Fairness & Accuracy in NYT Haiti Coverage?
Your Haiti coverage today ["Haiti President Forced Out; Marines Sent To Keep Order" 3/1/04] leaves a lot to be desired. Who forced President Aristide out? Rebels controlling an ever greater portion of the country while the US sat idly by, or the US itself? The salient facts enabling a poorly informed person to make sense of the Haiti situation--most crucially the US aid blockade--are found toward the end of the article. US Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee are even maintaining that President Aristide was kidnapped by the US government, but I can't find any coverage of this allegation in the articles today on Haiti. Even the major Democratic presidential candidates are alluding to the US government's double-dealing in Haiti, but your coverage provides no informed context for such information. While your editorial bemoans heavy-handed Bush administration dealings with Haiti, a slightly better informed reader would have to conclude that you want to have it both ways, having no particular stake in this desperately impoverished nation.
posted by Paul at 9:16 AM
Your skewed coverage of the Haiti crisis continues today [3/2/04]. We learn "Aristide, Now in Central African Republic, Has Harsh Words for the Haitian Rebels" in Michael Wines's article but what we won't find is any coverage of Aristide's telephone calls to prominent Americans like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Representative Maxine Waters of California, where he says he was kidnapped by military of the US government and forced into exile.
Michael Wines does report that South Africa has denied President Aristide asylum because opposition to President Mbeki there charge Mbeki"has a soft spot for internationally shunned dictators." This statement appearing five paragraphs ahead of the one in which certain dictators are named suggests erroneously that Aristide is one of them. He was elected by 60% of the Haitian population to fulfill a five year term.
In "State Dept. Denies Leader Was Forced Out of Office" David E. Sanger and Christopher Marquis build the news story around Secretary Powell's denial of the allegation of the US kidnapping of President Aristide, but it is only in the fifth paragraph from the end that we learn that "members of the Congressional Black caucus...believed that Mr. Aristide had been removed by 'a coup'." And though Sanger and Marquis mention in passing Rep. Charles Rangel's reporting that President Aristide was kidnapped, there isn't any in-depth record of the conversations that US Congresspersons, Rev. Jackson, and Randall Robinson had with President Aristide. If these conversations aren't newsworthy, I don't know what are. The "reporters" end the article allowing Sec. Powell a reassertion of his denial.
Your coverage of Haiti is some of the most biased I've seen recently from the New York Times. Do your reporters only rehash press releases from the Bush Administration these days? Fortunately, the Boston Globe and Reuters are beginning to air the story that the American people need to know.
All the News That’s Fit to Print, Yeah.
posted by Paul at 9:14 AM
I wrote yesterday that Michael Wines had implied President Aristide of Haiti was a dictator, well, today he writes ["The Host Of Aristide Is Uneasy" 3/3/04] that he was "a leader condemned by many as a dictator." Who are these "many"? Has the New York Times simply stooped to defamation of character or are you willing to document and allow the cross examination of your sources? Is this Michael Wines, whom you employ, a responsible journalist or just a right-wing hack like Rush Limbaugh?
If the duly elected president of Haiti is not reinstated to fulfill the remainder of his five year term and the country returns to an anarchy that this time the Bush Administration's covert subversion bears much responsibility for, by not fairly reporting the Haiti story your paper also is implicated. The world runs in an orderly fashion as long as "big countries act like gangsters and small ones like prostitutes," which your columnist David Brooks revealingly stated on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer last year. When a small country exercises sovereignty to improve their impoverished peoples' lot democratically, watch out!
posted by Paul at 9:12 AM
