April 11, 2007 – Toronto: overwhelmed at Indigo

Simply put, I could hardly believe it when more than 100 people crammed into the space set aside for book launches in the Bay&Bloor branch of Indigo Books, in downtown Toronto’s Manulife Centre.

Despite having been on the road for weeks promoting The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, this was really my first foray into the big time – one of Toronto’s largest book stores. I was determined to do a launch at Indigo – despite the apparent risk that it could be a flop – in order to get the book onto the radar screen of Canada’s biggest bookseller. In the end, the event was standing room only.

Gerry Caplan led off the event, summarizing the role of the media in the Rwanda genocide, particularly the hate media radio station RTLM. I made a point of reminding the audience of Gerry’s remarkable contribution to raising public awareness of the Rwanda genocide. Gerry is probably best known to Canadians as an eloquent, leftwing commentator and longtime New Democrat who has at various times worked together with Stephen Lewis. Gerry’s academic background is in African studies. His link to events in Rwanda was forged when he acted as the primary researcher and author for a landmark study on the Rwanda genocide produced by a panel of eminent persons appointed by the Organization of African Unity. Gerry’s work, The Preventable Genocide, is still one of the most readable and comprehensive accounts of the events in Rwanda. A few years back, Gerry made it his mission to make sure the world commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, in 2004, and established an international committee to spearhead events.

He also produced a superb course on the role of the media in the genocide, which he has delivered at the National University of Rwanda and in other places. Gerry is a force of nature. I was thrilled when he agreed to contribute a historical chapter to the collection I edited and pleased to share the stage with him at Indigo.

It was also a particular pleasure to see so many friendly faces in the crowd at Indigo. A number of  former colleagues from the Toronto Star took the time to attend, along with friends from White Pine Pictures, the company that produced the Shake Hands with the Devil documentary two years back. A good number of my Toronto-based relatives also came out to support me and indeed, my aunt and uncle, Shirley and Bob Bourgeois (Shirley is my Dad’s sister), made the two-hour drive from their home in Walkerton. I also had the chance while in Toronto to connect with old friends from my high school days in Walkerton, Scott Worsley and Brent Schuknecht. Because my wife is out of the country on business, our son Laith was along for this journey, skipping school to tag along on Dad’s book tour. Scott and his wife Donna own two speciality DVD/video stores in Toronto called The Film Buff. Laith’s eyes popped when Scott told him he could borrow as many movies as he liked. For months now, Laith has also been asking for a suit jacket and tie – like the ones I wear – so this afternoon, we went to the Eaton Centre and bought his mini-me outfit. And as long as there is a hard floor at the book venue, Laith is happy. He passes the time rolling around on his Heely shoes, those treacherous sneakers with wheels set into the bottom of them.

The whole evening was a thrill. The question and answer period went on as long as the formal remarks. It was great to see friends and family in the audience. But it was also important to see so many strangers, particularly a good number of people from Rwanda who now make Canada home.

A couple dozen people lined up to get their crisp new copies of the book signed. It is difficult to explain how gratifying it is when someone who lived through the Rwanda genocide takes you by the hand and says ‘thank you.’

One encounter was particularly poignant. A young woman from the local Rwandan-Canadian community approached me and said she heard about the event from a friend in Ottawa. She said she had something she would like to give me and reached into her purse to pull out one of those commemorative wrist bands that are commonly associated with various causes these days. This one was deep purple, the colour of mourning and the theme colour for all the genocide commemoration ceremonies in Rwanda.

The bracelet says simply: Remember RWANDA 1994.

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Mar. 30, 2007 – A chance Rwanda encounter at Pearson airport

While waiting for my return flight to Ottawa I spotted a familiar face in the departure lounge at Pearson International Airport. Maurice Baril, the retired general who was Canada’s chief of defence staff in the late 1990s, was on the last leg of a journey home to  Ottawa from an overseas trip. We had a chance to chat and as usual, the subject turned to Rwanda.

In 1994, Baril served as chief military advisor to the department of peacekeeping operations at the United Nations secretariat in New York. In a twist of fate, it was Baril who was at the receiving end of the increasingly frantic code cables from Rwanda written by fellow Canadian Romeo Dallaire, including the famous Jan. 11, 1994 message in which Dallaire described an informant who spoke of death squads preparing to kill thousands of ethnic Tutsi per day.

Dallaire has maintained that officials in New York did not seem to take heed of his messages from Kigali. With so many UN missions on the go at the time, they seemingly failed to grasp the significance of what was unfolding in Rwanda. And Dallaire’s Jan. 11 warning, citing an informant predicting the mass slaughter to come, was not transmitted to the UN Security Council. In the years since serving at the UN, Baril has kept his own counsel about the advice he offered at the time to Kofi Annan, who then headed the UN’s department of peacekeeping operations. But I know that Baril and Dallaire have remained on good terms over the years.

By 1996, Baril was the commander of the Canadian army and was dispatched by Jean Chretien to eastern Zaire to lead a peacekeeping force intended to help resolve the ongoing crisis among Hutu refugees who had fled Rwanda at the end of the 1994 genocide. In the end, Baril’s mission was cut short when hundreds of thousands of refugees returned to Rwanda on foot and the peacekeeping force was disbanded. I was reporting for The Toronto Star from eastern Zaire in that period and spent some time with Baril. Indeed, in my files I have a couple of news clippings of front page photos that appeared at the time, showing Baril being interviewed by reporters in Goma. One of the journalists posing a question is a shockingly thin version of myself.

In late 1997, Baril was appointed to head the Canadian Forces as Chief of Defence Staff. After his retirement from the military, Baril also led the board of inquiry into the friendly fire deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002. We have kept in touch over the years and as usual, it was a pleasure to bump into him for a chat.

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Mar. 29, 2007 – Old friends and new at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo

This kind of book tour has many rewards, not least the stimulating give and take of question and answer sessions, the range of audience reaction and the chance to meet up again with old acquaintances while on the road.

But the most rewarding moments are those like the one that came at the end of today’s presentation to students and faculty members at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo.

I was packing up my gear and chatting with my hosts – Global Studies Department professor Alex Latta and political scientist Derek Hall – when I noticed a young man who was waiting patiently to get my attention. His long, straight hair draped down over his forehead and he was sporting a hockey T-shirt.

Jeff Kitchen, a student in Wilfrid Laurier’s business program, apologized for coming in toward the end of my presentation and admitted that he had never really given much thought to Rwanda before today. He has been more interested in his frequent guitar gigs. But now he wanted to know everything and asked for any information that I could send him on the media, Rwanda and the genocide, as well as material from my presentation. I will gladly oblige.

In addition to someone who was turning their mind to Rwanda for the first time, the WLU audience also included someone who has been focusing on these issues for years, Ernie Regehr, co-founder of Project Ploughshares. I have spoken to Ernie a number of times over the years, particularly while reporting on foreign affairs and development issues for the Toronto Star. The last time we met was here in Waterloo, in late 2005, when I shared a table with Ernie and his wife Nancy at dinner during a conference on United Nations reform. It was a pleasure to renew our acquaintance today.

At the end of today’s talk I also had the chance to meet with Madelaine Hron, as assistant professor in the department of English and Film Studies at WLU who is focusing her research on depictions of the Rwanda genocide and its survivors in popular culture. Madeleine asked a number of insightful questions during the discussion period and after the talk, came forward to share some of her thoughts on the subject. Hron’s excitement about her research on Rwanda was infectious. Today she was among a crowd of 75 or more who turned up for my presentation – quite an impressive crowd given that it is the end of term. Thanks again to my hosts, Derek and Alex, for their work organizing and promoting the event.

