The Failure of the Media and Haiti

On February 2nd, exactly three weeks after the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince hit, I checked the news. I scoured the main pages of CNN.com (“The most trusted name in news”) and NYTimes.com (“All the news that’s fit to print”), searching for updates on the situation in Haiti, a glimpse into what was happening only a couple hundred miles away. It turns out that despite the well-documented facts that some Haitians hadn’t even received aid yet and thousands of bodies remained entombed beneath the rubble, the earthquake was no longer front page news. I found one link on the bottom of each of those web pages to something Haiti-related.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but something told me that this situation might have been different, considering the entire world’s generous, heartfelt outpouring of aid to Haiti. Over two billion dollars have been pledged (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jan/14/haiti-quake-aid-pledges-country-donations); George Clooney organized a telethon, for God’s sake. In a time of crisis in a forgotten country, people from all over actually stood together and did something about it. In a time where people are more strapped for cash than ever, they reached into their pockets and did the right thing.

So, where did their money go? Well, if it were up to CNN or the New York Times, we might never know. After a few days of “breaking news” coverage complete with 50-point font, photo montages, dramatic music, and predictably self-serving “journalism” by the likes of Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Haiti once again faded into the background. Article after article was published, filled with disparaging comments about international aid and fingers pointed at just about everyone, especially the Haitians themselves. “We must do things differently!” the pundits cried, many of whom never having set a foot in the country itself.

Three weeks later, the capricious mainstream media give the equivalent to George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” in the form of utter silence. The average American, the same one who donated her hard-earned money to a just cause, ceases to hear anything new at all. Rocked into complacency, she gradually forgets about the tragedy that continues to happen so close to home. The earthquake becomes an event of the past, rather than an ongoing disaster that is all-too-real for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

Meanwhile, the same members of the media, decriers of previous development efforts and lamenters of the corrupt Haitians, find new stories. If they ever had the intention of “keeping them accountable,” they lose all their credibility by covering some bogus Tiger Woods story or, worse, focusing their “Haiti” coverage on a group of idiotic Americans who decided that international laws did not apply to them and started kidnapping children. Yeah, that’s the spirit! Let’s see how we can possibly manipulate this story into something that has to do with people more like us.

It makes you wonder what makes up the myriad other things that the media don’t deem “fit to print.”