Haiti / Americas

  

Videos show Haiti’s community radio stations in ruins

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…

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Foreign journalists, seen here working in Port-au-Prince, have flooded into Haiti after the earthquake, but the local media is in tatters. (Reuters/Eliana Aponte)

Media must not be left behind as Haiti rebuilds

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…

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Haiti’s Radio Tele Caraïbes lost its offices, not its mission

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…

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Women sell fruit in Jacmel, where Radio Fondwa was completely destroyed along with much of the city’s downtown. (AP)

Community radio stations obliterated, off the air in Haiti

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…

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Haitian media casualties, damages mount

Working in an atmosphere of great confusion and grief, our sources in Haiti are compiling preliminary lists of media casualties, documenting damages to news facilities, and examining the challenges ahead. SOS Journalistes, a press advocacy group led by the prominent Haitian journalist Guyler Delva, reports that at least 11 journalists died in the January 12…

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For Haiti’s Michele Montas, trauma and determination

Michele Montas, the Haitian journalist and former spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon, has experienced a harrowing time in aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. “Haiti appears to be on doomsday,” said Montas, who said she has been shaken by the number of dead and wounded on the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Her own…

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Destruction in Port-au-Prince. (AP/Rodrigo Abd)

In Haiti, initial media toll is released

The Association of Haitian Journalists has recorded at least three media fatalities and one seriously wounded journalist as a preliminary toll from the earthquake that struck the Caribbean island on January 12. In an interview with CPJ from Port-au-Prince, AJH Secretary General Jacques Desrosiers identified the early victims as Wanel Fils, a reporter with Radio…

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In the studios of Signal FM this week. (AP/Ariana Cubillos)

In Haiti, Signal FM staff keeps station running

Signal FM is the only Haitian radio station to continuously broadcast during and after the powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake that ravaged the capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding areas on January 12. Signal’s online news service kept operating as well. The station’s equipment, located in Petionville (east of Port-au-Prince) remained in service, withstanding, remarkably, tremors to the building…

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A man sits amid the rubble in Port-au-Prince. (AP)

How to help journalists in Haiti

The scenes from Port-au-Prince are horrifying, and the needs are staggering. There is no food, no water, no place to bury the dead. And there is also no information. According to CPJ’s Senior Americas Program Coordinator Carlos Lauria, who spoke with Haitian journalist Guylar Delva today, only a handful of Creole-language radio stations are operating. Journalists are unable to work…

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Haitian journalist describes scenes of death and destruction

At 5 p.m. on Tuesday, prominent Haitian journalist Joseph Guyler Delva, 43, was driving his car on the streets of Port-au-Prince. Delva, the country’s leading press freedom advocate, was on his way to pick-up his 7-year-old daughter from school when he heard a loud bang. “I thought I was hit by a truck,” he said. After…

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