About 45 minutes were devoted to a question and answer period. Audience members asked about a number of issues:

1. The seemingly constant absence of background and context in media reports, perhaps a function of the political economy of the media;
2. Ernie Regehr asked whether commercial media organizations are abandoning some areas of coverage to independent media sources;
3. Does the fact that nothing is being done about Darfur – despite significant media coverage – indicate that people just don’t care?
4. Madelaine Hron asked about post-genocide representations of Rwanda and witness accounts of the genocide;
5. How do news consumers go about authenticating the information they receive online from blogs and other independent sources?
6. Are there any other media capacity-building projects like the Rwanda Initiative?
7. How do we deal with compassion fatigue?

At the end of our 90-minute time slot, I chatted briefly with Ernie Regehr, Jeff Kitchen and Madelaine Hron, before  my hosts, Derek and Alex, took me for dinner before I retired to the nearby Comfort Inn.

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Mar. 22, 2007 – Genocide in the box of chocolates

The strange headline on today’s blog speaks volumes about the unique and somewhat bizarre two-hour experience of appearing before a class in religion, politics and culture taught by McGill University professor Norman Cornett. Prof. Cornett’s approach takes a little explaining and guest speakers who appear before his class of 75 eager students are purposefully kept in the dark and left to figure out the unusual dynamic of his class on their own.

Prof. Cornett assembles a group of subject matter experts to appear before his class for question and answer sessions he calls “dialogics.” He contacted me first by phone a few weeks ago and in his message left clear instructions that I call him back at his office, as he does not use email or the internet. Curious, I checked out the student reviews of Cornett’s class on one of those rate-my-professor sites. Most said it was one of the strangest experiences they had ever had at university – and the most fulfilling. In essence, students read their brains out, put their reflections down on paper, and then get a chance to discuss topics with a panel of experts.  There are no opening remarks by the panelists, no presentations – just a few words by Cornett before a volley of questions from students, interspersed with discussion. Cornett leads off by quickly introducing the topic and the members of the dialogic panel.

Today’s topic was the media and genocide. The panel (from left to right in the photo) consisted of our host Prof. Cornette, myself, Frank Chalk, who is a history professor at Concordia and head of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Rwandan researcher Pauline Ngirumpatse, cultural anthropologist Yara El-Ghadban from the University of Montreal and Marc Raboy, the Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications at McGill.

Before we began, I noticed some visual clues about the way the class is structured. “Gumpers and Forestians” was written on the blackboard in stark white letters. Cornett refers to all of the students by some kind of nickname: Vegetable Lasagna, Bubba, Warrior Heart, Stork of the Future. I learn later that each term, the class takes a name drawn from a film and students adopt appropriate monikers. This term’s choice – Forest Gump. Hence, the description of the class itself as “the box of chocolates,’’ and the designation of Gumpers and Forestians. Sounds weird, I know. It is even weirder when no one explains any of this to you ahead of time. But it works, creating a sort of pseudonymous, intellectual fantasy world, where students exist only to immerse themselves in the subject at hand.

Students had been instructed to get a copy of The Media and the Rwanda Genocide in advance, to read it, to write down their reflections and to compose questions for a discussion. They were not told in advance who the participants in the ‘dialogics’ session would be, so my arrival was a surprise to the students. (Probably less surprising than the arrival a week later of former prime minister Paul Martin for a discussion on development in Africa).

Cornett, who is clearly adored by his students despite the quirky pretense of the class, acts as the mellifluous and unfailingly polite talk show host. He really does seem like a being from another era, one of utmost civility, introspection and passion for knowledge.

“We’d like to share with our dialogue partners and then open it up for discussion how we as a community in box of chocolates experienced the issues raised in The Media and the Rwanda Genocide,’’ Cornett began.

After painstakingly reading from some of the student reflections on the book, Cornett opened the floor to questions and discussion. What followed was a 90-minute bear pit session touching on a vast range of issues, some only loosely related to the book itself. Here, I can but list a few of the topics up for discussion:

1. Isn’t it purely speculation to discuss whether more media coverage might have stopped the genocide?
2. Would greater representation of images of genocide not just serve to de-sensitize the audience?
3. How could media technology help us now, in Darfur for instance?
4. Do the media turn atrocities into a commodity or a banality?
5. Should incitement by the media be a crime? What about press freedom?
6. Do we have free and fair media anywhere?
7. To what extent is media biased and controlled by government?
8. Is the detention of prisoners in Guantanamo an act of genocide? What about the treatment of the Palestinians?
9. Why can’t journalists take more responsibility and try to drive the public agenda?
10. Isn’t media just a big business?
11. We seem to have too much information, so many leftovers.
12. Where is the balance between Britney Spears and Darfur?

It was, quite simply, a remarkable afternoon. I will try to post an audio recording of the session to do it justice.

Earlier, I began the day in a more conventional setting, conducting a small seminar with a group of grad students and faculty at Concordia, drawn together by Frank Chalk, one of the contributors to The Media and the Rwanda Genocide. The participants in the seminar included an interesting cross section of students and faculty, including Frank’s longtime colleague, Kurt Jonassohn. The group also included a journalism student from Concordia, someone examining theatre and the Holocaust, an MA student in history, a PhD in Religion who is looking at religion and the media and another MA student in history. And Pauline Ngirumpatse, who would later participate in Cornett’s dialogic session, also took part in the morning seminar.

The day ended with a launch at the Paragraphe book store - a beautiful shop at the corner of Sherbrooke and McGill College, just across the street from McGill University. The crowd was small, but I must give credit to the store manager for going all out to create a lavish setup for the event in a quiet corner of the store, including posters, piles of books, and a riser and podium.

My colleague Frank Chalk, one of the contributors to the book, spoke first, with a special focus on the current situation in Darfur. I spoke briefly then took questions. It was a pleasure to see two of my best friends, Veronique Lamontagne and Michel Bergeron. Michel and Vero are close friends, who used to live in Ottawa and now make their home in Montreal, in NDG. Vero and I actually met up in Rwanda during one of my reporting ventures for the Toronto Star, when she was there working as a consultant, advising on the post-genocide reconstruction of the country. As with many stops on this tour, it was wonderful to end the day by connecting with dear friends.

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Mar. 20, 2007 – A reunion in Edmonton with my Rwanda “bookends”

My first stop today was at the Edmonton Journal, where I had arranged to meet with two old acquaintances, David Evans, now the newpaper’s editorial page editor and Peter Maser, a former Southam News Africa correspondent who is now the Journal’s city editor. I contacted the Journal to ask about stopping in to the newsroom to give a brief presentation on Carleton’s Master of Journalism program. But Peter insisted that in addition to that, I also make a presentation to some of his staff members about the media and the Rwanda genocide. It is not without reason that David and Peter have a keen interest in Rwanda. And as I told the dozen or so reporters and editors who showed up for our morning session, I regard these two journalists as the bookends of my Rwanda experience.

