In the aftermath of the late-September coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, two journalists were murdered, another is missing, others remain under arrest, and most of the rest are intimidated. In this atmosphere of fear, Lilyanne Pierre-Paul went into hiding. In December, a radio broadcast by the Tontons Macoute, the brutal militia connected to the Duvalier regime, included her on a list of reporters, clergy, and politicians to be "neutralized." Under the guise of reporting the news, state-run Radio Nationale re-aired the names and addresses.

For years, Haitians had tuned in to Lilyanne's gusty reports in Creole on Radio Haiti Inter, a pioneering station owned by renowned journalist Jean Dominique. Lilyanne -- known by everyone in Haiti by her first name -- has won a wide following by taking changes, as when she reported on the corruption of Duvalier officials and the harshness of life during the dictatorship. So the latest wave of repression wasn't about to stop her. In recent months, by working the phones and using foreign journalists and other Haitian reporters to do some of the legwork, Lilyanne has been able to broadcast to the exile community. She and a handful of others provide listeners in Miami, New York, and Boston news and analysis too sensitive for the press inside the country to handle.

Haiti's radio stations -- the main source of information for the country's largely illiterate population and the primary targets of the military crackdown -- are for the most part censoring themselves. "We're not running certain stories that might be inflammatory," says Richard Widmaier, program director of Radio Metropole, in Port au Prince. "It's frustrating, but we're giving as much news as we can."

Even the exile press is still taking precautions. Haiti Observateur, a newspaper published in New York City but with reporters and distribution in Haiti, stopped using bylines on most stories filed from there. Marcus Garcia, editor of the Miami-based Haiti en Marche, was doing much of the reporting for his weekly via telephone from Miami because his correspondent in Haiti was "too afraid to get out."

"In Haiti it's a question of life and death when you're giving news," says Lilyanne, speaking from a "safe house." "If it's the wrong news, you're hit hard by the forces against you."

Lilyanne learned journalism on the job when she went to work for Haiti Inter in 1977. Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier was the dictator then. During the Duvalier years, the government routinely tried to silence the press through intimidation and bribery or by stifling efforts to gather accurate information. Still, Haiti Inter managed to get away with some risky reports, as when, for example, Lilyanne and other reporters were sent out to the provinces and urban slums to expose conditions there. At the same time, the station began broadcasts in Creole, Haiti's real national language (only about 10 percent of Haitians speak French). "Before, news was something genteel, between French-speaking people, between the wealthy," says Michele Montas, Haiti Inter's former editor-in-chief. "People never heard what was happening below."

But press criticism was starting to get to the government, and the inevitable crackdown came in November 1980, with the arrest and deportation of scores of journalists. At Haiti Inter, police burst into the station, smashed equipment, and carted the staff off to jail. After a month and a half in prison, Lilyanne was forced into exile. She spent the next six years in Latin America and Canada.

From exile she watched as the Catholic Church's Radio Soleil stepped in to lead the campaign from within to hasten the demise f the dictatorship. The exile press -- Haiti Observateur, in particular -- rallied international sentiment against the young Duvalier. After Baby Doc's departure in February 1986, the information void was quickly filled by a proliferation of newspapers and broadcast stations. By then, Haiti's press corps was, for the most part, untrained and unprofessional, but with the return of old hands like Lilyanne, and the addition of young, foreign-trained reporters attracted by the new freedom, press performance started to improve.

Haiti's media faced a daunting challenge. After thirty years of dictatorship in a country with no institutions except the church and the army, Haitians looked to the newly liberated press to fill all sorts of needs. "If a person had no food, he expected the radio to tell him where to get it," Lilyanne recalls. "If he had a fight with his wife, he wanted the radio to tell him how to solve things. We had to develop programs to meet those needs. In Haiti a journalist is a psychiatrist, a marriage counselor, everything."

Eventually the press would face another challenge: providing balanced coverage of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first freely elected president -- he took office in February 1991 -- and a man adored by most Haitians, including many journalists. The emotion-charged atmosphere of the Artistide presidency led to some confusion about the role of an independent media. At Radio Metropole one staff member quit rather than broadcast news critical of the new leader.

When Lilyanne denounced the mob tactics some Aristide supporters used to intimidate members of parliament, listeners roundly criticized her. Larry Pierre, producer of Radio sans Frontieres, the Miami program that airs Lilyanne's reports from Haiti, says many Haitians "only want to hear the side they agree with."

Still, during the five years since Baby Doc's departure and the brief eight months of Aristide's tenure, the press operated virtually free of government restrictions. Now, with the country again experiencing coups, crackdowns, and chaos, many believe that only the exile press can be a force for change.

But Lilyanne emphasizes that the exile press can never be a substitute for a vital media inside Haiti. "To change things you have to reach Haitians here," she says. "The exile press doesn't do that. That's the job that we inside Haiti will have to try to do."

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe