Criticism has been growing over the last few days over the Dread Mainstream Media's coverage of sporadic violence and looting in Port-au-Prince.
While most print and broadcast media have been careful to emphasize the word "'sporadic,' there have been reports of looting of stores and homes, tussles over food at distribution spots, gangs of young men wielding machetes walking down city streets, and a few cases of vigilante justice where citizens have turned on looters and lynched them on the spot.
Most of the blogo-punditry has deemed any coverage or mention of looting or lawlessness as 'racist,' hearkening back to shoddy, race-tinged reporting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Theoretically, these critics would prefer the media make no mention of post-disaster violence, and focus exclusively on the stories of people coming together in the face of catastrophe. Moreover, they'd prefer a narrative of lawlessness as a socially-acceptable response to a desperate situation.
'When someone is starving or dying of thirst and they steal food or water, it isn't looting,' writes Tom McNalley in the Huffington Post in a representative argument. 'It's surviving. This is especially true after a devastating natural disaster. (And more so when your country is about 100 degrees year round.)'
The "it-isn't-looting-if-you're-starving" argument strikes me particularly lame. Stuff doesn't stop belonging to someone else just because there's an emergency and you need it more.
Don't get me wrong: if I were in Haiti right now, I'd be walking out of the nearest demolished supermarket with a bra full of Spam and canned peas...but I wouldn't argue it was some egalitarian redistribution of goods.
This is the language we have to work with: to loot means to plunder, and to plunder means to seize wrongfully or by force. The Germans call it 'pluendern.' The French say 'pillage.' Spaniards call it 'saquero.' In every language, the word 'looting' carries within it the terrible breakdown of civic order.
And this is exactly why the media needs to keep covering it. Because lawlesslness is indicative of a much larger, more critical issue than racism.
As we approach one full week since the disaster, the failure of international rescue operations to mount a coordinated response is growing more glaring by the hour.
While individual groups are doing extraordinary work, their efforts are diluted by the inability of the Haitian government, the United Nations, and the United States to come together and get a command-and-control system in place that gives the people of Haiti the security, the food, the water and the medical care they need to get through this disaster.
Yes, the situation is complicated and yes, the challenges are huge. But a week, and people are still hungry, still thirsty, still walking around piles of unburied bodies and nursing unattended wounds? Huge piles of food are still sitting at the airport? Roads still obstructed? No centralized clinics and feeding stations set up throughout the city?
So I say to the people of Haiti: Loot and lynch away. Wave those machetes. Set stuff on fire. Walk up to Anderson Cooper and pop him in the chops. (Trust me, CNN will replay it ten times an hour.) Do whatever you have to do to scare those in charge into helping you.
Update:
Someone (metaphorically) popped Anderson Cooper in the chops. Warning: graphic and incredibly sad.
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Get over it. The news is the news and when it is playing out right in front of you, unedited and not commented upon, you're getting the raw truth. If you can't handle it, dig a hole in the ground and stick your head in it.
Thank you for an important post. Do not re-erase!
PS: I never know what to make of Anderson Cooper, but I do know that seeing him do this, and watching Sanjay Gupta interrupt his news coverage to do actual brain surgery shows up the difference between CNN and Fox. Anyone want O'Reilly - or Palin - running your relief operation?
Looting brings to mind people breaking into Dept stores and walking out with TVs during race riots.
The international response given the circumstances, the total obliteration of a countries infrastructure, has been about as good as it can be it seems to me, although I wish they had more bulldozers to clear roads, but then, you bury people alive maybe... which would definitely trigger anger, even if it might make sense to prevent cholera. That is what you really don't want, is cholera. Then... I will hope that does not happen. But as usual well-balanced piece. :)
@Deb - There have been a handful of lynchings and looting-related shootings....one reporter saw a crowd turn on a guy, beat the tar out of him, then set a pile of garbage on fire. There was a story, I don't know if confirmed, but widespread by Twitter and rumor, that a woman was decapitated when found scavenging a collapsed store. Police are so overwhelmed, they're encouraging vigilante justice. It's NOT widespread, but there are increasing number of incidents each day, which says to me that the security situation is going the wrong direction.