In 1995, a year or so after I joined The Toronto Star’s Ottawa bureau, I was dispatched to Cotonou, in the tiny west African country of Benin, to cover the summit of La Francophonie, which then prime minister Jean Chretien was attending. I will never forget something that Peter did during the opening ceremonies of that event. As part of the introductions, the host of the summit of francophone heads of state and government asked all those in attendance to rise for a moment of silence in honour of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, who had been killed the year prior when his plane was shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994 – an event that triggered the Rwanda genocide. Peter refused to stand up for the moment of silence. Glowering, he muttered something along the lines of: “I’ll stand up when they ask for a moment of silence for the hundreds of thousands of people who were slaughtered, but not for Habyarimana.” To be honest, I didn’t fully grasp what Peter was on about. I would only come to realize the full significance of events in Rwanda the next year, in 1996, when I visited the country myself for the first time. As the Africa correspondent for Southam News, based in Harare, Zimbabwe, Peter spent much of April and May 1994 in South Africa, with most other African-based journalists, covering the election of Nelson Mandela and the formal end of the apartheid era. It is worthy of note that Peter was the last Africa correspondent for Southam News (now Canwest), which closed its Africa bureau for good in the late 1990s.

I met David Evans for the first time in June of 1994, in Normandy, when we were both covering the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landing. A bit more than two years later, our paths would cross again – in Rwanda. It was November, 1996 and I was among the media throng gathered in Rwanda to cover the refugee crisis across the border in eastern Zaire – the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide. I was in my room in the Meridien hotel in Gisenyi – the Rwandan border town nearest Goma – when I heard someone calling out my name. “Is Allan Thompson here? Has anyone seen Allan Thompson?” I poked my head out the door and there was David, who was then working for the Ottawa Citizen and had just arrived from Canada to cover the Zaire story. Finding the hotel packed with journalists, David noticed my name in the guest book and decided to track me down. As often happens on the road, even competing journalists will help each other out, so David crashed on the floor of my room as we each went our separate ways reporting on the refugee crisis.

Reunited in an Edmonton Journal boardroom, David, Peter and I reminisced about Rwanda during an hour-long discussion with fellow reporters and editors. It was one of the most enjoyable sessions of this extended book tour.

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Mar. 19 – A chance to meet up with my cousin David

Out of the blue, I received an email message a few weeks ago from my cousin David Surridge, who lives near Edmonton. David’s wife Carolyn had heard me on the radio, talking about The Media and the Rwanda Genocide. If I had any plans to visit Edmonton, be sure to come for a visit, David said in his message. Well, Edmonton did come up on my agenda, so I paid David and Carolyn a visit at their new home, not far from the Edmonton airport. I landed in tonight just after 9 p.m., from Regina. I have three speaking engagements in Edmonton tomorrow.

David is a first cousin on my mother’s side of the family. His father Keith was my Mom’s oldest brother and a major presence throughout our extended family. Growing up, none of us seemed to realize that our Grandma Surridge had in essence been the original single mother, left alone to raise a brood of eight children during the Second World War. Barely in his teens, Uncle Keith left school so that he could work to help support his siblings. For that reason, he always placed a high value on education and frequently challenged young visitors to his household to explain what they planned to do with their lives. When I recall Uncle Keith, I remember both the uncomfortable grilling I would receive while visiting his house during my high school years as well as the warm embrace and thoughtful conversations that typified our adult relationship.

David is the age of my eldest brother Gordon. I remember David as the cool dude with the long hair, who drove a van, carried around a red-haired dog named Brick and who sent me a fancy belt as a present when the family lived briefly in Brazil. Over a bottle of wine, David and Carolyn and I had a great visit tonight and a chance to catch up. At their request, I subjected them to the video montage I use in my presentations. Then we stayed up until the wee hours talking. Carolyn kindly dropped me off downtown in the morning on the doorstep of the Edmonton Journal, my first port of call.

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Mar. 19, 2007 – A talk about the Rwanda genocide with no images – how ironic

The irony was just a bit too much for me.

Scores of international studies students at the University of Regina were gathered in one of those so-called “smart’’ classrooms for a presentation about the media and the Rwanda genocide. We were already running late because the data projector and audio system wouldn’t work – not through my laptop, not through one of the university’s laptops, nor through the PC with a memory stick attached. I have been relying heavily in these presentations on a video montage with a scene from the film Hotel Rwanda, some actual news footage from Rwanda and then a news clip from the period. So I was anxious to give the technical support staff a chance to make things work. While I forged on with my presentation – sans images – first two, then three techies struggled to make the equipment work. Alas, it never did.

I carried on anyway, working my way through the presentation and then a question and answer period with students brought together by Nilgun Onder, coordinator of the university’s interdisciplinary program in international studies. And at the end of the session I had a long conversation with Terri Sleeva and Alicia Schaeffer, who have been trying for some time now to arrange for Romeo Dallaire to speak at a fundraiser for their group, which is raising money to send wheelchairs to Rwanda. I promised them I would pass on their coordinates to Senator Dallaire.

Earlier I met with students in an international journalism class taught by Gennady Chernov, one of the faculty members at the University of Regina School of Journalism. In the morning session, the video presentation worked, sparking a number of questions from these budding young journalists:

• How do journalists covering events like the Rwanda genocide balance their work against concerns for their personal safety?
• Would more news media images from Rwanda have made any difference?
• How can young journalists do this kind of work and make a contribution?
• How does one break through into the mainstream media?

Mar. 6, 2007 – Vancouver: a three-peat at UBC

After doing three, 90-minute sessions back to back today at the University of British Columbia I was physically bagged, but mentally pumped by the fact that I reached more than 300 people in one day and sparked scores of questions from the audience. And the fact that it was +13 Celsius and sunny in Vancouver today didn’t hurt, by comparison with -30C back home in Ottawa.

Vancouver skyline from my hotel

The bookends for the day were presentations to two separate classes of 140 political science students taught by Prof. Robert Farkasch. Robert – a graduate of Carleton’s MA program in international affairs by the way – teaches at both UBC and the University of Washington and lives in Seattle.

At UBC he teaches two sections of Political Science 260, an international politics course. I met his first class from 11 a.m. to 12:20 and the second group from 2 p.m. to 3:20. Each class of 140 gathered in a cavernous lecture hall in UBC’s Buchanan building.

I have to say, I was spellbound by the UBC campus, which has the feel of a national park. I hadn’t been to the campus before, despite several visits to Vancouver over the years. (In fact, I am embarrassed to admit that during the 1997 APEC summit in Vancouver – which turned into the famous pepper spray summit when police clashed with protestors on the UBC campus – I was among the majority of reporters who stayed close to the media centre downtown and didn’t venture out to UBC when summit host Jean Chretien held a retreat there for visiting APEC leaders. As it turned out, the real story unfolded at UBC, where protestors were pepper sprayed by police, not at the main summit site downtown, where most of the media were camped out. (Amazing how journalists can sometimes miss a story then scramble to cover their tracks later. Ahem.)

For each of the lecture hall appearances I spoke for about 35 minutes – making use of my video montage – then launched into a question and answer period. The questions just kept on coming and are worth listing here to give a sense of what some members of a student audience want to know about the media and the Rwanda genocide:

• Can people still relate to images like those from the Rwanda genocide, or are we desensitized?
• How much onus is there on citizens to question the information they get from the media?
• Would the images captured by Nick Hughes move us today?
• Do you have more information on the reports out of Rwanda by journalist Lindsey Hilsum?
• How do you explain that with so many unique issues in Africa, a vast continent, that the media focus only on civil war to genocide to famine?
• Are people still interested in stories like Rwanda?
• Has entertainment and celebrity news overtaken serious coverage?
• Are western media biased against using local reporters from Africa?
• What role can individual journalists play?
• Would international reporting be better if it came from independent journalists?
• Who are the gatekeepers for the front page?
• Did the militias in Rwanda try to hide the story of the genocide?
• What do you think of the media portrayal of Romeo Dallaire?
• Did governments influence the media coverage of Rwanda?
• Would more broadcast of the Hughes footage have made a difference?
• Do we need a few well placed images to reach the audience?
• Do you have any personal desire to go to Darfur and report?
• Do journalists have to sensationalize a story to get anyone’s attention?
• What kind of coverage have Burundi and Congo received?

