Tabaire, Bernard2023-04-142023-04-142008Tabaire, B. (2008). The Media and the Rwanda Genocide: Allan Thompson (ed.).https://doi.org/10.1080/096145208023872391364-9213https://nru.uncst.go.ug/handle/123456789/8475An anguished search for answers, in order to avoid a repeat, automatically follows the occurrence of such monumental human-made catastrophes as the Rwanda Genocide. Most times a deep sense of guilt accompanies, or even informs, that quest for understanding. The Media and the Rwanda Genocide is one of the latest books to try to wrestle with the demons that consumed the enchanting hills of Rwanda for 100 days in 1994, leaving behind some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead. In more than 30 fine (if sometimes repetitive) essays, the book provides a worthwhile read concerning the role of the media in the Rwanda Genocide. It is the first such study. Editor Allan Thompson, a professor of journalism at Carleton University in Canada and a former reporter with the Toronto Star, introduces the book by contending that the international ‘news media could have made a difference’ with early and ‘more informed and comprehensive coverage’ of the genocide (p. 3). Such robust reporting would have sparked ‘international outcry’ and consequently action to stop the genocide. The crux of the book, he says, is that while ‘local hate media fomented the genocide’, ‘international media essentially facilitated the process by turning their backs’ (p. 6). His point is that with local Rwandan media co-opted by a beleaguered regime which had turned ethnicity into an ‘organising principle of state policy’ (p. 25), proper coverage by the international media would have forced the world powers to act to prevent or halt the genocide. That this did not happen means that international journalists failed in their responsibility to report. Thompson, who says he first visited Rwanda in 1996, takes this personally, feeling that he should have done more to prevent the genocide. ‘But Rwanda does get inside you and, since then, I think I have been trying to some degree to make amends for not having been there in 1994’, he writes in the preface. Thompson's framing of the news media's role begs the question: where does this guilt-ridden analysis leave or take us? Reading through all four parts of the book (Hate Media in Rwanda; International Media Coverage of the Genocide; Journalism as Genocide – The Media Trial; and After the Genocide and the Way Forward), one comes away none the wiser. In fact, I ended up thinking that the power of the international news media to stop the genocide or any such event is overstated. Western governments knew enough to evacuate their nationals within days of the start of the genocide, after the downing of the presidential plane on 6 April 1994. The international news media used the word genocide pretty early on (Libération on 11 April, AFP on 20 April, and BBC on 29 April), and yet the Western governments still did nothing. Actually they did something: the Security Council voted to deny the UN peacekeepers of General Romeo Dallaire the support that they so desperately needed. As Linda Melvern states, ‘For three months the British and US administrations played down the crisis and tried to impede effective intervention by UN forces’ (p. 209). Why so? Steven Livingstone attempts an explanation. He places American government reaction to Rwanda within the context of Somalia, from which the USA hastily withdrew in 1993 after several members of its armed forces were killed in Mogadishu. He dismisses as a ‘myth’ the notion that somehow, if the media had given the genocide the right reporting treatment, as Thompson and others argue, the Western powers would have acted. He argues that generally the ‘media do not have the ability to reprioritize [US foreign] policy objectives’ (p. 189). He says that there is no basis in fact for the argument that media coverage of Somalia prompted the first President George Bush to intervene. ‘Instead,’ Livingstone writes, ‘the decision was the consequence of political pressure put on the administration by key members of Congress, and even from officials within the administration itself’ (p.195). It was nothing to do with the media, which ‘simply do not have that capability, however understood’ (p.196). As for halting killings in Bosnia, media coverage followed US involvement. Not the other way round (p. 193). Western foreign policy is not shaped by the media. It is shaped by policymakers operating under all sorts of influence. The media simply follow. To think otherwise is to live a delusion. The USA has recognised what is going on in Darfur as genocide. The news media have constantly covered Darfur. The result? Not strong intervention from Western powers, but hand-wringing and impotent pleadings with Khartoum. Certainly, it was not the media that took the second George Bush into Iraq. To rephrase a question posed by Anne Chaon, the news media cannot do much ‘when the world doesn't want to listen or to hear’ (p. 165). As many have argued, Rwanda was left to its own devices not because the media initially described the killings as tribal savagery or whatever other choice terms the West reserves for the rest, but because Rwanda (in ‘deep Africa’ or in the ‘middle of nowhere’ (p. 238) was of no strategic importance in Western capitals. Even then, The Media and the Rwanda Genocide raises some hefty issues worth sweating over. Where does free speech end and the rabble rousing of the hate media begin? How should we deal with media that spew out hate-ridden statements in an already charged atmosphere? This is a book for anyone interested in the Rwanda Genocide, or in genocide generally, and the attendant international legal regime; the role of the news media in conflict situations; the place of humanitarian NGOs; and the relationship between Western powers and small developing countries. Considering post-genocide Rwanda, the book calls for vigilance. The regime of Paul Kagame (who once was deputy head of military intelligence in Uganda and not the head, as claimed by Lars Waldorf and others before him) has exploited the genocide to stifle dissent, creating a situation where ‘there is less press freedom and media pluralism in Rwanda today than there was before the genocide’ (p. 404).enMediaGenocideArticle