Celebrating Courage in Journalism
Colby honored Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald with the Lovejoy Award for her coverage of Haiti
The last time Jacqueline Charles, the Caribbean correspondent for the Miami Herald, went on a reporting trip to Haiti, she packed a bulletproof vest along with her pens and notebooks.
It’s a necessary step to take when traveling to a country that is crippled by gang violence, civil unrest, kidnapping, and other crime. The nation has been under a state of emergency for several months, and the U.S. Department of State has issued its highest travel advisory level for Haiti, telling Americans bluntly, “Do Not Travel” there.
Many people, given the choice, would prefer not to go at all. But for Charles, whom Colby honored on Sept. 20 with the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism, it’s important to witness what is happening and tell the stories of the resilient Haitians she meets there. Those are the people who are trying their best to survive and give their children a better future within the volatile confines of their country.
“Despite all of the things in this country that don’t work, the 12 million people who live there are real people. They have dreams and hopes just like you and I,” Charles said. “I’ve never used the phrase, ‘This is the poorest country in the hemisphere,’ because what does that mean? What does that say? What I aim to show is that 30-plus years outside of a dictatorship, this place is still struggling with this thing we call democracy.”
In doing so, her work—often done on the front lines of natural disasters, political turmoil, and healthcare crises—has achieved broad recognition. Charles has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and has won a regional Emmy Award, the Excellence in International Reporting Award from the International Center for Journalism, was twice named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists, and was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot Prize—the oldest award in international journalism—for coverage of the Americas.
An appreciative crowd at the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts listened carefully as Charles and moderator Matt Apuzzo ’00, the international investigations editor for the New York Times, talked about what it takes for her to do diligent, fact-based reporting in Haiti and why it’s so important to keep going back.
‘A dead journalist is of no use to anybody’
She’s done that in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake that left more than 220,000 people dead, in the wake of the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and in the ongoing violence that has paralyzed the country.
On her last trip, she went to a tent city where some of the more than half-million Haitians are living who have been displaced from their homes by armed gangs in the last few years.
“When I arrived in this tent city, people were literally sleeping in the mud. There are no tarps. They’re people who have been forced out of their homes with just the clothes on their backs,” Charles said. “When I got there it was just shocking. And I said, ‘I have to write the story because this is the story that’s not being told.’”
The way she does her reporting in Haiti has changed over the years. In the past, she was comfortable traveling around freely to talk to sources, even sometimes in the middle of the night, but as the violence has escalated, she can’t do that anymore.
Last year, as she was trying to get off the airplane near the capital she found herself in the middle of a police riot. On another occasion, a Haitian reporter who is a good friend narrowly survived being hit by an assassin’s bullet. On a different trip, she was stuck in the country longer than anticipated because of violence that included setting an airplane on fire.
Just as ordinary Haitians do every day, Charles must constantly evaluate how to be as safe as possible while talking to sources and moving around the country.
“A dead journalist is of no use to anybody,” she said.
The power of words
The kind of bravery that Charles has embodied in her career is remarkable but not singular, said Colby President David A. Greene, who talked about the dangers that can be inherent in the field of journalism. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 48 journalists have been killed this year alone, with many more imprisoned just for doing their jobs.
The Lovejoy Award, established in 1952, is awarded to a journalist who demonstrates fearlessness and commitment to freedom of the press. Last year’s Lovejoy Award winner, Wall Street Journal reporter and Bowdoin College graduate Evan Gershkovich, was imprisoned in Russia for 16 months before being released on Aug. 1 in a complicated prisoner swap.
“Turns out there is never a shortage of journalists to recognize,” Greene said. “Every day, reporters risk their lives to amplify the compelling and necessary stories that reveal hard truths.”
A free press is a pillar of a democratic society, he said, and a threat to all those who seek autocratic rule.
“It’s a lesson that is very present as we witness the rise of fascism and totalitarianism around the world. The playbook for those autocrats is well known. It’s to control thought and information. It’s to control facts and truth,” Greene said. “And that begins by abolishing a free press, then goes to destroying universities and jailing the intellectuals, the artists, the poets, who shape culture and understanding.”
It’s as true today as it was in 1837, when Lovejoy, the crusading abolitionist editor and 1826 Colby valedictorian from Albion, Maine, was murdered in Illinois because of his impassioned anti-slavery editorials. Previously, his printing presses had been destroyed multiple times because of his views.
“He rebuilt them and kept writing, and ultimately he was killed by a mob for the power of his views and his words,” Greene said. “We honor Elijah Parish Lovejoy, his courage, his willingness to speak out by remembering his story and by recognizing individuals who represent his commitment to justice and the First Amendment.”
Holding people accountable and building trust
Charles, whose mother is Haitian, is fluent in Creole—something that helps her to connect with people in the country. Another skill that helps with that is her commitment to finding the truth.
“Journalists have a responsibility to do their jobs and hold people accountable, governments, individuals,” she said while answering a student’s question about what journalists should do in response to misinformation and disinformation. “This is why we investigate. This is why we look at what’s being said. Is there evidence to support this or not? You let the story take you where it needs to go.”
She has done that recently after Republican former president Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance broadly disseminated false and troubling claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. Charles investigated the story and learned that someone had in fact eaten a cat in Ohio, but it wasn’t a Haitian immigrant but rather an American woman suffering from mental illness.
“Don’t go in with this preconceived notion that this is a lie and I’m going to prove it. What if it wasn’t a lie? That’s the honesty, the transparency that you owe your readers and that’s what people come back to you for,” she said. “When you are consistent and you show credibility, you build that trust.”
She also encouraged students and others to consider the credibility of the sources where they are getting information. It’s something that is becoming more challenging as so-called news deserts, places with limited or no access to credible local news, spread across the United States, which means that it’s also critical to support local journalism.
“It is a huge battle, when you look at these news deserts around the United States in terms of towns that do not have local news access anymore. It’s very depressing,” Charles said. “But for papers like the Miami Herald, for us, Haiti is a local story. It’s not a foreign story. We’ve been going at this even before I was born, and I hope that we continue to go at it. But it takes a huge financial commitment.”
Representatives from three Maine media outlets and newspaper networks, the Bangor Daily News, the Maine Trust for Local News, and the Maine Monitor, were available after the Lovejoy Award ceremony to talk to readers and explain what they do.
“Maine is one of the few places left in this country with a thriving local press corps,” Alison Beyea, executive director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs, said in her remarks before the award presentation. “This strong tradition of vibrant local journalism keeps our communities informed, engaged, and our government accountable.”
