"A demolir" - to be demolished - seals the fate of Radio Ibo's building. Photo: Anne Poulsen/IMS

Ever increasing costs combined with a serious decline in revenue pose serious threats to media outlets in Haiti. Report from the IMS Haiti Response team

Before the 12^th January earthquake, Radio Ibo, one of the top four radio stations in Haiti, had 12 journalists working around the clock to produce the station’s flagship: four daily news hours. Now, Radio Ibo can only afford sevenjournalists on their payroll, and the broadcast has been reduced to two daily news hours a day.

- Today, our revenue from commercials has been reduced to one third of what it was before the earthquake. It goes without saying that we are no longer able to pay the same number of journalists and no longer able to be on air to the same extent as we were before, says Hérold Jean-Francois, director of Radio Ibo.

The building at 51, Route du Canapé-Vert, which used to house Radio Ibo was seriously destroyed when the 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti and caused the death of hundreds of thousands and made millions homeless. On the outer wall of the building, a laconic “A demolir” – “To be demolished” signed off by the Ministry of Public Works, Transportation and Communication has sealed the fate of the building.

Today, Radio Ibo transmits from a makeshift studio set up in Hérold Jean-Francois private residence at Fermathe 55, in the mountains surrounding Port-au-Prince.

It is quite a challenge to keep Radio Ibo on air, admits Hérold Jean-Francois:

- To arrange for the journalists to come from the centre of Port-au-Prince all the way up here is really a logistical challenge. Let alone the price of transporting them forth and back. In the longer term, finding a new location for Radio Ibo is going to be extremely difficult given the fact that prices of real estate have skyrocketed at least fivefold since the earthquake, says Hérold Jean-Francois.

Media houses need help

His fears are being shared with colleagues in the National Association of Haitian Media Owners, Association National des Médias Haïtiens (ANMH). The association deplores that fact that whereas there seems to be a lot of support for the individual journalists, nobody seems willing to support the media as such.

The main priority for ANMH is now to enable the media outlets to publish and broadcast again - not only in order to generate income but also to avoid a genuine brain drain among the journalists.

- Unless media houses can get back on their feet again quickly, the brain drain effect will multiply rapidly as journalists will look for job opportunities in other sectors or will emigrate if possible, says Max Chauvet, director of the daily newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

Massive losses

As is the case for all other sectors, the media sector has suffered massive losses.

31 journalists were killed throughout the country and at least 13 were wounded. A large majority of the media houses in the four cities were destroyed or heavily damaged with massive equipment losses.

In Port-au-Prince, only about a dozen radio stations are today on air out of a total of about 50 stations.

In Leogane, only four radio stations are currently functioning to some extent while eight others have been destroyed. In Petit-Goâve, 15 radio stations have joined forces under the umbrella of the “Réseau des Médias de Petit-Goâve”, which enables them to produce and broadcast one shared programme lasting 3 ½ hours a day. Five radio stations have been destroyed.

Media outlets in the southern coastal town of Jacmel have also suffered major losses with Radio Tele Diffusion Jacmelienne being completely wiped out and now broadcasting in the open from the main square of Jacmel. Four other radio stations in Jacmel have equally suffered great losses.

Likewise, the premises of four of the key journalists’ organizations (Association des Journalistes Haïtiens (AJH), SOS Journalistes, Médialternatif and SAKS) in Port-au-Prince were totally destroyed hence wiping out in a few seconds years of accumulated knowledge. With no physical structure where the associations can assemble and work, the impacts of the earthquake are in effect preventing the associations from fulfilling their key role in providing support in the reconstruction phase of the wider journalist community.