In between lectures to Prof. Farkasch’s students I spoke at an event hosted by the School of Journalism at UBC and the Liu Institute for Global Issues.

To some degree, I was running on auto pilot today because of the pace, but the reception from all three audiences seemed to be very positive. The questions from the audience at the Liu Institute, which included a number of journalism students, had a slightly different flavour from those in the political science class:

• Could I comment on the differences between francophone and Anglophone coverage of Rwanda?
• What would I suggest to a journalism student who is fundraising to go to Africa who is worried about finding a job that will pay her anything to do what she believes in?
• In post-genocide Rwanda, have the mainstream media and the film industry been doing us a disservice by buying into the government line?
• How well did print media cover the genocide?
• Was I aware of the U.N.’s IRIN news agency?
• What is the likelihood of some positive reporting from Africa?

This marathon day ended with an overnight ‘red eye’ flight back to Ottawa, via Toronto, departing just after 11 p.m. The flight would get me to Ottawa just in time to teach my Wednesday morning class in Analytical Reporting.

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Mar. 4, 2007 – Book launch at the King’s Pearl, in the heart of Bruce County

Joined by family and friends, I launched The Media and the Rwanda Genocide today in the pleasant surroundings of the pub my sister Nancy Alexander and her husband Stuart operate in the little village of Tiverton, not far from where I grew up. This book launch was a first for the King’s Pearl Pub & Eatery, which opened for business last fall in a renovated brick home.

Almost as important to me as releasing the book in Rwanda itself was the prospect of doing a book launch back home in Bruce County, where my parents Ron and Eleanor Thompson still farm in the village of Glammis. My brothers Gordon and Tom reside in nearby Kincardine and Nancy in Glammis.

Me with my family at the book launch

On this day, even the weather cooperated, after a winter that has been one of the worst in years. Only yesterday, the wind howled and snow drifts filled in the laneways as quickly as you could blow them out. No surprise given the 7-foot snow banks that still line some of the country roads. Many in the area have been without power for days because of heavy ice on Thursday that pulled down power lines all along Highway 21, which runs along the Lake Huron shoreline in this snowbelt area. And even today, the stretch of Hwy 21 heading north out of Tiverton was still closed.

So it was a pleasant surprise to see a break in the weather. This Sunday began like every other in my parent’s household – with a trip to the regular service at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church, in Glammis. I noticed that the church bulletin included a reference to the efforts of the Presbyterian World Service to assist refugees in Darfur, that forsaken region of Africa that Romeo Dallaire refers to as “Rwanda in slow motion.”

The visit to St. Paul’s also made me harken back to the spring of 1994, when I was home for a weekend. I recall vividly standing on the church steps, chatting with Jim Gilchrist, one of the church elders. He was marveling at events in Rwanda and the horrific nature of the killings. Jim, a farmer, was a serious and thoughtful man. His wife Clara taught me in Grade 1. I recall Jim talking about the events in Rwanda and how the people there seemed to be ‘killing each other like rabbits.’

During my remarks at today’s launch I reflected on that conversation with Jim Gilchrist on the church steps and how little we seemed to know about what was going on in Rwanda, where the killing was in fact a methodical, systematic genocide.

About 30 people attended the afternoon book launch. Fincher’s Books, from Kincardine, sold 22 copies of the book and I had a chance to visit with my immediate family as well as cousins, aunts, and old school classmates. I was happy with the crowd, given the precarious weather. And I learned after the fact that I was competing against Al Gore – so to speak. There was a special screening in Kincardine of Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, with a number of guest speakers.  I was especially pleased to see two old schoolmates at the book launch from elementary and high school. Ruth Lemont (she will always be Ruth Anne Vanderbor to me) was there with her partner. I remember Ruth Anne as a talented writer and public speaker, always my rival for top spot in English class or the annual public speaking competition. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Greg Lamb, a classmate from Walkerton District Secondary School, along with his wife Darlene.

With Ruth Lemont, elementary school classmate

At the King’s Pearl, we gathered in the parlour room of the pub where I made a short presentation, then showed the video montage of Hotel Rwanda, the Nick Hughes media footage from Rwanda in 1994 and the top of the news on ABC.

Here in smalltown Ontario, just as in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and other major centres, the presentation sparked troubling questions. My brother-in-law Stuart Alexander wondered where on earth the U.N. had been through all of this. A local school teacher who had herself lived for a time in Africa asked me to reflect on what might be accomplished with the media in Rwanda and to speak about the current political climate there. My cousin Helen Morris queried whether it was realistic to expect journalists to risk their lives to report from war zones like Rwanda. Adele Kaminiski — a neighbour in Glammis — wondered what people like her could do. I said news consumers should demand more of their media outlets and should let them know that they want more reportage on places like Rwanda and Darfur. My Dad asked if the world might have shown more interest in Rwanda if there had been oil there. He also questioned whether racism had something to do with our disregard for Rwanda. All good questions. It’s too bad there aren’t more satisfactory answers.

After the formalities, we had a chance to hang around the pub a bit longer. It was interesting how Rwanda kept creeping back into the conversation. Sean Thompson, my eldest nephew, remarked upon the fact that it seemed to him that few if any of his contemporaries were even aware of what had happened in Rwanda. Donna Hendry, who manages my sister’s pub, said her husband Lloyd did a double take when I talked about the fact that 800,000 people had been killed in Rwanda. Even now, we are still learning the lessons of Rwanda and coming to terms with the magnitude of the killing.

The book event over, the family retreated to the upstairs function room for a gathering to mark March 7 birthdays for my Mom and sister-in-law Judy Thompson. Then I hit the road for Toronto, where I would spend the night at the airport Sheraton hotel so that I could be close at hand for my 7 a.m. flight to Vancouver. Seems I got out of Bruce County just in time. Within hours of my departure, the whole area was once again socked in by a brutal winter storm.

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Mar. 1, 2007 – Ryerson School of Journalism, Toronto

Journalism students ask a lot of questions. And that is as it should be. After a half-hour presentation to about 40 journalism students at Ryerson Universitytoday, I spent nearly three-quarters of an hour dealing with their questions about the media and Rwanda.

To be fair, the first question came from one of their teachers, Jagg Carr-Locke, who took issue with my thesis that the media under-reported the Rwanda genocide. She said I was overlooking a series of reports broadcast on CBC-Radio at the time by a young reporter. Jagg recalled later that the reporter was Jackie Northam, who was working as a freelancer in Nairobi in the spring of 1994 and reported from Rwanda after April 12, 1994. She is now the national security correspondent for National Public Radio in the U.S.

Northam was one of a few journalists who were on the ground in Rwanda in the early days. Another was British journalist Lindsey Hilsum, who also filed to CBC, along with Catherine Bond. Lindsey was one of only two international journalists on the ground in Rwanda on April 6, 1994 when the president’s plane was shot down. Lindsey contributed a chapter to The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, documenting her experience.

