From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Chaos sweeps across Haiti as armed groups that oppose the government of Jean-Vertrand

Aristide attack police stations and take over large portions of the country. Reporters are attacked,

shot, their stations and offices wrecked and torched. Journalists there have long been victims of

political strife. Michelle Montas, former director of Radio Haiti International,

has been living in the United States since early last year. Her husband, journalist Jean

Dominique, was killed in 2000. When we spoke to her last year, she just left Haiti after the

murder of her bodyguard. Threats on her life and the lives of her co-workers

forced her to shut her station down. But she remains in close contact with her colleagues

back home. She says the situation there is far worse than when she left. We have had this year

only from January until today about 50 aggressions against the press compared to 30 last year. I think right now

it's getting even difficult for foreign journalists covering the events in Haiti because a lot of

local groups, armed groups, are taking now foreign journalists as targets. So they would take

cameras and they would destroy equipment or attack journalists as targets. So they would take cameras and they would destroy equipment

or attack journalists, as was the case for Mexican journalists, this past week.

Let's talk about the impact on the coverage. I guess most of the television has been bought up

by the government except for one cable channel and much of the radio is pro-opposition.

Does it strike you that everybody is taking sides over there?

Well, definitely. I think this is what has been obvious in the media landscape recently,

is that the majority of journalists or media are taking sides.

You listen to radio, particularly early in the morning, to know where you go.

And it is obvious that right now the reports can be pretty biased on one side or the other,

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