Journalists beware: Words can kill, just as they can liberate

The media cannot commit genocide, but individuals can be held accountable for their words. Photo/Daniel Sabiiti 

By CHRISTOPHER KAYUMBA

In Summary

• While words can liberate, they can also kill with equal ferocity. Journalists can individually be held accountable for their words.

It was during this time of year, 20 years ago, that plans to exterminate Rwanda’s Tutsis were in advanced stages as its orchestrators did the final touches to the killer plan.

This plan ranged from training militias that would kill across the land to drawing up lists of victims and stockpiling weapons, distributing them and mobilising the masses.

Although the media as channels of communication cannot commit genocide, there is incontrovertible evidence that had planners of this crime not deployed the local media to serve their goal, and had the international media reported accurately, it would have been difficult — nor even impossible — for them to implement their plan with the same intensity, speed, conviction and mass involvement of ordinary citizens.

As respected people like Gen Roméo Dallaire, the commander of the UN peacekeepers in Rwanda (UNAMIR) at the time of genocide, researchers Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and scholar Jean-Paul Chréstien have argued, while the international media was at first absent or misleading and trivial when it reported, the local media popularised the idea of genocide, moralised it, mobilised the masses and, in the case of radio RTLM, directed the killers to their victims.

Although we talk about the media’s role in promoting genocide, in actual sense, it is the role of journalists — through their words. This is why there is no media outlet that has ever been charged or convicted of genocide; but individual journalists and editors have.

From the Nuremberg trial and sentencing to death of the editor-in-chief of Der Stürmer Julius Streicher on October 1, 1946, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) trial and conviction in 2003 of Hassan Ngeze of Kangura newsletter, Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza of RTLM radio, there is no doubt that journalists can actually kill with their words.

Thus, in the “Never Again” spirit, it is fitting to review some of the words that were used by journalists in 1994 that either shielded the world from knowing the truth — therefore contributing to inaction — or words that constitute the crime of direct and public incitement to genocide as defined by UN’s Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and subsequently cemented by the ICTR.

For starters, when debating the media’s role in the genocide, there is a tendency to focus only on hate outlets — the 11 out of 43 outlets — such as Kangura, RTLM, Echo des 1000 Collines, La Médaille Nyiramacibiri, Umurwanashyaka and Urumuli rwa Demokarasi.

But to comprehend the role of the media before and during the genocide, let us divide the media into three categories: International media, the “moderates” and the hate media.

The “moderates” such as Kanguka, Rwanda Rushya, and Rwanda Libération were more allied to the opposition: They opposed massacres and favoured power-sharing. They were starved of advertisements and most of their members were killed — constituting the 54 documented journalists who lost their lives during the genocide.

The international media, while they eventually forced world leaders to admit that genocide had been committed, they are rightly blamed for the lack of what’s known as “the CNN effect” in Rwanda’s tragedy.

The “CNN effect” refers to a belief, within conflict management, that in crisis situations, if you have the cameras rolling and reporting is accurate, world leaders will act, as they cannot afford the outrage of their populations.

In Rwanda’s case, there was no such effect because, at most, the international media were superficial and, at worst, misleading. For example, The Times of London, on April 11, 1994, reported the “outbreak of civil war” and wondered, in its editorial, “Which parties would be asked to cease-fire against whom?” This was a week into the genocide; not civil war.

The international media also underestimated the deaths—which also made it difficult to understand the intensity of what was going on in the early days of the massacres. The New York Times reported, on April 10 1994, of “8,000 deaths” while The Guardian “estimated 20,000.”

And Paris Europe No.1 Radio informed its audience on April 11 that “Hutus [were] hunting down Tutsis” and vice versa! And on April 14, Le Monde and The Times of London wrote that “it was now the Hutu who feared vengeance from Tutsi rebels