For immediate release

Foreign media share blame
for Rwanda genocide: new book

International news media contributed to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, alongside hate media outlets in the country, a new book argues.

"Through their absence and a failure to adequately observe and record events, journalists contributed to the behaviour of the perpetrators of the genocide – who were encouraged by the world’s apathy and acted with impunity," Allan Thompson contends in the new book, The Media and the Rwanda Genocide.

The 470-page volume is an edited collection of papers, published this month by Fountain Publishers of Kampala, Pluto Press of London and Canada’s International Development Research Centre. (For more information on the book visit: www.idrc.ca/rwandagenocide).

"More comprehensive and accurate reporting about the Rwanda genocide could have changed the behaviour of the perpetrators, mitigating the slaughter," Thompson writes in his introduction to the book.

Thompson, a former journalist with the Toronto Star newspaper, is now a journalism professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and director of the Rwanda Initiative, a media capacity-building project.

"At every turn, it seems, we return to this troubling equation, implicating news media – both within Rwanda and internationally – in the genocide. In looking back on this period, it is important to examine the role of domestic hate media and the international media in tandem…As uncomfortable as this connection may seem, we cannot separate the two."

News media played a crucial role in the Rwanda genocide. Local hate media fuelled the killings while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued what was happening.

The Media and the Rwanda Genocide is the first book to fully explore both sides of that media equation. The book examines how local radio and print media were used as a tool of hate by encouraging neighbours to turn against each other.

It also presents a critique of international media coverage of the cataclysmic events in Rwanda. Bringing together local reporters and commentators from Rwanda, high-profile Western journalists and leading media theorists, this is the only book to identify and probe the extent of the media's culpability. It also examines deliberations by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on the role of the media in the genocide and examines the way forward.

This book is a startling record of the dangerous and negative influence that the media can have, when used as a political tool or when news organisations and journalists fail to live up to their responsibilities. The authors put forward suggestions for the future by outlining how to avoid censorship and propaganda, and by arguing for a new responsibility in media reporting.

"The purpose of looking back at the media’s role in the Rwanda events is not just to remember," Thompson says. "We still have some learning to do on this subject and examining the way journalists and news organizations conducted themselves in 1994 is not just a historical exercise. Sadly, we don't yet seem to have fully discerned or absorbed the lessons from Rwanda."

The book grew out of a major international symposium held in 2004 at Carleton University, home to Canada’s most famous journalism school.

In a statement included in the book, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan suggests journalists must work harder to prevent future occurrences like Rwanda.

"There can be no more important issue, and no more binding obligation, than the prevention of genocide," Annan says in the book. "It is encouraging to know that the news media are also undertaking a process of self-examination as we collectively remember this tragedy."

Retired Canadian general Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the ill-fated U.N. mission in Rwanda in 1994, also contributed a chapter to the book.

"The international media initially affected events by their absence. A tree was falling in the forest and no one was there to hear it. Only those of us in Rwanda, it seemed, could hear the sound, because the international media were not there in any appreciable numbers at the outset," Dallaire writes.

Dallaire now sits as a Liberal in the Senate of Canada and continues to advocate for greater awareness of humanitarian crises and genocide, particularly the current tragedy in Darfur. Dallaire argues that more media coverage would have increased pressure on political decision makers to act in Rwanda.

"When news reaches the general population, it shapes public opinion. When there is a lack of statesmanship, public opinion can force a government to make decisions… In the case of Rwanda, that’s where the process broke down. The events in Rwanda simply did not break through to such an extent as to create momentum."

And he goes further: "As for the international media, I think we need to ask ourselves, did the lack of attention and understanding by the international media actually contribute to the genocide? Did the decision to ignore Rwanda border on complicity by letting this atrocity go unreported?"

The role of hate media in the Rwanda genocide is in some ways self-evident. But it is not so clear, or at least not as universally accepted, that international media played a role in the genocide as well. The Media and the Rwanda Genocide makes the case for media culpability.

Media contacts:
Prof. Allan Thompson
allan_thompson@carleton.ca