Notably, in her paper, Lindsey notes that while a small team of dedicated journalists risked their lives to cover the genocide in the first few weeks after April 6, more than 500 journalists descended upon Goma, in eastern Zaire in July of 1994 to report on what became the mega-story of the summer – the humanitarian crisis among Hutu refugees.

Jagg is right: reporters like Northam and Hilsum did an amazing job of documenting events in Rwanda during the genocide. But in retrospect, I don’t think anyone could dispute that there was not enough reportage from Rwanda and that those events somehow did not connect with the wider audience, which was preoccupied with other stories.

That brings me back to one of the central paradoxes of the media and Rwanda: how is it that some individual journalists could do an exceptional job, but the media – writ large – could still fail miserably?

The rest of the question and answer period at Ryerson covered a range of topics. One of the students said her mother had worked on the costume design during the production in Rwanda this past summer of the new feature film based on Romeo Dallaire’s memoir, Shake Hands with the Devil. Her question was about the potential impact of these cinematic treatments of events like Rwanda.

In response, I told the student that I had in fact met her mother last summer while I was in Rwanda and visited the film set. I also talked a bit about the Rwanda genre of film, suggesting that the best I have seen so far is the HBO production Sometimes in April.

Another student wondered if she would be less of a reporter if she opted not to go to hostile environments like Rwanda and Darfur. I replied that in fact, The Star once had a correspondent who had a personal policy of not reporting from war zones and that the newspaper simply had to deal with that. So reporters can make choices. And one of those choices is to take on assignments like Rwanda.

The questions just kept coming:

• What is happening with the media now in Rwanda?
• When did hate radio RTLM stop broadcasting?
• Why did no one jam the RTLM radio signal?
• What do you recommend to young journalists who want to make a difference when mainstream media don’t seem to care about these issues?
• Where should we turn for information?
• Why did the genocide happen? What contributed to these events in Rwanda?
• How would you rate the documentary treatment of the events in Rwanda?
• Do the media in Rwanda still report on the aftermath of the genocide and why is no one reporting on what is going on in Rwanda now?
• What impact might individual video journalists have on coverage?
• Was the focus on the Balkans in 1994, instead of Rwanda, racist?
• What about events in Congo, where millions died in the past decade?
• Should foreign media organizations open up newspapers in places like Rwanda?

As always with Rwanda, more questions than there are satisfactory answers.

Before closing, I should thank my hosts at Ryerson. The director of Ryerson’s journalism program, Paul Knox, introduced me to students. Paul is an old friend, the former foreign editor at the Globe and one of Canada’s best writers on foreign policy issues. Another faculty member, Alex Gillis, a freelance journalist who teaches feature writing, brought some of his students to the presentation. And Wendy Peters, the program manager at the journalism school, helped to make sure that everything went according to plan.

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Feb. 26 – On the road again – to Halifax

After a few weeks back on the ground in Ottawa I took flight again last night to promote The Media and the Rwanda Genocide in eastern Canada and along the way, to talk up Carleton’s Master of Journalism program.

I spent the day today in Halifax, meeting with students in the Journalism program at the University of King’s College to talk about Rwanda before speaking to a group of students from the International Development Studies program next door, at Dalhousie University.

As I mentioned, I will be wearing two hats on most of these Canadian stops, promoting the book, but also doing some cross promotion for Carleton’s Master of Journalism program, particularly the direct-entry stream that allows media professionals to go straight into the second year of the program. To that end, I started the day today by visiting the Halifax newsroom of CBC-TV, where I sat in on a morning story meeting and made my pitch for Carleton’s program.

Then I caught a cab to King’s College, which offers an undergraduate program in Journalism.

King’s College

Don’t make the mistake of saying that the King’s College journalism program is at Dalhousie, it is at King’s, which is in effect a university within a university, a small, distinct university in its own right, founded in 1789 but also affiliated with the larger Dalhousie University next door.

My host was journalism professor Kim Kierans, the director of the journalism program at King’s. I have communicated with Kim on various matters in the past by email, but today was the first time we had met. And I discovered that we have mutual interests in journalism training abroad – her in Asia, me in Africa.

I also had a chance to meet with a number of other journalism profs, including Dean Jobb, which is a bit ironic, given that I was reading his book on the plane last night. Jobb is the co-author of a new journalism text, Digging Deeper: A Canadian Guide to Finding Information Fast (Oxford University Press, 2006), co-written with Rob Cribb, David McKie and Fred Vallance-Jones. (Cribb was a colleague of mine at the Toronto Star and Dave, from CBC, also teaches investigative journalism at Carleton.)

This visit also provided an opportunity to get re-acquainted with another former Star colleague, Kelly Toughill, who joined the King’s faculty in 2006. (Kelly and her husband had me over for a lovely dinner this evening, along with a number of other faculty members from King’s)

On the flight in last night, I was straining to remember the last time I had been to Halifax, or indeed even the first. I think the first visit was on a trip east with my parents, decades ago. In fact, I think it was in Halifax where, determined to try some seafood, I ordered my first and last plate of cod tongues.

The last time I was here was in 2003, as a reporter for The Star, when I was covering the Liberal leadership contest that pitted Paul Martin against Sheila Copps and John Manley. Sheila and I bought fresh lobsters together at the airport on the way back to Ottawa. I will never forget when she opened her wallet to pay for her lobsters. Her Club Z card fell out on the floor and in a hail of laughter, she asked aloud how many other Liberal cabinet ministers would carry a Club Z card. In the end we nearly missed our flight as we waited for the lobsters to be boxed up and I had to ride Sheila’s shirttails to be whisked through security.

But I digress. This morning I spoke to students from two classes, advanced radio and investigative reporting. They wanted some explanation for the way the news media ignore Africa. And most of all, it seemed to me, they wanted to know how they could get to Africa to tell that story.

Later, I met with students in the International  Development Studies program, in a course taught by Prof. Shelly Whitman. Even after a number of these presentations on the road, there are still poignant moments at every stop. Today, it came at the end of my presentation to the development studies class.

Student Refilwe Masilela, who had been watching intently in the front row of the classroom, raised her hand just at the last moment.

“I just wanted to say thank you,’’ she began. “One important question you raise is ‘where were you in 1994?’ I was born and bred in South Africa and when I think about Rwanda, I realize we were so much consumed by what was happening in our country, that we didn’t know that much about what was happening elsewhere in Africa.”

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Feb. 7, 2007 – Carleton University launch – bringing Rwanda to the next generation

I was happy to see dozens of students in the crowd at tonight’s Carleton University launch for The Media and the Rwanda Genocide. I don’t think people fully realize the degree to which students these days are engaged with the developing world and issues like the way we responded to the Rwanda genocide. While many of the students I teach in Carleton’s journalism program were teenagers – if even that – when the genocide occurred in 1994, they are nonetheless passionate about the subject and want to learn more.

For example, when we decided to launch a Rwanda Initiative media internship program last year that would take Carleton journalism students to Rwanda to work at the New Times newspaper, more than a dozen signed up, even though they would have to pay most of their own expenses. I would encourage you to look over some of the blogs those students posted to the Rwanda Initiative site during their time in Rwanda last year.

Students who attended the Carleton launch, including, front
and centre, former exchange student Kayla Hounsell

Among those who gathered in the foyer of the Tory building for tonight’s launch were a number of students who travelled to Rwanda last year to work at the New Times, or to be exchange students at the National University of Rwanda. I was so glad to see them at the launch because if I had to pick out one target audience for The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, it would be them: students who want to make a difference when it comes to the way the western news media report on Africa.

