There has been an increase in media coverage for different marginalized groups, as seen with more documentaries and movies being made about them. It is quite easy to assume that just because such marginalized people (such as sex workers) are brought into the public eye, they are being accurately represented; when in reality, only one side of their story is being shared with the world as a tool for entertainment to increase ratings and views. “Across the channels, ratings and revenues delivering programmes – entertainment and lifestyle – have increased, while news and analysis have shown a corresponding decline” (Thussu 104). This therefore leads to “infotainment” (Thussu 1) – material that aims to entertain and inform. Consequently leading to remembrance (from the media) being mutually exclusive to representation of marginalized people.

“Strategic silences” (Jiwani 899) are used in the media all the time. Specifically, missing Aboriginal sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) have moved between being “invisible” (Jiwani 899) (not seen at all) to “hypervisible” (Jiwani 899) (over-seen) as rebellious and deviant (e.g. only seen as drug addicts). In her memoir, Missing Sarah, Maggie De Vries, mentions how even though her sister, Sarah De Vries (a sex worker DTES) was a drug addict, she had many other parts to her personality that made her human…that made her relatable. However, the CBC documentary on missing women DTES, that featured Sarah, didn’t acknowledge the fact that she was so much more than just a sex worker and a drug addict – in the documentary, the last image that froze of Sarah was her high on drugs (shown by her eyes being unfocused) (Vries 254). Instead of showing how loving (Vries 30) kind (Vries 90) and high-spirited (Vries 254) Sarah was, the camera only took footage of Sarah being “out of it” (Vries 254) – an act of hypervisibility. Clearly, Sarah as well as all the sex workers DTES were misrepresented in that documentary, “Neither what Sarah did for a living nor her addiction was all she was” (Vries 148).

To increase ratings, the media – seen through the CBC documentary – makes individuals hypervisible and deliberately focuses on “juicy” (Thussu 150) (usually negative) aspects of a story and leaves out others aspects (usually positive) to increase ratings and entertain the public. In doing this, the media missuses it’s power and misrepresents marginalized groups such as the missing Aboriginal sex workers in Vancouver DTES. As Maggie De Vries said, “Rememberance is a powerful act, but it must be done right” (Vries 254). In the CBC documentary Sarah wasn’t remembered for who she truly was, but “re-membered” (Vries 254) – recreated to be a perfect fit in the narrow, hegemonic idea of what it means to be a sex worker in order to attract the public.

Works cited:

Jiwani, Yasmin. Young, Mary Lynn. “On representations.” Missing and Mudered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse, vol. 31, no. 4, 2006, pp. 898-900.

Vries, Maggie De. Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008. Print

Thussu, Daya Kishan. News as Entertainment: The Rise of Global Infotainment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007. Print.

At 4:53pm on January 12 2010, Dany Laferrière (a Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist) was having lunch in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake unexpectedly hit the country. More than 300,000 people died – Laferrière was one of the lucky ones that survived. In his memoir, The World Is Moving Around Me, each small entry is a snapshot of his native country before and after the earthquake. Laferrière captures different angles of Haiti, highlighting how Western journalists paint a general and bias portrait of his country; the scene after the earthquake was seen as a panorama; resulting in international aid instead of help strategies that are more sustainable – “The country needs energy, not tears.” (Laferrière 147)

A panorama is a picture containing a wide view of the whole region surrounding the observer. Describing the reports journalists give to the Western world on Haiti as panoramic, makes it easier to understand how doing this limits people’s awareness of all the different (positive) qualities of Haiti. A panorama is very broad, much like the common misconception that all there is to Haiti is being “cursed” (Laferrière 76); the West’s “two favorite words… ‘dictatorship’ and ‘corruption.’” An example of how a panoramic view was created was when his friend (a photographer), Ivanoh Demers took the moving photo of a “young man lifting his eyes to us as a mixture of pain and gravitas” (Laferrière 59) that went viral and became one the most famous pictures representing the Haitian people after the earthquake.

Having such images of grief as the only images other countries see inevitably makes foreigners see Haiti through one lens. Laferrière is not saying such views of hardships and loss aren’t true about Haiti, but stresses how it’s simply one side to the story. He shows people beginning to go about their daily tasks: shopping at the Caribean market (Laferrière 35) and getting their cars repaired (Laferrière 152) – Haitians have “the ability to find a solution when everything seems blocked” (Laferrière 31).

Thomas G Couser in his book, Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemprary Lide Writing, uses the term “rhetoric of emancipation” (Couser 44) – a strategy that aims to ‘represent many lives that go unrepresented’ (Couser 45) in disability narratives. This concept can be applied to what Laferrière is doing in his memoir – representing the Haitian population as hard working and resourceful, instead of corrupt and helpless (Laferrière 76). In his entry, “The Mango Lady” (Laferrière 32), a woman is on the streets of Port-au-Prince selling mangoes only a day after the earthquake hit. This shows how resilient the people of Haiti are – “people are so used to finding life in difficult conditions that they could bring hope down to hell”( Laferrière 32)…a quality the media doesn’t show. Laferrière’s memoir could be seen as a form of “autoethnography” (Couser 46), which is a form of research where the author uses personal experiences to connect to a wider social meaning (Couser 46), which in this case could be how the media misrepresents developing countries as a single story of poverty and helplessness.

Laferrière explicitly highlights the media’s panoramic view of Haiti before, during and after the 2010 earthquake and ‘frees’ (with the rhetoric of emancipation) his people from being viewed in a single negative light by the rest of the world (by the West in particular). This is of value to us as scholars because it questions the ethics of international journalism and research – is it’s main goal to bring awareness and help the disadvantaged or to entertain their market? Laferrière opens up the debate of immorality in international journalism – a relevant issue in our increasingly globalized world.

Works cited:

Laferrière, Dany, and David Homel. The World Is Moving around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 2013. Print.

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 2009. Print.