28 November 1980 – 28 November 2025: From Yesterday's Gag to Today's Media Excesses

Forty-five years after the gag of November 28, 1980, the traces of that day continue to haunt the Haitian public sphere and national memory. At the time, after Ambassador Andrew Young's visit and President Jimmy Carter's humanist interlude, a brief breath of freedom had allowed the press to assert itself. But Carter's electoral defeat by Republican Ronald Reagan and the return of an international climate favorable to authoritarianism offered Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime the opportunity to tighten its grip. On November 28, 1980, the dictatorship unleashed itself against journalists, students, political activists, and intellectuals, abruptly breaking the nascent democratic momentum. Today, as traditional and digital media sink into dependence, cronyism, and cacophony, this date stands as a brutal mirror: that of an unfinished democratic conquest, sometimes perverted, often betrayed. Context and Scope of November 28, 1980 In the late 1970s, Haiti experienced a discreet but real political effervescence. A new generation of journalists, intellectuals, and students, influenced by ideas of liberation, social justice, and human rights, openly defied the dictatorship. Media outlets like Radio Haiti Inter, Radio Métropole, Radio Progrès, Radio Lumière, and Le Petit Samedi Soir offered spaces for relative expression. Journalists Michèle Montas, Anthony Pascal, better known as "Konpè Filo," Sony Bastien, Liliane Pierre-Paul, Marvel Dandin, Richard Brisson, Marcus Garcia, Elsie Ethéart, Pierre Clitandre, Jean Robert Hérard, Jean L. Dominique, Georges Michel, and others denounced the regime's abuses. The aggressive press law published on October 20, 1979, sparked mobilization that forced the authorities to revise their stance and publish, on April 15, 1980, a new decree-law deemed more or less acceptable. The Terror Operation On November 28, 1980, Jean-Claude Duvalier's government reacted with spectacular brutality. More than 150 arbitrary arrests targeted journalists, intellectuals, religious figures, and activists, including Jean-Jacques Honorat, Nicole Magloire, and Lafontant Joseph. Closed stations, beatings, humiliations, torture, forced exiles: the regime showed its true face and buried the myth of the "young modernizing president." Fear changed sides. Educated urban circles definitively broke with the regime, while the international community began to gauge the extent of the repression. The regime's fall on February 7, 1986, driven by popular mobilization, bears the imprint of that day. Political Legacies 45 Years Later

1. The Seeds of a Modern Civil Society

The gag or roundup of 1980 shaped a generation of social actors who, after 1986, became involved in human rights organizations, independent radio stations, critical press, and the structuring of civil society. The Association of Haitian Journalists (AJH), of which I was a member from its inception, is part of this legacy.

2. A Dotted-Line Democracy

While the fall of the dictatorship opened a new era, the scars of 1980 fueled contradictory dynamics: mistrust between the state and the press, institutional fragility, fragmentation of democratic forces, and an inability to build a pluralistic culture. From 1986 to 2025, Haiti has experienced a succession of contested or paralyzed elections, interminable transitions, chronic political crises, and security collapse. 1986–2025: Freedom Conquered, Freedom Fragilized After 1986, radio stations and newspapers multiplied, speech was liberated, and opinions abounded. But forty-five years after the 1980 roundup, the threats have changed form: more diffuse, less spectacular, sometimes more corrosive. The "microphone merchants" and "pen prostitutes" cause more damage than official censors; subtle manipulation replaces frontal repression. The Excesses of Our Media

1. Traditional Media: Fragility, Dependence, and Collusion

Plagued by financial difficulties, many media outlets now subsist on political advertising, veiled blackmail, and opaque arrangements. Self-censorship reigns, slander thrives. It is no longer the Tonton Macoutes who dictate editorial lines, but budgets. Sensationalism triumphs over investigation, confrontation over analysis, gossip over information. Journalists transform into disguised political actors, blurring the lines between opinion, propaganda, and information.

2. Digital Media: Speed, Violence, and Din

Internet, which should have consolidated democracy, often produces the opposite effect. Truth becomes what circulates quickly, not what is verified. Permanent indignation replaces reflection. Attacks move from the streets to screens: harassment, defamation, threats. Every phone owner becomes an analyst, judge, accuser. Media chaos dilutes truth in a torrent of noise. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged: serious media outlets, both traditional and digital, continue to denounce corruption, misgovernance, repression, inequalities, injustices, and abuses, keeping an independent and rigorous press alive. Forty-five years later, November 28, 1980, must not become a mere dusty commemoration, but a reminder of what true democracy demands. This date teaches that a country can survive dictatorship, but not confusion; that it can resist imposed silence, but hardly the din that distorts everything. If we do not rebuild a public space founded on rigor, ethics, and independence, the country will remain a prisoner, no longer of yesterday's fear, but of today's clamor. Between the gag of 1980 and the media excesses of 2025, the thread is more taut than it seems: that of a fight for truth that we do not have the right to abandon.