Haitian Aid, Don’t Fade Away

Quick to the tragic scene in Haiti this past January, Anderson Cooper, CNN’s go-to anchor for covering calamities, found himself overwhelmed. “We all know what’s going to happen in a week or two. People are just going to lose interest in this as a story. They’re going to stop watching.” Cooper, who uttered this aside to his companion for the earthquake’s coverage, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, spoke with a fatalism borne of long experience reporting on global disasters. Yet as Haiti’s reconstruction efforts continue, the world has a chance to prove Cooper wrong.

A month ago, donations for Haiti’s earthquake victims passed the half-billion-dollar mark, and many Americans continued that support through the Hope for Haiti telethon and coverage during major sports events featuring players of Haitian background, such as professional basketball games and the Super Bowl. According to a Pew Research Center poll on Feb. 3, two weeks after Cooper’s remark, Americans still followed ongoing efforts in Haiti more than any other news story, with no other issue receiving even half as many viewers. Now, the numbers tell a different story. Events in Haiti are now the fifth-most-followed topic—and even then the coverage is not about reconstruction, but instead about the controversy involving American missionaries.

With the Olympics, health-care reform, and even Sarah Palin’s Tea Parties drawing the public’s attention, such a drop-off in coverage and the public’s consideration is unsurprising. The Pew Research Center’s latest findings do, however, indicate that Americans continue to donate to Haitian relief efforts, and over half of American households have now contributed. This number must continue to grow: Those who reached into their pockets immediately after the disaster—myself included—cannot simply give once and move on.

The media must return to Haiti regularly to encourage the public to return to its pocketbooks. Gupta replied to Cooper in January, “In part, it’s up to you and up to us to make sure they don’t forget.” Maintaining media coverage is an obvious starting point for substantiating Gupta’s words. But a broader shift in the way we view reconstruction may be necessary.

Rebuilding from any destruction is difficult—especially in the case of Haiti, a country already in a dire position before the earthquake struck—and naturally such efforts will take longer than outsiders would hope or even expect. The tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina both have required massive efforts to pick up the pieces and look forward, processes that are still ongoing. The pressure will be on Cooper and other news anchors, however, to chase the next big story. If Cooper really believes what he says, the onus will be on him to return to Haiti every several months and resume its story for the American public. While his reporting may not produce breaking headlines, it will assuredly provide new stories of hope and perspective for those of us removed from Haiti’s struggles.

For now, the people of the United States (and the global community, for that matter) face a great challenge: to maintain support after Cooper and the media has largely moved on. Telethons and publicity provide critical impetus for donations and attention, but we cannot rely on such efforts to direct us. Within Harvard, we have responded well—so far. The Harvard for Haiti initiative to pool donations raised several thousand dollars, with other fundraisers chipping in as well. Our commitment to humanity, however, will be tested more clearly as the fund continues to seek donations in the coming months, when the initial desperate images of the earthquake come less freshly to mind.

Haiti will receive sustained support from its large diaspora in the United States, Canada, and other nations. Their focus seems unlikely to lessen with time, and Haiti has reached out to expatriates’ previously unwelcome expertise. This aid will provide a base in the months ahead, but the resources of the Haitian global community cannot manage alone. The Harvard community, and our home countries, wherever they may be, must remember Haiti’s reconstruction will not simply go away as an issue.

Our greatest challenge will be to keep an eye on Haiti’s people and their struggle to rebuild, even when the news networks and celebrity phone messages move on to the next crisis. Because if Cooper’s fatalism rings true, it is in this sense—Haiti will not be the last humanitarian crisis; there will be more disasters. New causes will demand the attention public attention.

Yet this realization should not lessen our concern for Haiti’s people. When the next major crisis develops, we will again be moved, dismayed, and galvanized into action. If, while moving to help, though, we sustain the ongoing efforts in Haiti, we will prove Anderson Cooper wrong—a story he will surely be glad to cover.

Alexander R. Konrad ’11, a former Crimson associate editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.