Once again, I was glad to be able to introduce my parents, Ron and Eleanor Thompson, who drove up from southern Ontario for these book launch events. My wife Roula and our son Laith were also there: Laith spent most of the evening rolling up and down the ramp in the Tory foyer, making good use of his Heelys, those crazy running shoes with the wheels on the bottom.

Signing a book for my son Laith

Chris Dornan, who was the director of Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication when the Rwanda project was launched, opened the event. Chris made a point of noting the group effort involved in Carleton’s Rwanda Initiative project, which has morphed from a one-day symposium into a major project that has now produced publications, a media internship program and an ongoing visiting lecturer exchange with the National University of Rwanda.

Professor Chris Dornan

In my remarks, I noted how important it was to me to see students in the audience, many of whom had become directly involved in the Rwanda project. I also thanked Katherine Graham, Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs, for her support. In fact, Dean Graham could claim to have launched the Rwanda Initiative. Part of the hiring committee process that I went through at Carleton in 2003 involved a meeting with the Dean. During our conversation, Katherine suggested that I translate my keen interest in Rwanda into some kind of academic activity. In fact, she was the one who suggested holding a symposium at Carleton on the role of the media in the Rwanda genocide. And when the time came the following year, Katherine gave me the institutional support of the Faculty to help turn the idea for the 2004 symposium into a reality.

with Dean Katherine Graham, Prof. Chris Dornan
and Prof. Michael Dorland

And among the 75 or so people who attended the Carleton launch there were some other very important guests, including Paul Heinbecker and Robert Fowler. Both served as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations – Bob from 1995 to 2000 and Paul from 2000 to 2004. I came to know and respect both men during my years as a political reporter with The Star.

Paul Heinbecker (L) and Bob Fowler at the Carleton launch

I first met Bob when he was leaving his post as deputy minister of defence to take up an appointment at the U.N. and wrote a profile for The Star. Bob is one of those fascinating characters whose career path has been interwoven with important moments in Canadian foreign policy. Indeed, in the early 1980s he served as foreign policy advisor to Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Brian Mulroney. After his stint at the U.N., Bob was appointed as Canada’s ambassador to Italy, but also took on the additional responsibility of acting as the Africa ‘sherpa’ for then prime minister Jean Chretien in the leadup to the Kananaskis G8 summit. He continued to serve as Africa envoy for Chretien and later for Paul Martin. He recently retired from the public service but remains active on a number of fronts. And he has a Rwanda link. Bob’s first job was teaching English at the National University of Rwanda, in Butare in the late 1960s.

Paul Heinbecker is one of those soft-spoken movers and shakers who are the bedrock of Canadian foreign policy. A career foreign service officer, from 1989-92 he was foreign policy advisor to prime minister Brian Mulroney. Later, behind the scenes, Paul was the architect of Canada’s ‘human security’ policy. He represented Canada at the U.N. during the establishment of the International Criminal Court and crucial deliberations about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. After retiring from the public service, Paul became the inaugural director of the Centre for Global Relations, Governance and Policy at Wilfrid Laurier University and Senior Research Fellow at the independent research Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo. And he has become increasingly less soft spoken. A few months back he gave a barnburner of a speech at a dinner organized by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression imploring journalists to re-think their coverage of terrorism and national security issues. Paul’s plea for a bit more introspection by Canadian journalists in very much in keeping with The Media and the Rwanda Genocide.

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Feb. 6, 2007 – Parliament Hill launch in Ottawa

Romeo Dallaire is a hard act to follow.

Dallaire, the former commander of the doomed United Nations mission in Rwanda and now a Liberal Senator, made an important contribution to The Media and the Rwanda Genocide by contributing a valuable chapter to the book after having thrown his weight behind the 2004 Carleton symposium.

It has been my privilege on several occasions to introduce Romeo to audiences. Tonight, I had the honour of being introduced by Romeo at the Canadian launch for the book, held on Parliament Hill in the company of more than a hundred people – MPs, Senators, members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and other representatives of civil society and the non-government sector. You can listen to an audio recording of the book launch. [Requires Windows MediaPlayer]

With Romeo Dallaire

With Maureen O'Neil, president of IDRC and Romeo Dallaire

Maureen O’Neil, president of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), opened the event, which was held in Rm. 214N of the Centre block of the Parliament buildings, the private dining room of the House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken. When other committee rooms were not available for the launch, Speaker Milliken kindly allowed us to use his chambers, with the endorsement of one of the deputy speakers, New Democrat Bill Blaikie. Thank you to both.

Maureen reminded the audience of IDRC’s unique role as a development research organization committed to using the power of knowledge creation to fuel development. As she pointed out, IDRC was instrumental in launching the research project that resulted in Carleton University’s 2004 symposium on the role of the media in the Rwanda genocide, which in turn led to this book and to Carleton’s Rwanda Initiative partnership with the National University of Rwanda.

Then she turned the podium over to Romeo Dallaire, who, true to form, dazzled the audience with his powerful message about the lessons of Rwanda and the crucial role the media played in 1994.

“It raises what the media and its power is within a society,’’ Romeo said. He referred to the media as “an instrument of modern society that is used in developing countries sometimes with massive abuse.’’

Dallaire said that hate media in Rwanda “guaranteed the continuance over a hundred days of that massive slaughter. It was the voice of genocide.”  

Romeo harkened back to the trip we made together to Sierra Leone in 2001, when I documented his mission as a special envoy on the issue of war-affected children.

Romeo said it is important “to influence the next generations of journalists,’’ in Canada and more importantly, in Rwanda. And he said he hoped there would come a day when journalists could help to prevent genocide, rather than reporting on its aftermath.

Finally, he said some kind words about my involvement with the Rwanda file and the importance of this new collection on the role of the media in the Rwanda genocide.

I can’t stress enough how important it is that this collection exists. Indeed, a number of MPs who attended the Parliament Hill launched made the same point. Bill Blaikie, the towering United Church minister and longtime New Democrat who was one of the co-hosts for the evening, ducked out of the Speaker’s chair in the Commons to pop into the book launch for a few moments. And Bill’s point was this: we need more of this kind of journalistic memoir and accounting, more of an acknowledgement of the role the news media play in society.

When it came to my turn to speak, I reminded the audience that I had been determined to launch the book on Parliament Hill, in the presence of journalists, political decision makers and representatives of civil society organizations. A separate launch for the Carleton University community will be held tomorrow night on campus.

On a busy day in the parliamentary calendar, when most MPs and Senators were tied up with a parliamentary dinner hosted by the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, I was pleased to see nearly a dozen MPs and Senators in attendance at the launch. They came from across the political spectrum. MPs Art Hanger, Leon Benoit and Garry Breitkreuz represented the Conservatives, Liberals Paul Martin and Alan Tonks were in attendance (what a thrill for my parents to meet a former prime minister), along with New Democrats Chris Charlton, Peter Stoffer and Bill Blaikie. Bloc MP France Bonsant also took part. Liberal Senator Jim Munson, an old buddy from his days as a Hill reporter with CTV News, also attended. I know there were other parliamentarians in attendance, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to them.

