SYNDICATED COLUMN: Down the Haiti Memory Hole
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Haiti News Coverage Turns Sublimely Ridiculous Ah, “1984.” As the cartoonist Matt Bors says, it’s “the dystopian novel that keeps on giving.” Orwell’s main character worked for a government ministry that controlled the future by changing the past. Its most effective tool: the Memory Hole. Pieces of history went in—poof!—never to be heard from again. Afterward, it was as if those particular events had never happened: “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” American news producers and editors have long been masters of the Memory Hole, purposefully omitting the most relevant information stories that would otherwise make the whatever the current regime is look bad. “President Hugo Chávez,” reported The Washington Post in a typical example of spin from 2005, “has recently accused President Bush of plotting to assassinate him.” Going on to slam Chávez’s supposed “bluster and anti-American showmanship,” the Post left…
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