Radio News Project Helps Haitians Survive

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Feb. 5) -- Amid the continuing chaos of post-quake Haiti, solid information is a valuable commodity, and a novel group of local and foreign journalists is working long days to make sure Haitians get it.

Internews, a nonprofit international news organization specializing in war zone and disaster reporting, arrived on the scene in Port-au-Prince immediately following the quake with a handful of laptops and recording equipment. Within a day the team was producing a 10-minute radio program and distributing it to those stations still operating in the capital.

They work seven days a week in a tight makeshift newsroom, where the production studio doubles as sleeping quarters when air mattresses are placed on the floor.

Haitian-born journalist Yves Colon, a former Miami Herald reporter now with Internews, said the country is in desperate need of "news it can use."

"Most Haitian radio programs are just endless talk that doesn't provide real news," Colon said during his morning staff meeting with a group of young local reporters made jobless when the quake damaged the headquarters of Haiti's largest newspaper, Le Nouvelliste.

The Internews program aims to provide Haitians with useful reporting such as where to find medical treatment, how to care for wounds after leaving the hospital and other critical health issues. The team also keeps an eye on post-quake food prices, the state of public transportation in Port-au-Prince and when the schools might reopen -- all topics that have proved of consuming interest with radio listeners.

"You'll see one radio in the tent camps with dozens of people around it listening for any bit of information," said Colon, who broadcasts in Haiti's Creole language. "People here are really hungry for news."

Based in California, Internews gets funding from U.S. Agency for International Development and private foundations to develop news outlets and promote independent media in the developing world.

Last week, Colon tasked radio journalist Johnny Cesar Etienne, until recently a newspaper reporter, with running down two stories the Internews team has been trying to cover since it arrived in Haiti: AIDS care and the Red Cross' medical efforts.

After listening to Colon's editorial guidance about how to tackle the stories, Etienne headed out into the bumper-to-bumper traffic of a city riddled with fallen buildings.

At an AIDS clinic, Etienne asked doctors and patients about the state of health care at the facility near the capital's devastated downtown. Just blocks from where the city's business district has been reduced to rubble, hundreds of Haitians with AIDS were lining up to receive free medication.

"They tell me they are treating a few hundred people a day here," Etienne said after interviewing one of the medical staff. Voice recorder in hand, he gathers quotes from several of the patients asking them about their post-quake health care experience.

Then it's off to the Red Cross in the hillside neighborhood of Paco, one of the worst affected by the Jan. 12 quake. There even the Red Cross building is suffering: One wall of the clinic has completely collapsed, rendering it too dangerous to treat patients inside. A makeshift triage unit has been set up in the yard.

Etienne listens carefully as Red Cross nurse Monika Hörling tells him she expects to be treating patients "for a long time to come."

"When this mess is over, (the country's growing health care crisis) is going to continue for years and years," Hörling said.

Etienne surveyed the patients, mostly small children. One small boy lost parts of two fingers when a wall fell on him; his bandaged hand was being treated by a volunteer.

Etienne raced back to the Internews studio in time to write his script and voice his reports. In the office, a team of senior journalists work with Etienne and the other field reporters to cobble their stories into the 10-minute broadcast.

After the show is recorded, it's burned onto CDs for distribution to nearly two dozen radio stations. Couriers on motorcycles then deliver the discs by hand to each station, providing Haitians with potentially life-saving insight into what's happening around them.

"We hope that the news we provide to Haitians can help them survive this ordeal," Colon said.