@write away....maybe we do need a new word. The thing is, you can't really tell what's looting for survival and what's looting for profit. People on the ground there say that scavenging by individuals is giving way to looting by the organized street gangs that worked in the city even before the earthquake, and who never let a good natural disaster go to waste when it comes to victimizing fellow Haitians.
This was pretty much the implication of the photograph of a white " looter" in New Orleans after Katrina -
'When someone is starving or dying of thirst and they steal food or water, it isn't looting,' writes Tom McNalley in the Huffington Post in a representative argument. 'It's surviving. This is especially true after a devastating natural disaster. (And more so when your country is about 100 degrees year round.)'
However, a black "looter" was described as just that: a looter. As you pointed out, this is probably behind all of the racial sensitivity. There's usually a reason for sensitivity on this subject.
I do like your post for its honesty, insight, and the salient points you make. Rated
To Deb: if you want to begin to understand Haiti and it's issues, begin by reading Madison Smartt Bell's trilogy: All Souls' Rising, The Master of the Crossroads, and The Stone that the Builder Refused. He also wrote a biography of Toussaint Louverture.
And J.A.K.: I believe that the words 'looting' and 'plunder' were used to describe the behaviour of the Wall Street gang. These words have also described the behaviour of Mugabe and others. Bad behaviour is not bound by skin colour or class.
It's too bad that some rabid partisans use this human tragedy as an excuse to take a punch at O'Reilly and FOX News. Actually, O'Reilly would probably do a better job than most in making sure that aid resources are honestly distributed without diversion to corrupt politicians.
1) You need to bring the aid in. That requires an airport or port or roads. All of these will have customs points.
2) You need a warehouse/distribution center. Who owns it? Where will you get it?
3) You need workers. They all need visas.
4) Your warehouse needs security. Who's going to provide it? What are you going to do to prevent, say, the police, from cleaning out your warehouse full of food aid?
It's very, very tough to run an operation without some degree of support from the Gov't. Frankly, being a news commentator is not much of a resume for logistics management in a country that was a basketcase before it became a catastrophe.
3 million people is a huge obstacle to face. We did a horrible job with Katrina and it doesn't look like we are much more prepared for this. What I see is a lot of politicians making plans when they still haven't achieved anything yet. I am sending prayers and meditating for the people of Haiti - they are their own greatest hope.
A whole different plane of understanding.
That doesn't mean that I think it shouldn't be reported on, of course. Those are two different arguments, and your post seems to conflate them. Many of us are sympathetic to people trying to survive even as we consider their actions news.
Words paint a picture. In the absence of an adequate contextual framework, one can easily misrepresent the facts on the ground. When taken in conjunction with pre-existing biases its easy to see how some might take exception to how the news is being reported. Then again, it may depend upon one’s frame of reference, as we do not all view world events through the same paradigm.
I'm always amazed that anyone could ever think that it would not be exactly the same anywhere. People are not so different. I promise you that should such an event happen in NY or Chicago or LA--assuming the same lack of immediate relief, etc.--you and I and bankers and teachers and accountants and social workers would eventually find ourselves making alliances, stealing food and shelter, zealously--perhaps overzealously given the adrenaline and calamity--protecting our own and our children's lives. As for whether the "looting" is for survival or not, it's a distinction without a difference in this situation: How on earth can anyone know where their next meal will come? Stockpiling, hoarding even without immediate need--these are behaviors that make sense to me, given the situation.
Heather, I'm not necessarily addressing you directly here but rather shouting out to the general universe that I think people should not be judged for this.
And again, that is simply not connected to the discussion of whether news organizations should cover exactly what's happening on the ground. They should.
1) "Looting" is race neutral.
