Haiti

As part of three days of mourning in Haiti to remember the one-month anniversary of the January 12 earthquake, songs and prayers with melancholic voices echoing and images of a crowd mostly dressed in white were broadcast live on the state-owned National Radio and Television stations (RTNH).

The three main online news agencies in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, are struggling in the aftermath of the quake. Clarens Renois, the founding director of Haiti Press Network, addressed the outlet's future frankly: “In three months, I will close the agency,” he said. 

His collarbone severely fractured in the January 12 earthquake, Haitian journalist Yves Adler Boissonniere needed considerable medical attention—care that he could not get in his devastated country. With US$40 and a few gourdes (Haiti’s currency) in his pocket, Boissonniere decided in late January to cross the border to the Dominican Republic in hopes of getting care. Yet his situation remained exceedingly difficult: A few dollars could not pay for the X-rays, examinations, and treatment he needed. This week, Boissonniere’s prospects brightened when he received grants from international organizations, including CPJ, that will allow him to seek immediate care.

February 2010

News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

A month after the January 12 earthquake, the death toll for journalists has risen to 26, with two others injured, according to a new provisional tally released by media groups in Haiti. Under the umbrella of International Media Support, a joint mission of press groups (including the Association of Haitian Journalists, SOS Journalistes, and the Group for Reflection and Action for Freedom of the Press) visited Leogane, Petit Goave, and Grand Goave on Friday—the areas most devastated by the disaster—to try to get a better sense of the number of journalists killed. CPJ continues to investigate the number of deaths from the quake.

The two Haitian dailies, Le Nouvelliste and Le Matin, are still coping with the devastating effects of the January earthquake. Though these outlets continue to disseminate news via the Internet, it will take them some time to resume publishing in print.

Every evening, between 9 and 10 p.m., people in areas affected by the January 12 earthquake listen to the program “Nouvel pou nou Konnen” (News to Know). Huddled in tents or sitting in the open air, men and women cling to their transistor radios to get news on the latest decisions of the Haitian government or agencies coordinating international assistance in affected areas. The program comes via the California-based media development agency Internews, which opened a press center in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, in order to bridge the information gap following the destruction of most media outlets in this city.

Radio Metropole’s journalists, coping in a tent set up in the garden of the radio station’s office in Port-au-Prince, have not still resumed their normal pace of work because of the trauma caused by the January 12 earthquake. The station resumed its normal programming on February 1, after broadcasting news via the Internet for two weeks. 

Amid Haiti’s chaos, Marcus Garcia struggles every day to fulfill his duty as journalist. He said he routinely goes up and down the streets of Port-au-Prince in search of fuel for his car. When talking on the phone, the tone of his voice indicates the difficulties he encounters as a journalist willing to keep doing his job in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake. Garcia feels the toll as heavily as anyone right now: He lost his wife in the disaster.

As CPJ’s Haiti consultant Jean Roland Chery wrote Wednesday on the CPJ Blog, “Community radio stations play a leading role in local news coverage in Haiti’s most remote communities, filling the void left by private radio stations in the capital.” Today we can show you two videos clearly depicting the devastation to the Haitian local radio community after the earthquake.