Signing a book for Paul Martin

My parents, Ron and Eleanor Thompson, with Paul Martin

I was glad to see Chris Dornan, the former director of the School of Journalism and Communication (now on sabbatical and sporting a new surfer boy hair style).  As director, Chris gave me his total support for the Rwanda project from day one. The current director of the school, Karim Karim, also attended the launch along with a number of other Carleton colleagues.

The remarkable Flora MacDonald, former Tory foreign minister and for some years, the chair of the IDRC board of directors was there, along with another of Ottawa’s most important journalistic voices on Africa, Clyde Sanger.

Romeo Dallaire with Flora MacDonald

Andre Ouellet, who was Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time of the Rwanda genocide joined the crowd. The list goes on, and includes Ellen Wright, who was responsible for the Canada Fund for Africa’s contribution to the Rwanda Initiative project last year. My old journalism school classmate Leslie Scanlon also attended. Leslie was working in the Human Security division of the foreign affairs department when that organization sponsored the first phase of the Rwanda Initiative project.  

I made a point of introducing my parents, Ron and Eleanor Thompson, who had to fight their way through a winter blizzard in southern Ontario to get here. My wife Roula and our son Laith were also able to attend. Laith was anxious to finally get his hands on a copy of the book and to get signatures from me and Romeo.

Student volunteers with Romeo Dallaire

Octopus Books took charge of book sales for evening and apparently sold more than 50 copies. By the end of the evening it certainly felt as if I had signed 50 books.

I also did a couple of important media interviews today. While the Parliament Hill book launch was taking place, the CBC Radio program As it Happens was broadcasting an interview taped earlier in the day with host Carol Off.

The wide-ranging interview lasted nearly 10 minutes (go to Part III of the show), a testament perhaps to Carol’s intense interest in the subject. She wrote one of the first books touching on Romeo Dallaire experiences in Rwanda. Her bestseller, The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle.

chronicled the experiences of Dallaire (the lion) Lewis MacKenzie (the fox) and Louise Arbour (the eagle).

Earlier I did an interview with Carmel Kilkenny on the Radio Canada International program The Link, a two-hour daily radio show aimed at connecting new immigrants to Canada and Canada to the world.

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Feb. 1, 2007 – Washington D.C. – Packing them in at the World Bank

I’ve said it before and I will say it again – it is a good sign on a book tour when there are people sitting in the aisles and standing at the back of the room. For today’s book launch of The Media and the Rwanda Genocide at the World Bank Infoshop here in the U.S. capital, more than 130 packed the auditorium at the Infoshop and others spilled out into the hall, where they watched the launch and panel discussion on a television monitor.

World Bank panel, with (L-R) Mark Frohardt, Thomas Kamilindi
and Steven Livingston

Panel discussions have been my favourite format during this book tour and that was the special ingredient in today’s launch. I was joined by three of the contributors to The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, Rwandan journalist Thomas Kamilindi, academic Steven Livingston and Mark Frohardt from the NGO Internews.

With Thomas Kamilindi, Mark Frohardt and Johathan Temin
at World Bank event

The event was co-hosted at the Infoshop by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, where Steven Livingston is a professor. What better venue than the media capital of the western hemisphere, Washington D.C., to launch The Media and the Rwanda Genocide.

Washington, D.C.

These three panelists represented the media role in the Rwanda genocide, before, during and after. I introduced Thomas as the former Radio Rwanda journalist who finally refused to read lies on the air any longer and quit his job on the eve of the 1994 genocide – an action which doubtless inscribed his name on a death list. (Read Thomas’s chapter in the book)

Steven Livingston has examined the conduct of U.S. news organizations during the Rwanda genocide, tracking their coverage by comparison with other events of the day – such as the O.J. Simpson trial and the elections in South Africa. (Read Steven’s chapter in the book)

Mark Frohardt, along with co-author Jonathan Temin – who was also present in the audience today – wrote a groundbreaking paper on use and abuse of media in vulnerable societies, which examines the way forward in terms of effective media interventions. (Read Mark’s chapter in the book)

I spoke first at the book launch, introducing myself, the collection, the Rwanda Initiative project and the central thrust of the book.

Steven Livingston described how his original research on media coverage of Sudan in 1994 took him to Africa at the time of the Rwanda genocide. He described his interactions with journalists based in Nairobi and talked about his later research on the agenda-setting function of news and the link between news content and policy decision-making.

Thomas Kamilindi spoke next, recounting his remarkable personal narrative of the genocide. Thomas was among those who took refuge in the Milles Collines Hotel, made famous in the film Hotel Rwanda. He spoke of how his father, an ethnic Tutsi married to a Hutu, had taken measures in 1959 to change his ethnic identity to Hutu, in an attempt to avoid persecution.

But it is what Thomas said next that electrified the audience. Now based in the U.S. as a researcher at the University of Michigan, Thomas launched into a withering critique of the current media environment in his native Rwanda. Thomas said that the presence of independent news media in Rwanda belies the “hidden face,’’ of the real situation. He said many journalists find themselves in trouble if they report on topics that are “taboo” such as the army, the person of the President or corruption. Thomas recounted how he once came in for direct harassment – phone calls and death threats – after he reported on an interview with a political opponent of the President. He spoke of how plainclothes officers came to his house to retrieve his tape recording of the telephone death threats. He said the officers threatened his family if he did not turn over the tape – so he turned over the tape.

He said that more than 20 Rwandan journalists have chosen “the path of exile abroad,’’ in recent years. “We never saw this before the RPF came to power,’’ he said. He said that like others, he was hopeful after the genocide that the regime of President Paul Kagame would bring about change in Rwanda. “I was hopeful things could change drastically. I am deceived,’’ Thomas said.

Mark Frohardt took us through the outline of his paper on abuse of media in vulnerable societies, with a focus on how to prevent such situations from evolving. He said the most effective forms of media intervention are those aimed changing the structure of the media environment, by emphasizing plurality, resources for journalists and media professionalism. He called for training programs for investigative journalism and efforts to foster an international community of journalists.

During the question and answer period, the first to step forward was Donatella Lorch, who reported for the New York Times from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Donatella, like others who poured their hearts into their coverage of the Rwanda genocide, took exception to what she saw as a simplistic critique of journalists. “Rwanda dug deep into my heart and my soul and I reported it the best that I could,’’ she said. “Don’t paint the media with one brush,’’ she implored. And she reminded the audience how remarkably difficult it was for journalists to cover the events in Rwanda in 1994.

In reply, I said that I agreed with her entirely and was careful to draw a distinction between journalists, who did their jobs to the best of their ability, and the media, writ large, which failed to adequately cover Rwanda. There is a disconnect between the fact that journalists can give their all, and yet ‘the media’ can still fail.

The next person to speak was a representative of the embassy of Rwanda who immediately challenged Thomas Kamilindi’s assessment of the situation in current day Rwanda. The diplomat said he agreed with Thomas’s recounting of the events of the genocide, but disagreed totally with his critique of the Kagame regime. The diplomat called Thomas’s assessment ‘a distortion,’ and said he needs to back and see what is happening in Rwanda.

As the moderator, Steven Livingston cut the diplomat short after a few minutes when it was apparent that he did not intend to pose a question.

We were then joined by Rwandan journalists who were watching the event through a live satellite link, established in the World Bank’s Rwanda office, in Kigali. One of the journalists, from the independent Focus newspaper, used his question to challenge Thomas Kamilindi and to provide what he called “a clarification.” For his part, Thomas said he was surprised that journalists have to attack each other. He said Rwanda needs more independent media, not media controlled by the government.

