‘Tis the season, first Kim Kardashian visited Haiti and now Oprah Winfrey. Oprah is in Haiti touring a tent city with actor Sean Penn. Sean Penn founded an organization J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO) to provide help to Haitians displaced by the horrific earthquake of January 2010. When I learned that Oprah was visiting Haiti, I was glad to know that media attention would continue to be shed on the needs of the thousands still homeless following the earthquake. That being said, I was disappointed to learn that it was Sean Penn’s organization that would mostly benefit from the much needed media attention.
Nothing against Sean Penn but OPRAH is in Haiti y’all! Arguably, the most powerful person in media (male, female, black or white) is in Haiti and she could have taken this opportunity to bring attention to indigenous grassroots organizations led by Haitians for Haitians. An organization that has a vested interest – emotional not financial – in seeing Haiti rise to her full glory. Maybe Senn Penn will help ratings at Oprah’s struggling Oprah Winfrey Network!
I’m sure Sean Penn is helping in some way but millions and millions have been raised in the name of Haiti yet many remain homeless, without adequate food, shelter, healthcare, etc. These larger, more well known organizations and NGOs have raised loads of money but unfortunately, we don’t know where the hell all of this money has gone but we certainly know where it didn’t go!
According to ABC News, Penn said he liked the interest of “the world’s most elegant woman” and expected it would help Haiti. “Everybody who has spent time in Haiti knows how important it is for the world to see what is going on here. … We really appreciate that she’s here with us,” Penn said. Even though I disagree with whom she chose to visit while in Haiti, I’m glad she’s there too. I hope her visit helps in some way to continue mainstream media coverage of Haiti.
RCS Sidenote: Associated Press reported that photographer Lionel Lafortune, who was among several journalists trying to cover Winfrey, was detained by a guard as he entered the encampment and took photos. Does his name look a little familiar? He took the picture used in this article!
An Associated Press journalist saw a private security guard grab Lafortune, who works for the newspaper Haiti Progress, and drag him into a small police station at the camp, where officers demanded that he erase the memory card from his camera and refused to let him leave.
The photographer declined to delete the photo, and police continued to hold him until a more senior official, Police Inspector Jean-Lionel Aurelien, arrived and ordered him released, saying, “Journalists have the right to work without intimidation.”
Later, a Winfrey spokesman, Chance Patterson, said the guard apparently didn’t realize Lafortune was a journalist. “No one knew who he was, or what he had been doing or who he was with,” said Patterson, a senior vice president for Harpo Studios, the producer of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” who is accompanying Winfrey on her trip this week. Why does a Haitian who lives there need to explain “what he had been doing or who he was with”? I’m just sayn…
“He just came running in apparently and started taking photos and he was stopped and then the supervisor came and said, ‘Let him go,'” Patterson told the AP. “That was it.”
