• published: 17 Feb 2013
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July 1, 2003 The following is an International Press Institute report (No. 1, 2000). It helps answer the question, "Why didn't we know about the Rawandan genocide, one of the worst in the 20th Century, in time to stop it?" How the Media Missed Rwandan Genocide Alan J Kuperman From April to July 1994, approximately 500,000 Rwandan Tutsi, some 80 percent of the country's Tutsi population, were exterminated in the most efficient and complete genocide of modern times. Western media blame the international community for not intervening quickly, but the media must share blame for not immediately recognizing the extent of the carnage and mobilizing world attention to it. They failed to report that a nationwide killing campaign was under way in Rwanda until almost three weeks into the violence. By that time, some 250,000 Tutsi had already been massacred. During those first weeks of genocide, Western reporting was marred by four lapses. First, it mistook genocide for civil war. The country had been wracked by a low-level civil war from 1990 to 1993 between the government, controlled by the Hutu majority, and a rebel force comprised mainly of Tutsi. Though a minority, the Tutsi had ruled until the late 1950s when the Hutu took power and forced many Tutsi to flee as refugees. Conflict continued through the next three decades, so upon the outbreak of genocide on April 6, 1994, Western correspondents reported the initial burst of violence in the capital Kigali as resumption of a bloody civil war. On April 11, an editorial in London's Times pondered international calls for a cease-fire and asked rhetorically, "Which parties would be asked to cease fire against whom?" An April 12 report in Belgium's De Standaard on government violence in Kigali added that "it is absolutely certain that a large number of acts of terror were committed" as well "in the area controlled by the rebels." Early reports also indicated that the Tutsi rebels were winning the civil war and had rejected government offers of a nationwide cease-fire, which contradicted any notion of Tutsi as victims. By April 13, Paris Radio France International reported that "the fall of Kigali seems imminent." On April 14, Le Monde and The London Times reported that it was now the Hutu who feared vengeance from Tutsi rebels who had gained the upper hand in Kigali. Violence was then reported on the wane when in fact it was mounting. On April 11, just four days after the fighting had started, The New York Times reported that fighting in Rwanda had "diminished in intensity." Three days later, Le Monde said that "a strange calm reigns in downtown" Kigali. On April 15, it reported this calm spreading to the capital's suburbs, allowing "humanitarian organizations to cautiously resume their activities." Only on April 18 did Brussels La Une Radio Network question this consensus by explaining that the decline in reports of violence was because "most foreigners have left, including journalists." The exodus of reporters was so thorough that it virtually halted Western press coverage. European newspapers that had been providing daily coverage of the violence in Kigali stopped cold on April 18, for four days in France's Le Monde and seven in Britain's Guardian. Ironically, this was when the slaughter reached its peak. Early published death counts were gross underestimates, sometimes by a factor of ten. On April 10, three days into the killing, The New York Times quoted estimates of 8,000 or "tens of thousands" dead in Kigali. However, during the second week media estimates did not rise at all. The estimates did not rise to levels that commonly would be considered "genocidal" for a country of 8 million people with 650,000 Tutsi. On April 16, the Guardian still reported only an "estimated 20,000 deaths." Two days later, The New York Times repeated this same statistic, underestimating the actual carnage at that point by about ten-fold. Not until a few days later did the scope of killing rapidly emerge. ........ Rwanda's Hutu government wanted reporters to think that violence was civil war rather than genocide. In a similarly manipulative way, the Kosovo Liberation Army wanted reporters to think that Yugoslav government violence prior to NATO's bombing was genocide or ethnic cleansing rather than counterinsurgency. In both cases, Western reporters were fooled. They should take a lesson from this as they continue their vital task of informing Western policymakers and public's about violent conflicts around the world. Alan J. Kuperman is a MacArthur transnational security fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies and a fellow of the Institute for the Study of World Politics. His most recent publication is in the Jan./Feb. 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs. The article, "Rwanda in Retrospect," is an excerpt from his forthcoming book on the limits of humanitarian intervention. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COMM.7.8.03.HTM