Journalists don't know the difference between conditions and people. A sh*thole is a description of a geographic location. It is not the description of a person. People flee Haiti because of conditions there. People don't flee Norway because of conditions there.
Go live in Haiti at the average wage of a citizen there for 3 months. Going there as a journalist is not the same as living as a citizen there. Then do the same in another country and report on the differences you find.
In fact, do a year long series of having somebody spend 60 days in Haiti, Norway, Liberia, China, Russia, and Malaysia living on the average wage in each country. At the end rank each country on economics, freedoms, and other conditions. See which journalist volunteers to do so.
I've been in quite a few of the Latin American countries to include Honduras and Chile. Go live in Mocoron, Honduras for six months on the salary of the average citizen, then check out life in Santiago, Chile and compare which is best and worst by your own experience.
Most of the people in these countries are generally nice to you, but the conditions there are not as good from one country to the next. Some are worse, some conditions within a country are better than other locations in the same country.
Journalists live in a bubble where they believe if you call something elsewhere negative this is somehow racist or against American values. Go ask most immigrants that have left many of those countries where they prefer to live. The vast majority will say the US.
There's a HUGE difference going some place as a journalists and actually living there on the economy. Sure, as a journalist you will see the bad stuff, but you aren't living under it as a citizen. You are there as a foreigner and because of that are treated entirely different.
Go down to Houston and speak with some of the Afghans that live there about what they think of living in the US compared to Afghanistan, particularly if they lived in the outlying areas of Afghanistan before coming here.
Another thing, journalists are often talking about how crappy living conditions are in third world countries. They point out the lack of clean drinking water in places like Haiti. Lack of clean drinking water is an indication of substandard living conditions.
The journalists' choice of words may be slightly different, but they are not extolling how great living in a place like Haiti is, except unless of course the president mentions it isn't the best place in the world to live.
