Caribbean Cornucopia's Blog
Passionate about all things Caribbean!Archive for TV images
‘American Missionaries’ charged with abduction
They may have been well intended but they were intelligent human beings and it is difficult to accept that they did not know what to do or which rules were to be followed.
With their heads covered heading back to their jail cells, the ten American missionaries in Haiti have been charged with abduction. They were all arrested on Friday as they tried to take 33 Haitian children to an alleged orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
The Haitian courts were able to prove that ALL the 33 children were in fact not orphans, and all have close relations still alive and searching for them.
They face up to 15 years in jail. Full coverage from the New York Times here.
American authorities say they are letting Haitian justice take its course. And in the UK Guardian newspapers, the Haitian Prime Minister has been quoted as saying the ten missionaries are generating more headlines than the millions of people still suffering on the streets of Port au Prince.
Yes. Sigh. All we need now is for the missionaries to start saying that “God is testing them.”
Why did they not put through the proper paper work?
Why did they not make contact with the Haitian authorities- NGO, Government or otherwise?
Why no apology from the group, even when goaded by an American TV journalist?
Were they taking advantage of the crisis in Haiti as many have said?
Why are they all wearing dark sun glasses and smiling for the cameras?
Haiti hit by another earthquake
Eight days after the massive earthquake hit Haiti, another large one has struck the Caribbean island again.
Measuring 6.1 on the ritcher scale, the earthquake struck around 6.30 this morning sending shock and horror out in to the early morning air.
It struck northwest of the capital Port au Prince and it’s not yet clear if there’s been futher deaths or damage.
Despite the massive international aid mobilisation, supplies, food, and medicines are still slow to reach the people who need it most in the outlying villages. Reports seem to indicate that tangible aid and distribution are coming from the Haitian Olympic Committee members, a small hospital on the Dominican Republic border.
One committee member told reporters “the top people meet for too long everyday.“
According to the Haitian President Rene Preval aid delivery was the main problem now.
Help came “very fast,” he said. ”When it arrives, the question is: where are the trucks to transport it, where are the depots?“
And this got me thinking that I haven’t seen pictures of heavy earth moving machinery, bobcats or bulldozers anywhere. Are the roads in Haiti still impassable?
Shouldn’t it be a major priority to move rubble out of the streets clearing a path for the medical workers and aid distribution teams? Maybe the rubble is being cleared and paths being created for the delivery trucks and the cameras just haven’t picked up these images as yet.
And people are starting to question the images coming out of Haiti. One NPR blogger in America is asking whether the images have crossed the lines of taste and decency? See my previous posts.
Meantime, rescue workers are still finding survivors. A little brother and sister pulled from the rubble after seven days of being trapped.
This resilient spirit is a most powerful message.
Dignity in death in Haiti
Here’s the idea.
There are rules which are meant to apply to television coverage of major disasters, be it man made or the wrath of mother nature. If you didn’t know before, you know now, that news teams have specific guidelines on how to handle pictures of the dead, and indeed people suffering and distressed.
Start thinking words like ‘sensitive, dignity, due care, children.’
The BBC Guidelines on the internet say:
We should respect human dignity without sanitising the realities of war. There must be clear editorial justification for the use of very graphic pictures of war or atrocity.
The same thing pretty much applies to earthquakes, hurricanes and all natural disasters.
The images on television are meant to be sensitive to the emotions and fears of people watching, sensitive to how hurtful it must be to sit in front of a TV screen and recognise a dead body lying in the streets of Port au Prince as your aunt, friend or grandmother.
How is a child of any society meant to handle such images in the news? You would think that it goes without saying that painful stories such the latest monumental tragedy in Hait must be handled carefully.
All this seems to have completely gone out the door in the global coverage of Haiti.
And it needs to be said up front that, it is very, very difficult to cover earthquakes and massive disaster stories. Some sections of the global media need to be commended for getting in quickly and getting the pictures out to the world which has responded to Haiti’s cry for help.
I guess in the ‘heat of the moment’ of covering the story, television stations across the world no longer care that dead bodies lying in the streets, scared, crying faces trapped under rubble, badly broken limbs, bleeding skulls are upsetting to children and their audiences.
There seems to be little care for the anguish of the relatives and friends of Haitians around the world watching the harrowing images without any means of contacting anyone because of destroyed communications.
The thing is there are very many ways to tell a story without the graphic shock factor.
Would you not get the same message of someone dying in the street if the deceased was covered up with a sheet? Another example – showing images of people badly injured can easily be done with shots of medical staff attending to victims without close up shots of broken bones or bloodied skulls.
Well go make the comparisons yourself – check the images of the war in Afghanistan, look again at the reports of the last suicide bombing in Iraq, trawl through web images of the Gaza and come to your own conclusions. And then ask why is it ok for Haitians to be shown in such a shocking, graphic way.
This is the same global media that made the right and very swift decision to stop showing the images of people jumping off the NY twin towers during the 9/11 attacks because the families of those people who were so desperate to save themselves, wanted dignity….even in death.
Looting or survival?
When the hell, it is right/correct to describe a woman’s or man’s urgency to feed a hungry child as looting?
Three days after the earthquake devastated this Caribbean island, people, survivors, have yet to see any help from the outside world.
$268 million in international aid has been pledged but it is not yet reaching the people for all sorts of dire reasons.
Planes are queuing in the skies at the Port au Prince airport, and the process is exceeding slow as the main port has been badly damaged and the airport is extremely narrow. It is physically hard to get the food aid in.
There is no electricity. People have no tvs, no water, nothing to tell them that the help is coming so….when a desperate Haitian looks for food is it looting?
Did any Haitian see or hear President Obama’s promise of help yesterday? I don’t think so. Haitians do not know that help is coming.
Media reports have already begun this cycle of clichés in their reporting of the devastating situation in Haiti.
Already there are reports of ‘looting,.’
When does a desperate need to find food and water and seeing the items on broken shelves, smashed supermarkets turn in to looting?
The most urgent appeal making the international rounds this morning is for protection of the children who survived the earthquake on Tuesday.
The DEC (disaster and Emergency Committee) says ”there’s a need for food and water and protection of the children in particular.”
Aid is not getting through to the island. So what are bleeding, sick, tired, hungry, shocked Haitians to do?
The DEC has a 70 year history in dealing with emergencies and on a television interview this morning and a spokeswoman was very clear not to take the bait from the anchor on the looting questions.
This as reports emerge that the UN Food Programme warehouse has been raided.
This is how the script could have gone…..”Hungry Haitians dealing with the aftermath of a devastated country have been helping themselves to the food and water from the broken and damaged UN food warehouse which collapsed in Tuesday’s earthquake.
Oh and the anchor could factually add that ’1500 people are still buried under the same fallen UN building,’ according to the UN Food spokesman. A six storey building reduced to rubble with food everywhere.
If your children are hungry and there’s no other way to feed them you are going to walk in to a supermarket that’s been trashed and take what you want.
Haiti’s most famous son the rapper and Fugees singer Wyclef Jean told international news agencies he spent the day picking up dead bodies from the streets, many, many of them children.
Is the real issue that devastated Haitians are helping themselves to food wherever they could find it?
