Jake Johnston on Haiti Reporting

This week on CounterSpin: Whether it’s Haitians or Muslims or Mexicans, Donald Trump’s actions seem clearly driven by hatred, and whatever cocktail of ignorance and fear undergirds it. Media’s job goes beyond identifying this animus, to countering the damage it inflicts with thoughtful, humane reporting. Jake Johnston is a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and lead author for CEPR’s Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog. His latest, an account of a UN-connected “anti-gang raid” in Port-au-Prince that ended in the death of civilians, is just one example of the present-day news we need to hear to get Haiti coverage beyond tales of hardship and handwringing. Jake Johnston joins us to talk about that.

Also on the show: Participants in a rally to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, now entering its 17th year of operation, included family members of people killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks, along with torture survivors and human rights activists. All called for an end, finally, to the monument to illegality and cruelty that Guantánamo represents, and where 41 Muslim men remain indefinitely. Pardiss Kebriaei is senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She’ll tell us about the new legal challenge to the prison.


Share This Episode