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.

Argentine writer and journalist Tomás Eloy Martínez, who died on Monday after a long battle with cancer, was ranked among Latin America’s most prominent intellectuals. Best known for his novels about former President Juan Domingo Perón and his wife Eva, Martínez cared deeply about press freedom and was a passionate advocate who helped scores of Argentine reporters, and was actively involved in CPJ’s efforts to campaign on behalf on Cuban imprisoned journalists.

Martínez understood the difficulties journalists face while working on dangerous assignments or under repressive regimes. In 1975, he was forced to flee Argentina after serious threats from a right-wing paramilitary group. He lived in exile during the dictatorship era, and returned briefly to the country after democracy was restored in 1983.

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.

New York, February 1, 2010—Jorge Ochoa Martínez, a Mexican editor and publisher in Guerrero state, died late Friday after being shot in the face, according to local press reports. Mexican authorities must put an end to the cycle of impunity in attacks on the press by ensuring those responsible for Ochoa’s murder are brought to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The earthquake that rocked Haiti didn't spare anyone, including the media. Like every institution in the troubled country, the media has had its share of challenges. They cannot pay decent salaries to reporters and the reporting most often doesn't go beyond the headlines. International organizations have developed training programs for Haitian journalists, but those journalists tend to leave Haiti after gaining some experiences, leaving a vicious brain drain and a permanent training cycle.

It has been almost nine months since I arrived in the United States. I can't believe how fast life is moving and how different my family’s days are now are from the old days—that was a beautiful time. Everything is changing now. There's no simplicity for us anymore.

Radio Tele Caraïbes is out on the street after losing the use of its offices in the January 12 earthquake, but the Port-au-Prince broadcaster has resumed operations nonetheless. A makeshift newsroom has been set up in a tent in the middle of a street. Staff meetings and discussions are being held under the gaze of passersby. Reports are being prepared without production studios, and technicians are making do with damaged equipment. The broadcaster has faced numerous challenges in its 60-year history, but none as extraordinary as those being posed in the earthquake’s aftermath.

More than two weeks after earthquake that devastated Haiti, several community radio stations are still off the air. In the western and southeastern parts of the country, at least 16 stations are facing serious problems that have suspended their broadcasts, Sony Esteus, executive director of SAKS, a local organization of community radio stations, told CPJ. The earthquake obliterated SAKS’ office in the Bourdon neighborhood, east of Port-au-Prince.