Multiple Haitian journalists were killed or attacked in 2022, with gangs specifically targeting reporters whose coverage of criminal activities made them perceived threats. The targeting of journalists by criminal networks represented one of the most alarming trends in Haiti’s already dire security situation, with each killing both a human tragedy and a blow to the information ecosystem that Haitian society needed to hold power accountable.
Gangs had long understood that journalists documenting their activities created risks of accountability. As gang territorial control expanded in 2022 and their activities became more brazen, the incentive to silence reporters who covered them intensified. Several journalists covering gang violence in the capital were warned to stop their reporting; some heeded the warnings; others continued and paid with their lives.
The pattern of journalist killings had a chilling effect on Haitian media as a whole. Editors reported that their journalists were increasingly reluctant to cover certain neighborhoods or to pursue stories that would require interactions with gang-controlled areas. The result was growing blind spots in Haitian media coverage — areas of the country and types of activity that were effectively becoming impossible to report on because doing so was too dangerous.
Press freedom organizations called for the killings of journalists to be treated as priority investigations, arguing that impunity for attacks on the press had direct consequences for democratic governance and public information. In an environment where the judicial system was barely functioning and gang members faced essentially no legal consequences for any violence, the calls for investigation and prosecution had a hollow ring, but advocates argued that maintaining the demand for accountability was itself important even when its delivery was uncertain.