CNN’s Soledad O’Brien Back From Haiti: “There Are No Easy Answers”

Mediaite: While you were in Haiti, there were some people who wrote about TV doctors and reporters getting too close to the story, or becoming part of the story. What do you think of that charge?

O’Brien: “It is always interesting when I read that. Part of story is there is no relief getting in. There was nobody else to save that person. Sanjay Gupta was the only neurosurgeon in the country at one point! People who are saying that really didn’t understand the circumstances. The idea a TV doctor had to help with surgery is an indication of how out of whack, chaotic, sincerely messed up the country was. That is an interesting story. There’s nobody else to do it. There’s no infrastructure. Every day it gets a little better, but to me, that was part of the story.

“The difference between what you were doing last night and this morning is so stark and so hard to think about.”

Mediaite: What did you find the hardest to convey in your reports?

O’Brien: I’m not sure we captured this – in the aftermath we’ll talk about it more. The history of Haiti is such an interesting thing. Its own leadership was often corrupt. It just never had a chance. It’s so incredibly sad. To me, the bigger picture is about poverty. We have to figure it out. The earthquake was much worse because of the impoverished situation of the country. There were no supplies, no distribution system, because they never had that. It’s not just that a bad thing happened here. Bad things happened, but they are not able to recover and won’t recover quickly because of hundreds of years of bad things happening to Haiti. Someone has to come in and say, ‘How do we make it better?’ It is not an easy answer.

Mediaite: Well all of the reporting has been so great. It has been engrossing to watch.

O’Brien: Really? How did it look on TV?

(At this point O’Brien’s daughter, Sophia, can be heard in the background. “You were so good,” she said.)

Mediaite: How is it being back home, back to your everyday life?

O’Brien: It’s kind of a relief, honestly. It’s like, back to real life. The difference between what you were doing last night and this morning is so stark and so hard to think about.

(This has been edited for length and clarity.)

• Back From Haiti: Bill Hemmer

Here’s a report on the orphans from earlier this week:

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