{"id":55158,"date":"2019-04-03T11:53:40","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T15:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=55158"},"modified":"2025-10-17T18:12:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T22:12:19","slug":"rwanda-media-lessons","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/rwanda-media-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Rwanda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Lessons from Rwanda\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

In the spring of 1994, during the darkest days of the Rwandan genocide, Allan Thompson<\/a> was a political reporter for the Toronto Star<\/em> and found himself in France, covering the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the D-Day landings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By that point, Rwanda had slid into the abyss and was nearly at the apex of a 100-day slaughter launched by the April 6 assassination of the country\u2019s Hutu president, a cataclysm that led to the massacre of an estimated 800,000 members of the country\u2019s Tutsi minority at the hands of Hutu extremists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In France, most of the western world\u2019s leaders were on the beach in Normandy for the Second World War commemoration ceremonies, recalls Thompson, who joined Carleton\u2019s Journalism faculty in 2003. But despite the carnage taking place in Rwanda, nobody was talking about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lessons<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rwanda didn\u2019t feature in any of the speeches, media scrums or talking points. The world had truly turned its back on the tiny East African country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is to my everlasting shame that I did not volunteer to go to Rwanda in 1994,\u201d Thompson writes in the introduction to Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond<\/em><\/a>, a new book that explores the \u201cmedia-genocide nexus\u201d in Rwanda \u2014 where so-called hate radio incited the killings, which continued unchecked as the international press turned away \u2014 and how social media has changed the way people respond to violence and conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRwanda is a case study for where media and mass atrocity intersect,\u201d says Thompson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJournalists didn\u2019t capture what was going on there, and we didn\u2019t mobilize the international community to intervene.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cRwanda is an important jumping off point for looking at these issues, and what we\u2019ve learned in the past 25 years.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Thompson first visited the country in 1996 to report on the repatriation of Hutu refugees from the Goma region of what was then eastern Zaire. \u201cRwanda does get inside you,\u201d he writes in the book, \u201cand, since then, I think I have been trying to some degree to make amends for not having been there in 1994.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Lessons<\/figure>\n\n\n

Violence in Rwanda Written Off as \u201cTribal Warfare\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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When the Rwandan genocide was underway, one of the prevailing views in the western media was that the country was too small, too under the radar and \u201ctoo far away\u201d for the global community to intervene. The violence in Rwanda was written off by many as \u201ctribal warfare\u201d as the massacres spread across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, according to Thompson, there are even fewer international journalists covering Africa \u2014 the Globe and Mail<\/em> is the only Canadian media outlet with a full-time correspondent on the continent, he says \u2014 and local reporting capacity has not improved significantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lessons
Allan Thompson with the remains of genocide victims in a crypt beneath a church in Nyamata, Rwanda.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This translates into inconsistent coverage and limited understanding of complex geopolitical, social, economic and environmental issues, despite the fact that the technology and equipment required to document and share stories has never been better, cheaper or more reliable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media has given us the capacity to cover mass atrocities effectively, says Thompson, but has also given voice to people who perpetrate violence. For example, he cites the sophisticated use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook by ISIS, and how Facebook was used to dehumanize the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was never really a \u2018golden age\u2019 of journalism and its coverage of conflict,\u201d says Thompson, who will be in Rwanda on April 6 and 7 for commemorative events marking the 25th<\/sup> anniversary of the genocide before heading to a book launch in Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 15 and launches in London, Ottawa and Washington, D.C., over the ensuing weeks. \u201cIt\u2019s just frustrating that it hasn\u2019t gotten any better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Lessons<\/figure>\n\n\n

