Uninformed and Complicit

January 11^th, 2011

Within journalism exists rhetoric of truthfulness. It is the idea that journalists are capable of supplying the viewers with "true stories" that are authentic and that these stories can be translated from one end of the globe to another. This appears to be the motive within this Al Jazeera English video I saw on the news and relocated on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40GEQqWMKIs

Journalist Sebastian Walker is attempting to condense a very complicated Haitian crisis into a short one minute and twenty-four second news clip. This process appears to be common to many journalists’ work; presenting indisputable “true” and horrifying stories that people in the Western world need to hear. While I agree that it is important that those from privileged parts of the world such as the West not turn a blind eye to devastating epidemics, natural disasters and political uprisings, I contest the ability for reports to bring back wholly truthful stories. Rather, journalists are capable of merely sharing opinions and accounts from the outside. These accounts are often context-less and relatively uninformed. In the short Al Jazeera English video, viewers are given bare bone facts surrounding the outbreak of cholera in Haiti. Walker describes the horrifying outbreak of cholera in a country that is, “already on its knees,” where he saw “two patients die in the space of an hour” (2010.) Further, he states that the hospital is overwhelmed with cases (Walker 2010). While this is indisputable the statement lacks context. It ignores the Haitian’s government’s agency in this event, the political structure within and outside of Haiti, the involvement of the United Nations, as well as the humanitarian aid working with the overwhelmed hospitals during the cholera outbreak. Also, it failed to mention that this area was not affected by the earthquake, merely side-stepping it by saying, “officials are concerned that it could spread to areas affected by the earthquake” (Walker 2010).

In Alms Dealers, Philip Gourevitch argues that the humanitarian ideal in practice was pure and unambiguous (109). Similarly, coverage of events which require humanitarian aid are attempting to purely and truthfully present events to the rest of the world. In the Al Jazeera English clip, Walker is confronted with a humanitarian disaster and attempts to present himself as an objective outsider (Gourevitch 106). However, he uncritically accepts the work of the hospital and fails to further investigate important questions such as who can be served at the hospital, how are patients prioritized, and information regarding the health care systems of Haiti.

Gourevitch argues that the graphic suffering of innocents made an inescapable appeal to the conscience in the case of Biafra which created the humanitarian aid business today as we know it (102). Further,

...in 1967, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the world’s oldest and largest humanitarian nongovernmental organization, had a total annual budget of just half a million dollars. A year later, the Red Cross was spending about a million and a half dollars a month on Biafra alone...(102).

News reports such as the Al Jazeera English clip discussed here indirectly support humanitarian aid ventures such as the Red Cross. The viewer is encountered with eerie images of people deathly ill. While there is no mention of Red Cross or something similar viewers watch an “objective” and “indisputable” report on the news surrounding the cholera outbreak in Haiti. Then, when the viewer comes in contact with perhaps a Red Cross commercial or the Canadian Red Cross website they are told to “donate now” as news lines below run stories of the Haiti’s misfortune.

Uninformed and context-less news coverage on Haiti is complicit in created an ineffective environment in which the cholera epidemic cannot be managed. This is due to a failure to be critical of the humanitarian aid they are indirectly supporting. As Yoleen Surena interviewed in the Al Jazeera English clip, “they don’t know what we are dealing with” (Surena 2010).

Works Cited

Alms Dealers: can you provide humanitarian aid without facilitating conflicts?

2010 The New Yorker, October 11: 102

Surena, Yoleen.

2010 Interview by Sebastian Walker. Haiti struggles to contain cholera. Al Jazeera English, October 22.

Walker, Sebastian.

2010 Haiti struggles to contain cholera. 1.5 min. Al Jazeera English. Saint-Marc