New York — Journalists for a news site covering the Haitian community in the United States say they were harassed and threatened with racist messages after reporting a fake story in an Ohio town about immigrants eating people’s pets.
An editor at the Haitian Times, a 25-year-old online publication, was “swat” this week when police showed up at her home to investigate false reports of a horrific crime. The news site canceled a planned community forum in Springfield, Ohio, and blocked public comments on articles about the issue because of threats and snarky posts.
The Times, which had a committee to protect journalists in Haiti to provide safety training for reporters, is now asking for advice on how to protect its staff in the United States, said founder and publisher Gary Pierre-Pierre.
“We’ve never experienced anything like this before,” Pierre-Pierre said Wednesday.
The Times aggressively reported on the fallout from a story that immigrants were eating Springfield residents’ dogs and cats, circulated by Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance (Donald Trump’s Republican running mate) and Trump himself during a debate with Democrat Kamala Harris.
Pierre-Pierre, a former reporter for The New York Times, said the site has not backed down despite receiving hundreds of such messages, citing a similar message from his former employer’s mission statement:
“We don’t want to hibernate,” he said. “We are taking the necessary precautions. But our first duty is to tell the truth without fear or favor, and we are not afraid.”
Pierre-Pierre, who immigrated to the United States in 1975, started the Haitian Times to cover issues relevant to first- and second-generation Haitians in the United States and to report on what was happening in their ancestral homeland. It started as a print publication that moved online in 2012 and now averages 10,000 to 15,000 visitors a day, but readership has grown in recent weeks.
McColby Neal, a special projects editor based in New York, was one of the employees who had police show up at her front door on Monday.
It all started when an advocacy group in Haiti received emails about crimes that had occurred at Neel’s address. They, in turn, reported it to the police, who showed up to investigate. She said the perpetrators not only knew where Neel lived, but also leaked the report through other organizations to cover their tracks.
Neel said she had a hunch that something like this could happen because she had been receiving hate messages. But it was still scary, and even more scary because the police who responded didn’t know about the concept of doxxing, which involves tracking people online for the purpose of harassment. She said the police searched her house and left.
She has always known that journalism is inherently about making people unhappy with you. This takes the threat to a whole new level. Racist hate groups are sophisticated and well-funded, ready to get involved in any issue, she said.
“This is a new form of domestic terrorism,” she said. “We have to treat it as such.”
Catherine Jacobson, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator, said there are particularly serious cases where journalists are being harassed in retaliation for reporting a story. “It’s devastating,” she said. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation, and yet we are.”
Even before Springfield gained national attention in recent weeks, the Haitian Times was reporting on the influx of immigrants to the Midwest in search of jobs and a lower cost of living, Pierre-Pierre said. A Springfield article now on the site details the uproar as “a reflection of a long-standing struggle America has with new immigrants who desperately need to survive.”
Another article on the site says the NAACP, Haitian-American groups and other activists across the country have stepped up to help Springfield residents at the center of the incident.
Likewise, the Times received offers of support from several other journalists, including Pierre-Pierre’s former employer. “I was deeply moved,” he said.
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David Bauder writes about media for AP. Follow him. http://x.com/dbauder.
