How the media missed genocide TheStar.com – opinion – How the media missed
genocide
April 07, 2007
John Honderich
BUTARE, RWANDA
Today is Genocide Memorial Day in Rwanda, exactly 13 years to the day
since the onset of one of the most brutal periods of the 20th century.
It is thought that close to 1 million Rwandans – including
three-quarters of the entire Tutsi population – were systematically
murdered within the span of 100 days.
This was no civil war, no mistake. Rather it was a deliberate and
methodical ethnic cleansing executed at a rate almost impossible to
fathom.
And in the first month, the world’s media missed the real story.
Missed it badly.
Search the files, as I did, and you will find most newspapers,
including the Star, were replete with stories of the horror that was
unfolding. Indeed, we ran 152 stories in the 100 days.
And a month into the killings, a few journalists, including the Star’s
Pulitzer-winning journalist Paul Watson, began to stitch together
pieces of the real story behind the slaughter.
For a month, though, this tragedy was portrayed as yet another bloody
civil war between two traditional tribal enemies – not a deliberate
genocide.
How could this happen? How could the world’s media miss a genocide?
And even more troubling, could it happen again?
These questions haunted me as I visited this surprisingly enchanting
and stunning country for the first time.
As editor of the Star at that time, I had ultimate responsibility for
the paper’s editorial coverage. And the notion that we weren’t aware
of one ofthe century’s worst episodes doesn’t sit well, as it wouldn’t
with any experienced editor.
After all, at the very same time, the world’s media were documenting
in detail the ethnic cleansing being perpetrated in Bosnia. Those
collective stories brought about a multinational response, just as
they had in Somalia.
Yet in Rwanda, the United Nations actually voted to decrease its
peacekeeping forces from 2,500 to a few hundred.
To the chagrin of Canadian Gen. Romeo D’Allaire and others, the world
was simply turning a blind eye to Rwanda – in large part because the
real story had yet to be told.
In short, we failed Rwanda, for which I will be forever remorseful.
In his new book, The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, former Toronto
Star reporter Allan Thompson provides compelling commentary on the
trail of hate literature and diabolical pre-planning that culminated
in the genocide.
Indeed, three Rwandan so-called journalists were actually indicted and
convicted of inciting genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda In other words, if reporters had cared to look, the
evidence was all there to realize that something horrific was about to
unfold.
Why didn’t we see it?
In retrospect, much is made of the fact that most of the world’s media
were focused at the very same time on the election in South Africa,
where Nelson Mandela was coming to power. In fact, the Star had two
reporters there.
Others speak of the concentration of attention on Bosnia.
Yet this analysis seems based on the unspoken premise that both the
world and the media were incapable of absorbing the notion that a
genocide was taking place in Africa at the same time as Mandela was
being elected and the Bosnia conflict was raging.
On reflection, it seems the fundamental answer lies somewhere else.
First, Rwanda was too poor for anyone in the West to care.
Second, I hearken back to the comment of Kofi Annan, later UN
secretary-general, who remarked that many Western nations were
reticent to intervene in Rwanda because they didn’t feel a "kinship"
with Africans.
Translation: Who cares about feuding blacks in Africa anyway.
Could such a story be missed again?
In the past 13 years, the number of correspondents stationed in Africa
has dropped significantly.
Virtually every analysis of Western media shows a decline of reportage
on Africa. For example, ABC’s Evening News spent just 11 minutes
throughout all of 2006 reporting on Darfur.
It seems, quite frankly, that media interest in Africa is on the
wane. And what stories appear invariably centre on AIDS, poverty or
corruption.
Any visitor to Rwanda is struck by the number of memorials to the
genocide that carry the ever-present message "Never Again." Can the
same be said of the media missing another such story on this
continent?
Based on what I’ve read and seen, I’m far from confident. Which, as a
former editor, troubles me profoundly.
John Honderich is a former publisher of the Star.