Abe Sauer published a (reported!) piece on The Awl last week about an American missionary who’s been held in Haitian prison for about four months without so much as a hearing. The reason for his imprisonment is unclear:
Pye, an American, has been in prison in Jacmel since Oct. 13, 2010. He has not been charged with any crime. The only people who seem to know this are a few friends in Haiti, the country’s Ministry of Justice, newly elected Haitian senator (and former Jacmel mayor) Edo Zenny, the judge that refuses to sign his release, the NGOs with which he’s been affiliated, his wife, Leann, the 22 Haitian children whose only home is the orphanage that he and his wife built—and the U.S. Embassy.
The post is a lot of things: comprehensive, disturbing, painful and fair. It’s also easily and effectively retold without getting into detail, and follows a simple, powerful narrative. Sooooooooo it’s a little weird that nobody else is picking this up, right? Maybe? A few possibilities:
Bad timing! February is a month for revolutions and protests, obviously. Plus the whole Haiti earthquake thing was like five years ago, in 2010. I can understand how it might be an awkward story to shoehorn into this month’s news cycles, but who cares?
Conservative outlets won’t cover it, because it doesn’t fit the narrative! This I don’t really understand, but maybe it has something to do with the source? I would think an article of this description most appropriate for the parochial religious press, since stories of persecuted missionaries are a staple for sources like CBN. Perhaps the fact that there’s no Islamic or anti-religious villain to invoke (or any villain beyond the existence of “corruption”) diminishes its catchiness? And while this borders on conspiracy, maybe Abe’s earlier reporting, which described how federal funding was being used to support proselytizing by Haitian aid workers, was problematic? Probably not.
Liberal outlets won’t cover it, because it doesn’t fit the narrative! Lots of people reflexively groan at MISSIONARIES IN PERIL! stories. I do, and I think it’s defensible: I’m uncomfortable with numerous aspects of missionary work—the paired motives of charity and self-service; the concept of essentially selling care or supplies for belief, or claimed belief; the sheer un-self-awareness of it all; the tokenistic LET’S GO TO CAMP! culture—so when I saw this headline, I made quite a few assumptions without considering them for even a second. I assumed that this guy did something stupid, and that he somehow got himself into this. I assumed that his was shallow work, or a Palin-style disaster tour. I assumed that I wouldn’t be able to empathize fully, because fuck, dude, what were you thinking?
Of course, he did nothing stupid, at least not in the pejorative sense of the word. He didn’t do something naive or clumsy. He was mindful of his surroundings. He wasn’t even a missionary, really—the article’s description is “Christian Aid Worker,” which is accurate, but that adjective doesn’t figure into the story as much as its presence in the headline suggests. He and his wife were doing unimpeachable work for which they had both made serious sacrifices. The one thing I got right was that I wasn’t able to fully empathize with the guy, because I’ve never considered doing something so worthwhile.
Anyway, backing up a little bit, the author actually wonders aloud why the piece hadn’t been picked up already, and if it was newsworthy:
We spoke with a few journalists, one for a major US national source, all of who said they had never heard of the Pye case. Asked if they would have pursued the story had the the embassy in Port-au-Prince issued a statement about it, all confirmed that is absolutely would be newsworthy.
So, what happened? Abe’s piece was seen by plenty of eyeballs belonging to bodies in, near, or contractually connected to all manner of newsrooms—if media humans aren’t reading The Awl, then I don’t know what media humans are reading. So who knows? Maybe it’s just not as compelling or as interesting a story as I truly believe it to be.
