A new podcast investigates the murders of local journalists Email not displaying correctly?
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In 1993, in a new job with the Committee to Protect Journalists, investigative journalist Ana Arana started reporting about violence against the press in the Americas. Arana researched the murders of 10 journalists in the U.S. from ethnic communities.
She saw a pattern.
“While the murders of U.S. journalists are promptly solved, none of the murders of immigrant reporters had been solved, as they involved the Vietnamese and the Haitian communities,” Arana told me in an email. “The two communities had something in common, they were newly arrived in the United States and lacked the connections and political clout to influence successful police investigations into the journalists’ murders.”
In both cases, the conflicts started in the journalists’ home countries and the communities were ideologically divided, Arana said.
“Our project looked at the Haitian murders and found gaps in the investigations,” she said. “Suspected intellectual authors were allowed to leave Miami for Haiti, other military-linked officers who were allegedly involved in the planning of the murder of the three reporters were never investigated.”
30 years after beginning that project, called “Silenced, ([link removed]) ” Arana is back on the story, this time with a new podcast called “Silenced: The Radio Murders” ([link removed]) from Kaleidoscope Content and iHeart Podcasts. She partnered with Oz Woloshyn, who previously worked on the podcast “Forgotten: Women of Juarez,” ([link removed]) about the mass disappearances of women in that border city.
“‘Forgotten’ reached a very large audience and brought younger listeners into a story that has been ongoing since the 1990s,” Arana said. “We hope that ‘Silenced’ will have a similar impact, bringing a new focus to a story that deserves far more attention.”
Below, I asked Arana a few questions about the work.

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Tell us about the podcast. Who do you hope to reach with this?
When we started the podcast, we wanted to tell a story about impunity and the impact it has on immigrant communities.
However, as we dug into the story we found out that the cases should be reopened, to have federal authorities look at the cases because they dealt with the First Amendment and the right to free speech. With the murders, these voices and the ideas that those broadcasters held were silenced.
When murders of journalists in small communities are not solved, they leave an open wound. During our investigation, we found that the three murders we looked at occurred during important dates in the political decision-making in Haiti. They were connected to the period Aristide was in office. The murders ended up intimidating the entire community, where the more powerful military and conservative voices quashed the poorer ones. After the third murder, fewer Haitian radio journalists dared to speak up.
What role do you think local reporters can and should play in helping hold those responsible accountable?
I think it goes back to reporting on poor immigrant communities. Reporters from the mainstream media have a hard time seeing these communities within their perimeter. Also, often you need cultural and language abilities to get through these communities. This is one reason to have a diverse journalism presence in local news outlets.
You can listen to "Silenced: The Radio Murders" here. ([link removed])

That’s it for me! I’m in Washington, D.C., this week to close out the 2022-2023 Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship, so probably crying happy tears because this was an incredible class.
Thanks for reading,
Kristen
Kristen Hare
Faculty
The Poynter Institute
@kristenhare ([link removed])
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