2) Looting is not morally neutral. It's morally UNDERSTANDABLE, and as I said, I would likely do it myself in similar circumstances, but it DOES have an impact on those who are the victims of looted, and that's not something we should trivialize as "well, they're just trying to survive." It's not a victimless act. That's why looters quite often end up shot, stabbed, hung or beaten to death.
3) Etymologically, looting indicates a response to a breakdown in civil, civic and legal order. That's the only thing that's really important in Haiti right now: looting as a leading indicator of the current state of affairs in this devastated country. And if showing looting on international television gets puts wheels in motion, that's all that matters right now.
4) If anyone has problems with this as an Editor's Pick or a Front Page pick or anything else, take it up with Judy or Kerry.
I'm trying to understand why you are feeling besieged about this post? Did you expect complete agreement? You make a distinction between morally neutral and morally understandable that I don't happen to share. That one's actions create victims does not necessarily make them immoral. If it has become survival of the fittest--quite literally--then there really are only victims, no?
I still think your post creates some confusion around two different issues--the language of the word "looting" and whether the looting itself should be covered. I do not think those are mutually exclusive camps.
Total aside, but it looked to me--and it kills me to say this b/c I like AC--that he was sort of pulling and holding the kid in a way that minimized the blood he got on himself. And then he couldn't help himself but focus on getting it off him at the very end, even before the kid was settled. Did anyone else think that too, or am I being overly critical?
Do I think the looting in Haiti should be reported on? Of course, it is part of this tragedy. But when (not if, When) emphasis on the (Ha!) "dark side of the story" (thanks for the unintentionally revealing phrase sagemerlin) is employed--as it was in Katrina--to dehumanize the victims of this disaster I am going to say so. The demand to control the narrative of other people is the very definition of white/western privilege.
If your point is that looting = a breakdown in civil order well then, duh. There was a massive old-testament earthquake Heather. There are no hospitals left standing. People are dying in the streets. What exactly do you expect? Forgive me, but it begins to seem suspicious that you would make such a point about "civil order" at this particular moment. The fact that you understand so little the tragic colonial history of Haiti that you would blame the Haitian's themselves for their lack of infrastructure tells me all I need to know about where you are coming from here.
http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/F/g/katrina_looting_vs_finding.jpg
As for your other remarks, do you really think it would be so different anywhere else? I mean, to what do you attribute the Haitians' unique lack of pulling together that apparently causes their poverty and their current chaos? Are you suggesting there's something in the DNA? or the culture? or what? I'm really asking.
Just one further note Heather: did you really mean to encourage people to "loot and lynch away?" I'm hoping you're making a Swiftian effort to make a point. If so, it didn't work for me. And if not, I'd have to question your good judgment. You say "Do whatever you have to do to scare those in charge into helping you."
I find that a naive and scary way of thinking.
As for Jeremiah's statement, "Do whatever you have to do to scare those in charge into helping you,", yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES. Look at the U.S., for example. We would still be under England's thumb has we not done whatever we needed to do to scare them into letting us have what we wanted. Same for freeing the slaves, making blacks count as more than 2/3 of a person, giving them the right to vote, giving women the right to vote, and getting any politician to make changes. When promises are continually made and broken and politicians are allowed to get away with this by the American people, it is because we didn't adhere to this basic principle. It doesn't always have to come in the form of violence, but it does have to scare the guy in charge.
I do think that it's important to report looting, if only to send the message that conditions on the ground may be worse than we have been told so that we may understand the necessity of improving the situation. Pull at our heartstrings. Tell us about the mothers stealing food from other mothers, so that we are forced to feel what they feel, so we can be sick at heart and find it in ourselves to do something.
Pretty chilling when such a callous, ignorant and absolutely racist commentary is rewarded by the hirelings of Joan Walsh.
I guess someone has to replace the idiocy of Camille Paglia...and gee, Heather, you just might be the girl for the job.