The Freedom of the Press Barons
The media and the 2004 Haiti coup
February 1, 2007
by Isabel Macdonald
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
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 Andre] 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 Liberte, 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.