The Media and the Rwanda Genocide<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the 10th<\/sup> anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, in 2004, Thompson organized a major international conference at Carleton called The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, which led to the release of an edited collection of essays with the same name, published in 2007<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2006, he helped launch the Rwanda Initiative, a partnership between Carleton\u2019s journalism school and its counterpart at the National University of Rwanda. Over the initiative\u2019s five-year lifespan, about 100 professional journalists from Canada went to teach in Rwanda, with 125 Carleton journalism students going to work as interns and a dozen Rwandan journalists coming to Canada to study at Carleton or work at media outlets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in December 2017, Thompson and the Waterloo-based Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), where he serves as a senior fellow<\/a>, organized another international symposium<\/a> at Carleton, Media and Mass Atrocity: the Rwanda Genocide and Beyond, from which the eponymous book \u2014 published by CIGI Press \u2014 has emerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lessons
Prof. Allan Thompson speaks at the international symposium – held at Carleton – in December 2017 that gave rise to the new book.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Thompson, with a foreword and chapter by retired Canadian general Rom\u00e9o Dallaire, the book features more than two dozen contributions from frontline war correspondents, including Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Watson, and academic researchers, many of whom participated in the symposium at Carleton in December 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chapters are grouped into sections, such as \u201cEchoes of Rwanda\u201d and \u201cSocial Media: The New Actor,\u201d and explore subjects ranging from hate radio and a specific video shot during the genocide in Rwanda to the experience of Central African journalists covering their country\u2019s war, the Islamic State\u2019s media strategy, and a comparison of U.S. news coverage of local and distant suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Lessons<\/figure>\n\n\n

Calculus of When to Intervene Has Not Changed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the \u201cPrevention\u201d section, in a piece entitled \u201cAdvanced Digital Technology and Genocide and Mass Atrocities Prevention,\u201d authors Steven Livingston and Alice Musabende \u2014 a George Washington University professor and University of Cambridge PhD student, respectively \u2014 look at \u201cwhether advances in media technology and our ability to document war crimes and human rights abuses have any preventive value.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe now see, often in close to real-time, atrocities that would have been lost to the world only a handful of years ago,\u201d Thompson writes about the chapter.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cBut Livingston and Musabende ask whether knowing necessarily translates into doing. Whether such access to information can be directly linked to changes in international policy-making processes remains undecided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lessons
Clothes and shoes of victims on display in a church memorial at Ntarama, Rwanda.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIndeed, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that changes in the technical capacity to gather evidence has had negligible effect on the willingness of states to intervene in mass atrocity events. It is no longer feasible for leaders to claim ignorance of atrocities. The chapter concludes, however, that the basic calculus of when to intervene to prevent atrocities has not changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the \u201cEchoes of Rwanda Section, in a chapter called \u201cWe Have Failed as a Continent\u201d: Covering an African Atrocity for an African Audience, j. (james) Siguru Wahutu, a visiting fellow at Harvard\u2019s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, explores the little-examined question of how African media cover atrocities on their own continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After interviewing journalists in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, mining his own prior work on and African media and in Darfur, and analyzing data, Wahutu shows the \u201cchallenges faced by African journalists in their pursuit to maintain control of narratives about atrocity in Africa, while pointing out the role played by African journalists in marginalizing African voices in this construction process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Lessons<\/figure>\n\n\n

New Book Part of Ongoing Conversation About Media and Mass Atrocity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it was shattered by the events of 1994, Rwanda is now highly functional, with low crime, good transit and clean streets in Kigali, the capital. There are plenty of radio stations, newspapers and online media outlets, yet they operate in a restrictive environment of self-censorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new book, which is aimed at a general audience, not only academics, is part of an ongoing conversation about media and mass atrocity, says Thompson.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThe book isn\u2019t just about Rwanda,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cNews consumers should be demanding more, and people should be more aware of the impact that social media has on the way we see the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSurely, after a quarter century, we can draw some lessons from Rwanda.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the spring of 1994, during the darkest days of the Rwandan genocide, Allan Thompson was a political reporter for the Toronto Star and found himself in France, covering the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings. By that point, Rwanda had slid into the abyss and was nearly at the apex of a 100-day slaughter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":55205,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[1921],"class_list":["post-55158","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-public-and-global-affairs"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/55158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/55158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98490,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/55158\/revisions\/98490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=55158"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=55158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}