Journalists-Chroniclers of Gangs and/or Promoters of Criminal Power in Haiti By Jean Venel Casséus

In a society afflicted by armed violence, journalism serves a stabilizing function. It names facts, verifies sources, distinguishes events from rumors, and provides the public with a minimal intelligibility without which neither the rule of law nor social cohesion can long endure. However, in the current Haitian context, a media practice is settling into a gray area where the pretense is to inform while, through cumulative effect, promoting criminal power. It is not about documenting insecurity, but rather dramatizing it, indexing it to specific figures, and drawing an audience from a daily dramaturgy based on the names and nicknames of gang leaders, the reputation of armed groups, territoriality, and the display of force. In a context of institutional fragmentation, this shift is not insignificant. It constitutes an aggravating factor. In all theaters of unconventional armed violence, the battle is never fought solely on the physical ground. It is also, and especially, fought in the symbolic, informational, and psychological space. Organized criminal groups, whether operating in Haiti, Mexico, Nigeria, or certain areas of the Middle East, seek three essential resources to maintain and expand: fear, notoriety, and recognition. Fear paralyzes populations, notoriety attracts recruits, and recognition imposes a form of informal legitimacy. However, obsessive media coverage centered on the figure of the gang leader, their nickname, territory, arsenal, and capacity for harm, freely provides these three resources. When journalists-chroniclers repeatedly broadcast the names of armed leaders, map their zones of influence in real-time, and comment on their actions as if they were performances, they participate in staging criminal power. The gang then ceases to appear as a predatory and fragile organization facing the state, instead establishing itself as a central actor in the national narrative. This exposure transforms violence into a spectacle and criminality into a horizon of success for youth deprived of economic and symbolic alternatives. From the perspective of transnational security, the boomerang effect is well-documented. The more an armed group benefits from uncritical media visibility, the more its capacity for attraction increases beyond its immediate territory. Criminal networks operate through imitation, alliance, and proliferation. The indirect glorification of a gang in Port-au-Prince resonates in other neighborhoods, in other cities, even in the diaspora, where the same images, the same narratives, the same names are circulated and elevated to references. Media coverage then becomes a vector of criminal contagion. It is also important to highlight the confusion maintained between denunciation and promotion. Denouncing a fact implies an analytical framework, a prioritization of information, and a contextualization of causes and consequences. Promoting, on the other hand, consists of making visible, showing, repeating, sometimes without any mediation other than the effect of presence produced by the circulation of images, names, and narratives. In many media productions, the enumeration of violent acts and the designation of their perpetrators fall more under this logic of promotion than a genuine work of denunciation. The formal reminder of the illegality and brutality of these actions, even when explicit and repeated, is not enough to transform promotion into analysis. The visibility granted to criminal actors persists, accumulates, and continues to fuel their symbolic presence in the public space. The information thus disseminated does not deconstruct the criminal phenomenon; it accompanies its circulation, contributing to a progressive normalization of armed violence. In contemporary doctrines for combating non-state armed violence, narrative control occupies a central place. States that have understood this dimension work closely with the media to avoid any unintentional amplification of criminal prestige. They prioritize the depersonalization of armed groups, the reduction of their individual visibility, and a focus on victims, social impacts, and institutional responses. Conversely, the media exaltation of gang figures weakens public authority and undermines stabilization efforts. The responsibility of journalists and chroniclers, in a context as explosive as that of Port-au-Prince, far exceeds the pursuit of audience or the logic of buzz. Constantly repeating the names of criminals like stars, broadcasting their images on a loop, and multiplying sensationalist narratives about them contribute to shaping a collective imagination where armed violence appears omnipresent, powerful, and almost inevitable. This imagination constitutes fertile ground for the proliferation of gangs and the lasting entrenchment of insecurity. It is not about advocating for silence or censorship. It is about demanding an information ethic adapted to a major security crisis situation. Informing, in this context, implies reducing the symbolic weight given to criminals, refusing their heroic staging, and refocusing the narrative on structural dynamics, institutional responsibilities, and possible ways out. Otherwise, those who present themselves as chroniclers risk, consciously or unconsciously, assuming the role of standard-bearers for a criminal order that thrives precisely thanks to their words. Pennsylvania, December 13, 2025

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Jean Venel Casséus is a journalist, holding a master's degree in defense and security of the Americas. He is notably the author of a work dedicated to the geopolitics of the sacred, titled Au nom de Dieu.