq, the U.S. helped orchestrate the removal of Haiti’s leader. Although it remains disputed the extent to which the U.S. was involved, ousted President Aristide maintains that he was taken hostage and forced to leave the country against his will. And while there is good evidence to support Aristide’s claims as well as to suggest that the U.S. backed the armed rebellion that swept into Port-au-Prince in 2004, the U.S. media to this day almost fully refuses to acknowledge what took place. You would think that the press would care a bit more about Haiti given the one major difference with Iraq: Aristide, unlike Saddam, was a democratically elected President so committed to peace that he abolished Haiti’s army.

Besides myself, The Heretik has been staying on top of the unfolding crisis, and today he points to some of the NYT’s rare and always atrocious coverage on Haiti. Today’s article amounts to little more than apologetics for the U.N.’s so-called “peace-keeping” activities.

Consider what happened: On July 6, U.N. troops surrounded one of Haiti’s worst shanty-towns, – Cité Soleil – with tanks and helicopters under the pretense of going after a gang leader and his thugs. In the weeks after the attack, the U.N. maintained that only the gang leader and a few armed gang members were killed, despite the countless reports emerging that dozens of innocent people were killed, many women and children. Independent observers who traveled to Haiti speak of the horror of bodies lying in the street being eaten by dogs. All of the victims were supporters of Aristide.

As The Heretik notes, the NYT’s coverage of this event leaves something to be desired. Today’s piece essentially blames the impoverished residents of Cité Soleil for the violence the peace-keeping troops inflicted upon them. The story also justifies the violent actions as necessary for democracy!

For United Nations peacekeeping forces, bringing some semblance of order to Cité Soleil and giving its residents a chance to vote in the elections are seen as important steps in establishing a new, credible government in Haiti.

With elections coming up in Haiti in the next few months, we are likely to see more violence against Aristide’s supporters and even more denials and rationalizations by the likes of the NYT.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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