And Now There is Haiti

Continuing on in the generally negative vein as in the last post, written in August 2009, let's take notice how 'disaster coverage' takes off on a life of its own. It can push everything else off of the air, off of the front page of every U.S. newspaper. Here in SoFLa, the Haiti story also engendered separate sections of color disaster photos.

Haiti is not part of the United States. If this tragedy had occurred in Guinea-Bissau, or in Kenya, Somalia, Zagreb or Vanuatu, it would be just as big a tragedy, but it wouldn't get 24/7 saturation coverage.

Fact: Haiti is 900 miles away from the U.S. Haiti is part of the island of Hispaniola, and adjoins the Spanish-speaking nation, the Dominican Republic. Haiti is Creole-speaking, and being mindful of that, the Dominican Republic guards is borders with soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets. The Dominicans may be concerned with the tragedy in Haiti, but they are not using this as a reason to permit a mass migration of Creole-speaking Haitians into the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic.