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25958: Koleva (reply) Fwd: (Comment) Simidor, Delva, and the crucifix of "objective" journalism (fwd)




From: Gergana Koleva <gergana@journalist.com>

  Last week I returned from a monthlong reporting fellowship in Haiti.
  On July 20th, barely into my second week there, I was kidnapped in
  Bel Air on my way back from the house of a woman whose son had been
  executed by police a few days prior and whom I had just interviewed.
  I was taken to a bare room in my kidnappers&#8217; cinderblock shack,
  which had apparently seen others like me before, for there was a rope
  on the floor and a heavy bolt across the door of another room further
  down the lakou. For the three hours that I was held there (I was
  extremely lucky to walk out in one piece and unharmed), I went back
  and forth between a complete denial of what was happening to a firm
  conviction that I was headed for a reenactment of Jacques
  Roche&#8217;s savage and sad end.

  I am recounting briefly this experience to show that I harbor not the
  least bit of sympathy for Haiti&#8217;s roaming gangs of violent
  chimeres and criminals. Though considering the political context of
  the Lavalas&#8217; rebellion (but &#8220;rebellion&#8221; is a noble
  word; referring to it as &#8220;Operation Baghdad&#8221; may be more
  accurate), it is perhaps necessary to distinguish between the two, in
  my eyes they are equally culpable of treating human life as having no
  more value than that of a scavenging goat.

  That said, I strongly disagree with Daniel Simidor&#8217;s comment
  regarding Joseph Guyler Delva and his thinly disguised appeal to
  Reuters to &#8220;get his ass fired&#8221; based on his July 28th
  story headlined &#8220;Aristide&#8217;s party split over Haiti
  elections.&#8221; While in Haiti, I met Delva on several occasions,
  one of which was on July 27 in Cap Haitien, where he had flown to
  interview former president Leslie Manigat, and I to meet and talk
  with workers at a nearby orange plantation. Later that evening we
  convened at the seaside bistro Les Cayes where he showed me an email
  on his laptop that he had received a few hours earlier from his
  editor in Miami. In the email, which included an attachment with an
  edited &#8220;Aristide&#8217;s party split&#8221; story, the editor
  asked Delva whether he was ok with a sentence that he had inserted,
  which he essentially claimed &#8220;put the story into greater
  perspective.&#8221; The sentence in question read &#8220;It [Haiti]
  faces the possibility of dong so without the Lavalas party that has
  dominated politics for 20 years.&#8221; Delva had not been able to
  check his email immediately and proofread the editor&#8217;s
  correction, and the story had already gone online without his
  consent.

  While Simidor busies himself making snug sarcastic comments about
  Reuters&#8217; arithmetic and &#8220;calculus of
  misconceptions,&#8221; I would recommend that he refrain from
  crucifying hard-working journalists who in addition to being
  perilously visible by the mere nature of working in the perpetually
  distorted, physically volatile political reality of Haiti, have had
  for years to endure alternating accusations of being pro- and
  anti-Aristide, depending on the sway of the current at any given
  moment. The uniquely American notion of squeaky clean,
  &#8220;objective&#8221; journalism hardly applies to Haiti at
  present, though it may well do so in the future, and testing the
  purity and fair-handedness of Delva&#8217;s reporting by weighing the
  connotations of the words &#8220;party&#8221; vs.
  &#8220;movement&#8221; hardly makes the case for his being fired.

  Note to Kathleen, who offers another neatly self-righteous comment:
  &#8220;a &#8216;journalist&#8217; who doesn't get his/her facts
  straight is incompetent and should be sanctioned, watched, and fired
  if there is no improvement.&#8221; There are several reasons why
  journalists sometimes fail to get their facts straight. In the case
  of reporting from a war zone, one reason could be the not-so-smart
  intervention of an editor bravely browsing the Internet away from the
  line of action in his air-conditioned office. Another (not in
  Delva&#8217;s case, but I bring it up by way of showing that I am not
  addressing his issue only) is an obstruction of justice and/or truth.
  The journalistic profession is on the same if not higher plane of
  scrutiny as politics and a reader&#8217;s potential disagreement with
  a piece of information by no means renders the author of the story
  incompetent.

  It seems to me that both Simidor and Kathleen need to revise their
  purist notions of unflinchingly PC journalism as practiced in times
  of severe international conflict, and specifically in Haiti.

  Regards,

  Gergana

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