Media Representations of Haiti

The year 2004, Haiti was at war with itself at that time and a complete revolt was about to take place. The Haitian government was in shambles and completely dismantled. The president at that time Jean-Bertrand Aristide was just ousted. Organized crime and rates skyrocketed and people were going hungry. Cite Soleil, Haiti’s largest slum, had become one of the most dangerous place in Port-Au-Prince. It was just immersed in violence and ruled by armed gangs. Armed gangs just terrorized local civilians and ran out local police. They inflicted all sorts of inhumane acts imaginable: rape, murder, and kidnappings. Haiti at that time became an icon that the media portrayed as a country of hopeless people. A never ending story of struggle and poverty-stricken people. These images also brought upon devastation to the entire Diaspora community of Haiti because it had become a place that no longer resembled the country that they knew and loved, but a place that they now feared to go back to every time they turned on the TV or turned the pages in their local news paper. In spite of all this, the media did not proclaim the causalities taken place, but rather pronounce the events themselves.
Voodoo, Zombies, and Mermaids: U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Haiti
In Voodoo, Zombies, and Mermaids: U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Haiti, Amy E. Potter focuses on the depictions of Haiti in seven areas. These areas are: poverty, social problems, social conditions, and economic conditions. Most importantly regarding the topic of this article, Potter illustrates these subject matters by producing newspaper articles, public opinions, and tables of specific terminologies used to describe these subject matters produced in our mass media. The focal point of Voodoo, Zombies, and Mermaids: U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Haiti is the false portrayals that the mass mediums in the United States covers on the country Haiti. This then transcends into the common inaccurate consensus of the country and its people.
Potter accurately obtains evident depictions of Haiti by examining periods throughout January 1 to December 31 of 2004. She focuses on the bicentenary that marks Haiti’s 200th Independence Day, political uproar over Aristide’s coup d’état, and the devastation of Hurricane Jeanne. She also has provide confirmation on these subject matters through presenting parts of articles written in the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, USA Today, and the Boston Globe. The most common perception that Potter first addresses is the common consensus that Haiti is a futile state and lacks suitable government practices. Potter uses the New York Times March 14, 2004 article entitled Life is Hard and Short in Haiti’s Bleak Villages as well as a quote in USA Today by Ted Galen Carpenter, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, as evidence to illustrate these notions further. Potter also explains that in doing her research in 2004, it was proven that media reports on Haiti never recognized the relationships that Haiti had or has with other countries, particularly the United States. Potter also lightly writes about the down fall of Haiti’s tourism production. She writes that the downfall of Haiti’s tourism was due to the 1980s aids exposure, which incorrectly revealed the country to be the origin of the disease and the myth that if you were Haitian, you were more prone to obtaining the disease.
Methods
To examine the reports on the affair and framework surrounding the ousting of the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Baumgartel looked at the editorials of the New York Times and the Washington Post that were published during the three weeks leading up to the coup on February 29th, 2004. Baumgartel studied the articles carefully, and in doing so, she managed to pick out seven terms that were utilized repeatedly to suggest parties involved in the political turmoil of Haiti. Baumgartel states that three coders coded 340 incidences of terminologies associated with groups.
Results
In Baumgartel findings, she reports journalist using the term “force” a good number of times (37.9%), followed directly by the term “group” (33.5%). The phrase “gang” symbolized 15.6% of the overall words that were examined (N=340), the other 12% were words like “thug,” “mob,” “protestor,” and “militant.” Words that applied to the adversaries of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his government signified 42.8% of the words, whereas Aristides followers were referenced to about 35.1% of the words. The remaining fifteen percent of the terms referenced several factions, other groups, or they were not clear enough to mention. The United States government was only referred to by 7.4% of the expressions studied. The New York Times reported on the affairs leading up to the coup d’état more frequently when compared to the Washington Post, and as a result, two thirds (66.2%) of the examined words were illustrated in the New York Times.
Baumgartel specifies that more than half of the phrases used to reference the adversaries of President Aristide’s government were “group,” whereas the other 21.4% were referenced to the word “force.” She presents a contrasting depiction of the terms in which 37% of the words that reference to Aristide followers were “force,” while 32% of the expressions referencing pro-Aristide were termed “gang.” The term “force” was utilized in almost every (92%) reference to the United States regime and the other two thirds (62%) referred to the unknown/multiple-/unclear/other groups. Of about three quarters of the reports that were examined, the phrase “gang” was utilized (n=53), the word referenced to Aristide followers. On the other hand no more than 20% of the occurrences did the phrase “gang” define the rivals of Aristide’s administration. When compared to the use of the term “gang,” the term “thug” was used 90.9% (n=11) to reference Aristide’s rivals. The phrase “group” referred to the rivals of Aristide in 67.5% of the terms inspected, at the same time the word was utilized to reference to Aristide’s followers in fewer than 20% of the cases. All of the occurrences of both “mob” and “protester” referenced to Aristide supporters. The use of the words “militant” and “force” were both evenly dispersed among Aristide factions with “militant” referring to the enemies of Aristide 48% of the time and Aristide followers in 44% of the occurrences. The term “force” was used 34% of the time to refer to Aristide followers; the other 24% was used to reference rivals of the Haitian government.
