'The Agronomist': the life and work of Jean Dominique.

On 3 May 2004, eminent writers and reporters gathered at UN Headquarters in New York City to observe World Press Freedom Day (see box on page 31), an annual event which serves as an occasion to inform the public of violations of the right to freedom of expression, and as a reminder that many journalists brave death or jail to bring news to people.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was also in attendance, affirmed that it is first and foremost a day on which journalists who have been killed in the line of duty, or whose reporting has led to their imprisonment or detention, should be remembered. He also mentioned the disturbing statistics documented by the New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists: 36 journalists killed and 136 imprisoned in 2003. Some of them, he said, were deliberately targeted because of what they were reporting or their affiliation with a news organization.

Such was the fate of Haitian journalist Jean Dominique, who ran the country's first independent radio station, Radio Haiti-Inter, and became a national hero, championing the cause of the poor and powerless; he was assassinated in 2000 at the age of 69. However, his constant struggles to bring democracy to Haiti were captured in a somber yet mesmerizing documentary entitled The Agronomist, filmed by Oscar Award-winning director Jonathan Demme of The Silence of the Lambs. Indeed, there was not a seat vacant for the noontime showing of the documentary, which took place at the Dag Hammarskjold Library auditorium at UN Headquarters.

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The Agronomist represents a labour of love for Mr. Demme, who first met and filmed the late journalist in 1987. As owner and operator of his nation's only free radio station, Mr. Dominique had been frequently at odds with Haiti's various repressive regimes and spent much of the 1990s in exile in New York City, where Mr. Demme continued to film him over the years. Watching the documentary, one learns of key events in Haiti's history; Mr. Dominique's life and Haitian history itself appear to be very much intertwined.

Agronomy is a branch of agriculture dealing with field-crop production and soil management, and Mr. Dominique started out his life as an agronomist in his native Haiti. In the 1950s, he studied plant genetics in Paris, and upon his return worked for eight years to improve crop growth under the dictatorship of "Papa Doc" Francois Duvallier, who assumed power in 1957, the period when politics entered Mr. Dominique's life. In the late 1960s, he joined Radio Haiti as a reporter and bought the station in 1971, renaming it Radio Haiti-Inter. That same year, Mr. Duvallier died in office after naming his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude, nicknamed "Baby Doc", as his successor. Radio Haiti-Inter began reaching out, starting the first systematic broadcast in Creole, the country's main language.

Mr. Dominique encouraged reporters from the countryside and gave more coverage of world affairs. As a critic of the Duvallier dictatorship, he was forced into exile in 1981 after his wife and fellow journalist, Michelle Mantas, and other staff at the radio station were arrested and deported by the regime. He returned after the fall of President-for-Life "Baby Doc" Duvallier in February 1986, only to leave again in 1991 when the army seized power, and then came back in 1994 after that regime fell. Indeed, his return in 1986 is perhaps the documentary's emotional high point, as thousands of supporters engulfed the Port-au-Prince airport upon his arrival, with both the crowd and Mr. Dominique feeling ebullient and optimistic about what the future might bring.

After the Duvallier regime collapsed, Mr. Dominique's fight for democracy and strong interest in social issues drew him to the Lavalas movement, which emerged in 1990 around the presidential candidacy of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He continued to air the news and comment- show "Interactualite", as well as an interview programme entitled "Face a l'opinion". Mr. Dominique made many enemies by harshly criticizing the country's moneyed elite, the army, the United States policy towards Haiti and, most recently, certain figures in Aristide's Lavalas party. As the documentary showed, he did not shy away from eventually criticizing Mr. Aristide himself in a radio interview regarding alleged corruption in his government.

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The journalist was murdered when he arrived before dawn at the radio station in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Delmas. He had parked and gotten out of his car and had turned to go into the building when a stranger walked into the yard and fired seven shots. He died instantly. The station's security guard, Jean-Claude Louissant, was also killed. His wife has said that Mr. Dominique was killed because nobody could tell him what to do or say. Watching The Agronomist, one certainly gets a sense of how true that statement is. His charisma and courage are undeniable, and the documentary captures his essence: a slim, passionate, witty, eloquent and fearless man with a penchant for smoking a pipe.

But as the history of Haiti reveals, happy endings in this country are hard to come by. Although the documentary ends with the assassination of Mr. Dominique, for almost three years his wife continued to keep Radio Haiti going, opening each day's broadcast with "Bonjour, Jean". But in December 2002 her bodyguard was murdered and with increasing threats against journalists at the radio station, she decided to close it down and continue fighting in other ways while in exile in the United States. Many of the most experienced Haitian journalists also fled. Meanwhile, those responsible for Mr. Dominique's murder go unpunished and the investigation itself remains stalled.

Given Haiti's high illiteracy rate, radio still remains its most popular communications medium. And according to a 2003 research by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the country is one of the most violent places to practise journalism in the western hemisphere--second only to Colombia.

But to watch The Agronomist is to be in awe of the human spirit and of Mr. Jean Dominique--a relentless optimist who, regardless of the abuses he witnessed and endured, persisted in his struggle for freedom, offering inspiration to countless others. "I tried to introduce information--risky business", he said in the documentary, and for him those words proved to be prophetic. Mr. Demme's absolute dedication to his subject will undoubtedly help to keep his memory alive.

World Press Freedom Day

The United Nations marked World Press Freedom Day 2004 on 3 May in the backdrop of the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) releasing a list of ten underreported stories (see page 6). In his opening address, Secretary-General Kofi Annan remarked that "it is first and foremost a day which we remember and pay tribute to journalists who have been killed in the line of duty". Noting the emphasis given by the press to selective coverage of issues, he said that this frustration was by no means confined to the media, adding that "Member States often pay undue attention to some issues and little to others of equal or even surpassing concern." Ambassador Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Chairman of the UN Committee on Information, at the commemoration said that freedom of the press was a fundamental human right, and the Day served as a reminder to uphold the rights of journalists. Society would be better equipped to fight evils where press freedom flourished, he said, reminding Governments that press freedom was neither a gift nor a political concession.

A panel discussion on "Reporting and Under-reporting: Who Decides?" moderated by UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Shashi Tharoor, comprised Alexander Boraine, President of the International Centre for Transitional Justice; James H. Ottaway Jr., Chairman of the World Press Freedom Committee; E.R. Shipp, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist with The Daily News; Danilo Turk. Assistant-Secretary-General of the UN Department of Political Affairs; and Tony Jenkins, President of the UN Correspondents Association.

Mr. Boraine said that the extent and choice of reporting depended on how much the news organization could afford and spend, adding that freedom of the press is "never ever secure, but must be fought for in every generation". Editors should focus on the remarkable courage of people living in different situations, especially women in countries wreaked by terror and war.

One of the most powerful deciding forces that was difficult to change was human nature, Mr. Ottaway said. "No one wants to be criticized. It leads to cover-ups, positive spins, whether in a democracy, theocracy, authoritarian or communist rule. Pride, human desire to hold on to positions, decide what information reporters can dig up from news sources. [Journalism] is the next dangerous profession in the world after the military." Fear of death and bodily harm, he continued, was the next most deciding force in what got reported.

Mr. Turk said that there was an "imbalance between news and entertainment due to domination of the entertainment media", and that it was "wrong to see news as entertainment". Ms. Shipp remarked that "those of us charged with looking for stories must not be stopped by that. Journalists have to become more creative to get stories into the media" Mr. Jenkins said that journalists, by exercising their craft, were "protecting all other civil rights. There is no question of the news business being driven by profit. The bottom line in media business is an annual profit of 25 per cent".--Vikram Sura 

By Udy Bell, for the Chronicle