Another audience member asked about media agenda-setting and yet another wondered if, in addition to the media critique, we should be paying more attention to a critique of the audience itself, western or American news consumers who don’t seem to have an appetite for news about the developing world.

Too soon, our time was up, which was very unfortunate given the number of questions that journalists in Rwanda still wanted to pose. Those of us who were in Washington took part in a post-launch reception in the World Bank Infoshop book store.

After saying my goodbyes to my fellow panelists, and to Susan Murray from IDRC in Ottawa who flew down to help with the event, I decided to make one more stop here in Washington.

I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. My main purpose was to deposit a book in the Holocaust museum’s extensive library. The librarian expressed great appreciation for the donation and said the book would be included in the collection as soon as possible and that the museum would be likely to make additional copies available to researchers.

United States Holocaust Museum

Then I had a chance to visit the museum itself, a remarkable testament to the history of the Holocaust, including major exhibits on the role of hate media in Nazi Germany and American media coverage of the persecution of the Jews throughout the 1930s and then during the Second World War itself.

There is also an interesting temporary exhibit at the Holocaust museum, called Genocide Emergency – Darfur Sudan.

Never again indeed.

At the tail end of a whirlwind two-week tour, this quick stop in Washington was well worth the effort. The bonus was the chance I had last night to get together with some old friends and journalistic colleagues from my days in the parliamentary press gallery in Ottawa. Once again, I have been pampered by expatriate friends on this stop. My gracious hosts were Tim Harper, Washington bureau chief for the Toronto Star and his partner Rita Mezzanotte, a communications consultant. Tim has been a friend for years and was my last boss in the Ottawa bureau before I made the move to Carleton. Rita drove all the way out to Dulles airport to pick me up last night, then we all got together for dinner with some of the members of the Canadian press contingent, including Eric Sorensen of Global TV, Sheldon Alberts of the National Post, Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail, Beth Gorham of Canadian Press and Susan Murray, a former CBC reporter who now does communications work for IDRC. It was nice to spend an evening with friends at the end of such a long journey.

L-R, Eric Sorenson, Global TV, Sheldon Alberts, National Post, Susan Murray, IDRC, Tim Harper, Toronto Star

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Jan. 30, 2007 – Call me a Mellon fellow

Today’s main event was a 45-minute lecture at Bates College for students, faculty and some outside visitors. My visit here has been sponsored by the Mellon Foundation. The talk was held in the Chase Lounge, suitably located in Chase Hall and was followed by a question and answer period. After several days of winging it off the cuff I decided tonight to return to notes for a more formal lecture-style presentation.

I also made use of the video compilation of the clip from Hotel Rwanda, the Nick Hughes news footage from Kigali and a few minutes of ABC World News Tonight. I find time and again that this compilation really connects with audiences. People are quite simply horrified by the Hughes footage, all the more so when they realize that these iconic images of the Rwanda genocide never seemed to resonate with news consumers at the time.

Earlier today I conducted a seminar with students in an Anthropology course called Person and Community in Contemporary Africa, taught by Prof. Elizabeth Eames.

To reinforce how ethnicity and identity have so infused Rwandan society, I started off with a reading from Gerard Prunier’s classic The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. The book is all the more remarkable for the fact that Prunier, a French journalist, published the first edition in 1995 – a year after the genocide. It remains one of the classic accounts.

I read from the introductory chapter, which outlines how first explorers began to delineate Rwanda’s ethnic groups. Notably, British explorer John Hanning Speke gave credence to the theory that the Tutsi were somehow a superior race that had at some point invaded Rwanda. These notions of ethnic superiority were reinforced by the Catholic Church and Belgian colonizers, who introduced ethnic identity cards and favoured the Tutsi as a ruling class, that is, right up until they switched allegiances and favoured the Hutu majority before leaving Rwanda in 1962.

After that I read from chapters in The Media and the Rwanda Genocide by Gerry Caplan, Jean-Pierre Chretien and Marcel Kabanda, documenting how ethnicity came to figure in the civil war and genocide, notably through the hate media rants on the radio station RTLM and the newspaper Kangura.

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Jan. 29 – Bates College, Lewiston, Maine

Worlds away from Africa, the book tour for The Media and the Rwanda genocide brings me to Maine and the hallowed halls of Bates College, a private liberal-arts college founded by abolitionists in 1855.

Bates College campus

In a testament to the wide reach of the internet, I came in contact with Bates some months ago when one of the professors here, Alexandre Dauge-Roth, got in touch with me by email to ask about my research on the role of the media in the Rwanda genocide and to invite me to visit the college and conduct some seminars. We had agreed on these dates months ago and only realized more recently that the visit could actually work into the book tour.

As it turns out, the Swiss-born Dauge-Roth teaches French in the romance languages and literature department at Bates and has designed a novel seminar course called “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda.’’ You can read a brief profile of Alexandre Dauge-Roth on the Bates website.

Alexandre Dauge-Roth

Alex has been researching the genocide for years now and during a trip to Rwanda last year, established an interesting network of genocide survivors who have been corresponding with his students here at Bates. Ultimately, he hopes to bring Bates students to Rwanda next year to meet their counterparts face to face.

Alex arranged for a grant from the Mellon Foundation to cover the cost of flying me to Bates as a “learning associate” to spend a few days meeting with students and giving a keynote talk tomorrow night (Tuesday) about the role of the media in the Rwanda genocide.

It took a while to get here. There are no direct flights from Ottawa to Portland, Maine, the nearest international airport to the college town, Lewiston. So I had to fly on Sunday morning by way of Newark and then wait several hours for a connection. Alex met me at the airport in Portland and drove the 45 minutes to the campus, a picture book New England college. In fact, the place looks so much like a movie set for a private U.S. college that it actually has been used as a set; an episode of The Sopranos included a scene filmed here, when Tony Soprano went looking for a college for his daughter Meadow. I am staying at a comfortable bed and breakfast right across from the campus, called the Ware Street Inn.

I met with two groups of students today. First, I led a seminar with a combined class of students who are in Alex’s ‘documenting genocide’ course and also students from an African studies class on cinematic portrayals of Africa. After a preliminary background discussion the Rwanda genocide, I talked a bit about the book and then the interesting Rwanda genre of films that has sprung up in recent years: 100 Days, Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, Sometimes in April, Sunday at the Pool and the soon to be released Dallaire feature, Shake Hands with the Devil. I mused about how it is odd that journalism notwithstanding, the events of the Rwanda genocide don’t seem to have captured the public imagination until people ‘experienced’ the genocide on the silver screen, through the Hollywood production Hotel Rwanda. But then, the same was probably true of Schindler’s List vis-à-vis the Holocaust and The Killing Fields for the Cambodian genocide. In a 45-minute question and answer period, students asked about the role of media in the genocide, the current state of the media in Rwanda, the initial reluctance to use the word genocide in the case of Rwanda, the propriety of showing mutilated corpses in news footage, whether news coverage of events ever results in political action and what has happened in terms of trials in Rwanda.

Seminar with Bates College students

Alex took me for dinner along with some other members of the faculty and then we attended a screening of the 2004 PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda, a powerful, two-hour re-telling of the events of 1994, with a heavy focus on the U.S. failure to mount any kind of international intervention.

After the screening a group of students stayed around for a discussion of the film, in particular, the question of whether or not more comprehensive media coverage of the events in Rwanda could have triggered international intervention.

Discussion after screening of PBS documentary Ghosts of Rwanda

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