Baumgartel indicates that the circulation of the words between the New York Times and the Washington Post were relatively the same. She notes that journalists for both newspapers utilized the examined words in comparable frequencies. Baumgartel presents evidence stating that both the New York Times and the Washington Post reveal a 15% frequency of the term “gang,” a three to three-and-a-half percent frequency of the term “thug,” and 37 to 40% frequency of the term “force." Lastly, Baumgartel affirms that the New York Times referenced the adversaries of Aristide 10% more times than of the followers of Aristide. However, journalists for the Washington Post referenced both the adversaries and followers of Aristide the same amount of times.
To further evaluate the associations between the terms that were utilized and the groups that they were used to define, Baumgartel gathered the first seven words and classified them according to value judgment. The terms “gang,” “thug,” and “mob” were hinted as terms with negative connotations. The terms “protester” and “militant” were coded as terms with a more positive undertone. As for “force” and “group,” they were coded as having a neutral undertone. Rivals of Aristide were referenced neutrally in 74% of the examined cases. Followers of Aristide were referenced neutrally in 54.6% of the cases. On the other hand, articles referenced Aristide followers by utilizing negative value terms more than 35% of cases, whereas rivals of Aristide received negative associations in exactly 14.5% of cases.
The Washington Post utilized neutral expressions in 78% of cases, whereas the New York Times utilized neutral expressions in exactly 68% of cases. Baumgartel notes that the difference in the depictions of the opponents and supporters of Aristide in regards to the application of valued and neutral terms was obvious. Valued terms were utilized in 59% of cases referencing Aristide’s followers, while valued terms used to reference the adversaries of Aristide were represented in exactly 40% of the cases. In the case of neutral terms, they were represented 37% of the time in reference to followers of Aristide. However, they were present in more than 62% of cases regarding the rivals of Aristide.
Discussion
In describing her findings, Baumgartel expresses that the most fascinating thing was the degree of the negative depictions of the supporters of Aristide. The followers of Aristide were referenced by terms that transmit a negative value judgment almost 20% more in comparison to the rivals of Aristide. As for the opponents of Aristide, they were commonly referred to with terms that suggested a neutral judgment. Representations such as these lack the effectiveness to encourage an understanding of international politics or widespread information conveyed to American readers as well as international readers. The emphasis on democracy has been portrayed continuously by the U.S. government to give reason for economic restrictions, CIA electoral interventions, and U.S. military raids in Haiti. Baumgartel explains that democracy is built upon flowing and relative notions, it is instantly defined and reliant on surrounding situations. In addition, Baumgartel notes that democracy is often defined by the party with the most economic power, which is alarming if democracy is based on the interest of those in control. She concludes that the reports on the coup d’état in Haiti in the New York Times and Washington Post echo the foreign policy aspirations of the U.S. government and of those who are in charge rather than the ethics of democratic truth-seekers.
Media reports on the earthquake and of the aftermath events continued with like dehumanization tales depicting troubled Haitians as unmoved and heartless individuals. Ulysse explains that this idea originated from popular false notions of Haitians being called illogical, devil-worshiping, progress-resistant, unskillful, cursed black inhabitants overpopulating their God-forsaken island. The people of Haiti and the nation itself will continue to be seen as a manifestation of blackness in the worst sense possible because of the unmanageable defiance demonstrated by the Haitian people in which they overcame all odds and caused the fall of colonial rule. Ulysse contested that Haiti had developed into colonialism’s bête noire so that the purity of whiteness was to continue untouched. She accounts another news correspondent, Pat Robertson. Days following the quake, Robertson stated publicly that the devastation in Haiti was a product of the country’s pact with the devil. Robertson’s claim is in reference to the ceremony that ignited the Haitian Revolution, known as Bois Caïman on August 14, 1791. Ulysse says days later the New York Times columnist David Brooks honed in on the noted poverty-stricken, progress-resistant stereotypes of Haiti without taking into account imperialist rule. Following these claims, a similar claim was exhausted on January 23 by then chief international news reporter Christiane Anampour of CNN. Christiane Anampour did a brief piece where the focal point was on Haiti’s history. Anampour made accounts beginning with the revolution, fast forwarding to decades of chaos pending President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to send U.S. troops to Haiti in 1915, then she skipped to 1945 when Haitian leaders set in motion a sequence of dictatorships concluding with the reign of Francois Duvalier and Jean-Claude Duvalier. Lastly, Anampour comments on the ousting of Jean-Bertrand Aristide by a military coup in 1991. Ulysse concludes by affirming that Haiti’s salvation came with a price. The symbols and imagery that came forward following the succession of Haiti’s revolt have and always will affect the representations of Haiti for years to come.<ref name="GinaAthenaUlysse"/>

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