Tackling the journalism brain drain in Haiti: Post-quake challenges to produce quality journalism
Journalism education in Haiti is weak with the main driving forces limited to a generalised humanities faculty at the State University and a UNESCO-supported master’s programme in journalism at the private-run Quisqueya University
By Robert Shaw
For those budding journalists who do manage to squeeze through the ever-shrinking education gap, the majority disappear abroad. According to a World Bank report, 84 per cent of university graduates leave the country soon after graduating.
Pushing to fill the gaps in jounalism training
Since the earthquake in January 2010, a range of international NGOs together with local organisations and UN agencies began pushing to fill the gaps in journalism training.
In late 2010, Kathy Klarreich, a Knight Foundation fellow, began work under an International Centre for Journalists programme with a select number of media outlets in Port-au-Prince to bolster investigative reporting within Haitian mainstream media circles.
“In Haiti investigative journalism is difficult for both obvious and not so obvious reasons,” she explains. “News is driven by events as opposed to issues and a culture that for the most part has not demanded it”.
However, while slow, now almost a year down the line, Klarreich’s work with news stations, independent journalists, agencies and associations has had its impact. One important investigation in the daily Le Nouvelliste brought to light the halt of a nearly completed US $2 million sewage treatment plant. In October, the government finally gave the green light to resume the work and the land, which was under dispute, to be declared a public utility.
At the same time, this sort of watchdog journalism has also begun to find other proponents beyond traditional mainstream media. Towards the end of last year, Jane Regan, an investigative journalist, who has worked in Haiti for most of the past two decades, dived head-on into the learning vacuum working to set up a fledgling but innovative group of Haitian community journalism outlets forming the IMS-supported Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW).
“Pretty early on, I realized that we needed to “grow” our own journalists, so I began with skills workshops at radio stations across several departments and in the capital,” explains Regan.
Level of professional journalism inhibited by low wages
Parallel to this work, in January this year, Regan started teaching Haiti’s first-ever university-level investigative journalism course at the state university. With support from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), they translated a chapter of theInvestigative Reporter’s Handbook and several chapters of an African investigative reporting manual by the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR).
However, Regan noted, until the pay-scale issue is addressed and until a code of ethics preventing journalists from moonlighting for businesses, humanitarian and development agencies or the government is put into place, the level of journalism in Haiti will remain low.
“Currently most young journalists only stay in the field a few years before moving to a government or development organisation position,” Regan noted.
Many journalists are paid little more than about US $500 a month. A recent study by a US labour federation put the minimum “livable wage” for a factory worker with two dependents – and without the need for a computer, Internet, and other journalist sine qua non – at US $749 per month.
Klarreich underscores the need for a sober analysis of the future for education and training in Haiti´s journalism world. “Until and unless the news system changes, investigations will not be given priority,” she affirms. “Without demand, owners will not put in the time and resources needed for the journalists.”
So while there appears to be more interest in reinvigorating the Haitian journalism education landscape with more investigative reporting than there was a year ago, Haiti remains a long way from having a stable work environment that can churn out the quantity and quality of stories that reflect those that can and should be covered.
