On February 29, Richard Boucher from the
U.S. Department of State released a press release claiming
that Jean Bertrand Aristide had resigned as president
of Haiti and that the United State facilitated his safe
departure. Within hours the major broadcast news stations
in the United States including CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS,
and NPR were reporting that Aristide had fled Haiti. An
Associated Press release that evening said "Aristide
resigns, flees into exile." The next day headlines
in the major newspapers across the country, including
the Washington Post, USA Today, New York Times, and Atlanta
Journal Constitution, all announced "Aristide Flees
Haiti." The Baltimore sun reported, "Haiti's
first democratically-elected president was forced to flee
his country yesterday like despots before him."
However on Sunday afternoon February 29, Pacific News
network with reporters live in Port-au-Prince Haiti were
claiming that Aristide was forced to resign by the US
and taken out of the Presidential Palace by armed US marines.
On Monday morning Amy Goodman with Democracy Now! news
show interviewed Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Waters said
she had received a phone call from Aristide at 9:00 AM
EST March 1 in which Aristide emphatically denied that
he had resigned and said that he had been kidnapped by
US and French forces. Aristide made calls to others including
TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson, who verified congresswomen
Waters' report.
Mainstream corporate media was faced with a dilemma.
Confirmed contradictions to headlines reports were being
openly revealed to hundreds of thousands of Pacifica listeners
nationwide. By Monday afternoon mainstream corporate media
began to respond to the charges. Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly
News, 6:30 PM voiced, "Haiti in crisis. Armed rebels
sweep into the capital as Aristide claims US troops kidnapped
him; forced him out. The US calls that nonsense."
Fox News Network with Brit Hume reported Colin Powell's
comments, "He was not kidnapped. We did not force
him on to the airplane. He went on to the airplane willingly,
and that's the truth. Mort Kondracke, executive editor
of Roll Call added, "Aristide, Šwas a thug and
a leader of thugs and ran his country into the ground."
The New York Times in a story buried on page 10 reported
that "President Jean-Bertrand Aristide asserted Monday
that he had been driven from power in Haiti by the United
States in "a coup," an allegation dismissed
by the White House as "complete nonsense."
Mainstream media had a credibility problem. Their original
story was openly contradicted. The kidnap story could
be ignored or back-paged as was done by many newspapers
in the US. Or it can be framed within the context of a
US denial and dismissed. Unfortunately, the corporate
media seems not at all interested in conducting an investigation
into the charges, seeking witnesses, or verifying contradictions.
Nor is the mainstream media asking or answering the question
of why they fully accept the State Department's version
of the coup in the first place. Corporate media certainly
had enough pre-warning to determine that Aristide was
not going to willingly leave the country. Aristide had
been saying exactly that for the past month during the
armed attacks in the north of Haiti. Aristide was interviewed
on CNN February 26. He explained that the terrorists,
and criminal drug dealers were former members of the Front
for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), which
had led the coup in 1991 killing 5,000 people. Aristide
believed that they would kill more people if a coup was
allowed to happen. It was also well known in media circles
that the US Undersecretary of State Roger Noriega for
Latin America was a senior aide to former Senator Jesse
Helms, who as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs committee
was a longtime backer of Haitian dictator Jean Claude
Duvalier and an opponent of Aristide. These facts alone
should have been a red flag regarding the State Department's
version.
As a former priest and liberation theologist, Jean Bertrand
Aristide stood for grassroots democracy, alleviation of
poverty, and God's love for all human beings. He challenged
the neo-liberal globalization efforts of the Haitian upper
class and their US partners. For this he was targeted
by the Bush administration. That the US waited until the
day after Aristide was gone to send in troops to stabilize
the country proves intent to remove him from office.
Mainstream media had every reason to question the State
Department's version of the coup in Haiti, but choose
instead to report a highly doubtful cover story. We deserve
more from our media than their being stenographers for
the government. Weapons of mass destruction aside, we
need a media that looks for the truth and exposes the
contradictions in the fabrications of the powerful.
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma
State University and director of Project Censored; a media
research organization.