Tragically, its huge cargo door blew off in flight, and the plane crashed. Half of the children died and the other half, we later learned, were brain damaged by the explosive decompression. So much for our desire to show the world how compassionate we could be. Later it would turn out that some of these kids were given to families that were not vetted, including a sexual predator. Some Vietnamese parents later fled to the US as boat people desperate to find their children who were refugees, not orphans.
I know about this in detail because I produced a story on it for ABC's 20/20. It won a big award but only one newspaper was interested in the more detailed report I did on a preventable tragedy involving corporate greed by the manufacture and government negligence/propaganda that many would prefer to forget.
Many Americans are not compassionate at all, and not just Rush Limbaugh. Bill O'Reilly polled his viewers on whether they would donate to Haiti. A majority--58%--defiantly said they would not! This type of callous insensitivity is cultivated and reinforced by media outlets and smarmy, know it all, self-righteous TV personalities. Others assuage their guilt by texting ten bucks and feel as if they are helping.
How much money supported the suffering children of Haiti BEFORE this recent disaster. How many Americans even know the history of our era of "beneficent" military interventions into Haiti or sweat shop "development" projects since.
How many knew that many kids were surviving by eating "mud pies?"
Even as TV correspondent after correspondent reports on crippling aid shortages, the overall frame of the coverage remains upbeat. There will a celebrity telethon on Friday night but no one seems to be investigating how this all went so badly and who is responsible. Who will get the reconstruction contracts? My guess: big American companies. How much are the executives for relief agencies paying themselves?
There has been criminal negligence here, not just mistakes. It is worse than "bottlenecks." Who will blow the whistle? Who will condemn it? Already this debacle is being compared to the "great job" President Bush did after Katrina devastated New Orleans.
It is time to speak up and speak out about a charade that promised so much and delivered so little, at all the preventable deaths and suffering caused by a massive screw-up. Could it have been deliberate? Our good intentions are now being buried in a mass grave in Haiti.
News Dissector Danny Schechter is monitoring the coverage of the crisis for
Mediachannel.org. His latest book is The Crime of Our Time on the financial
crisis. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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