Talk:Amelia Shaw

the name of this person was entered erroneously, but at this stage there is no way to fix this... how does one do that?

Dear User:86.142.205.171,

I've just moved the article to the correct spelling of her name, Amelia. Thanks for flagging it, and for your contributions to SourceWatch.

I would ask you to adhere more to news style writing and include more references. For example, you put the word "journalist" in quotes in this article, and don't clarify until much later in the article that her affiliation with Voice of America calls her journalism into question. Please see SourceWatch:Contributing and other help pages for more info.

best, Diane Farsetta 11:18, 20 Feb 2006 (EST)


 * It's true that the Voice of America is a U.S.-funded operation, but some of its reporting is actually more honest than the reporting on commercial U.S. news networks such as Fox News or even ABC. During the runup to war with Iraq, I remember being interviewed by some VoA journalists who were more critical of the Bush administration's case for war than most of the mainstream U.S. media. In the interview with Amelia Shaw that is circulating as evidence of her bias, the most politically charged language against Préval came, not from Amelia Shaw, but from Steve Inskeep, her NPR interviewer. Here's an excerpt from the interview as presented on San Francisco Bay View:


 * Inskeep: Maybe the way to put it is: Was Préval the only person who had thousands of supporters he could turn out into the street to cause mayhem?


 * Shaw: You know ... [she laughs conspiratorially] ... yes, because there really were no signs from other people who did not vote for Préval. There was no big political protest from the people who did not support, for there had been some statements to the press from the other political candidates who have also alleged fraud. But it will be interesting to see what the other candidates will say.

I've listed to the audio of the interview, and saying that Shaw "laughs conspiratorially" is interpretation. She did make some kind of laughing sound, but it's not clear whether she did so "conspiratorially" or for some other reason. It's possible that it was nervous laughter as she tried to decide how to answer Inskeep's question, with its loaded language. At one level, the correct answer to his question was "yes." Préval was the only candidate who had thousands of supporters energized enough to demonstrate on his behalf. On another level, of course, it's questionable whether it's a fair characterization to say the supporters were "put out into the street to cause mayhem."

Here's another report by Amelia Shaw, most of which reports public anger over perceived fraud in the election, and which notes that Préval is "widely popular among Haiti’s urban poor."

The evidence I've seen thus far doesn't point to Shaw as a particular bad egg. NPR (which is also a news program affiliated with the U.S. government) seems to be just as biased against Préval, if not more so, than she is. I agree, though, that her affiliation with the VoA should have been disclosed on NPR.

--Sheldon Rampton 12:29, 20 Feb 2006 (EST)