Another face of Haiti

If you've been paying any attention at all to the news in the past few weeks, you've probably noticed how it's been swamped with stories about the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath. Mostly, when I'd think about all of the coverage of Haiti, I'd be thankful that the media was at last paying attention to something that really mattered. But it wasn't until I read this article that it hit me just how much Haiti really has captured their attention.

The New York Times article is simply titled, "Media Struggle to Convey a Disaster." In straightforward and sometimes pained prose, it tells the story of the people behind all of the Haiti news coverage that you've been seeing—the reporters, anchors, and news crews who have been put on-location in Haiti to witness firsthand the destruction there.

Can you imagine seeing something so devastating, then having to talk about it to the whole world? The article opens with a brief account of Steve Harrigan, a correspondent (or on-the-scene reporter) with Fox News. In the course of his job, Harrigan has seen plenty of pretty traumatizing things, from the destruction left by Hurricane Katrina to the violence of several wars. But, when trying to report on the situation in Haiti after seeing the mourning of a mother who had just lost all five of her children, he broke down right on the air.

Since there was a severe shortage of foreign correspondents in Haiti (actually, there was only one), almost all of the correspondents you see reporting from Haiti were shipped in after the earthquake. To get the public its late-breaking news, these crews came in with or even before the aid organizations. And then they found themselves in a world that had literally fallen apart. They arrived well before anyone could begin to put things back together; at a time when the pain was sharp and new, and people were still discovering just how much they had lost.

In a situation like that, reporters lose all ability to be objective observers. They can't even come close to any sort of "ideological middle ground," where they're just giving the facts, because the truth about what they're seeing is made of emotion and physical pain. Their ideology turns primal: Pain and death are wrong; social stratification is irrelevant; coming together to bring relief and restoration is the highest good.

Being there, in the midst of all that chaos, they cease to be just reporters and become part of the story.

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Now, while you might argue that this article is an opportunistic attempt to cast the much-hated-on media in a more positive light—a journalist jumping on the chance to show that reporters are people too—but I'd argue that, even if it is, the article has a point. Reporters are people. Just like they can't help but put a bit of their own personal biases into their stories, they also can't help but be affected by them. (This is especially true, I'd guess, of correspondents.)

So will this knowledge change your life? Probably not. But I know that, at least for me, it'll change the way I think about the media. For instance, instead of separating the reported information from the reporter who is giving it, I'm guessing that I'll find myself looking for the humanness in the news report or article—for how the journalist is affecting the journalism as well as for how the subject might be affecting the journalist. Will looking at the media this way have any great effect on what I get out of it? Maybe, maybe not. But at least it'll be interesting.

peace,
blogdor