Staffers on Haiti’s 50-odd newspapers like to quote Petrarch and Thucydides, compose sonnets and write essays on existentialism, but they rarely get around to covering the news. When they do, their reports are usually sketchy, partisan, filled with slander, vituperation and undocumented sensation.
When a United Nations committee criticized the Haitian press last year as one of the worst trained in the hemisphere, President Dumarsais Estimé decided that it was high time for Haiti to start learning its journalistic ABCs. He summoned blonde, blue-eyed Edith Efron, 27, a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and an ex-newshen (the Lawton (Okla.) Constitution, the New York Times), and invited her to start a journalism course at the University of Haiti.
What Is Truth? Edith Efron is the Manhattan-born wife of Fortuné Bogat, a Haitian business agent for U.S. manufacturers (General Motors, RCA, Goodyear, Du Pont). Stepmother of three children, mother of a fourth and mistress of a mountainside mansion overlooking Port-au-Prince, she had a self-deprecating reply to President Estimé’s invitation: she had “never taught anybody anything.” But, she said, she was willing to try.
Weeding out applicants by a homemade aptitude test, Miss Efron started with a class of 20, including six practicing newsmen. At first, teacher and class fought in French on philosophical terrain: What is truth? What is objectivity? When Miss Efron tried to explain the difference between opinion and fact, gossip and news, her students replied that she was “stifling the Haitian soul.” Later, “Editor” Efron sent her reporters scurrying out on assignments. Says she proudly:”They got kicked out of the best places in town.”
Who Is Authentic? They also brought back to class more news than was being printed in the daily papers. Before long, the six professionals were unashamedly cribbing from their classmates’ homework. After six months, Editor Efron decided that her newshawks were ready to put out their own model newspaper. Printed in a limited edition of 1,000 copies and distributed to government offices, labor unions, political parties and cafés, Vol. 1, No. 1 of Journal caused a national uproar.
In an exclusive Page One interview, black President Estimé renounced the color-conscious “black” politics on which he had campaigned, declared that black Haitians were no more “authentic” than any others. When they got a look at Journal, Estimé’s ardently “black” political chieftains threatened to desert his camp.
Journal also ran an economic shocker under the headline SCANDALOUS PROFITS. The story: textile importers were marking up New York prices for profits ranging up to 450%. The carefully documented exposé started a consumers’ boycott, sent cloth prices tumbling, forced a government investigation of the textile industry. Hundreds of Haitians wrote Journal begging for more issues and more exposés.
A strict taskmistress, Edith Efron passed only five of her 20 students, flunked all but one of the professional newsmen. Last week the Haitian National Assembly was considering a permanent department of journalism at the University of Haiti. Probable chairman: Edith Efron.
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