1. RWANDAN (GENOCIDE): HOW THE AMERICAN MEDIA FAILED
DR. TRACY MUNSIL
POLTICS, MEDIA, AND TECHNOLOGY
FALL SEMESTER 2012
RACHEL E. BLACK
NOVEMBER 19, 2012

2. 1
It started over the radio. Simple messages of hate towards the Tutsi people on “Radio
Rwanda” and RTLM, rested in the ears of the Hutu’s. It was like a trail of gasoline, innocent at
first, waiting for a spark so it could burn a path of destruction. Years of resentment and bitterness
between these two tribes have passed the line of healthy patriotism into something far more
deadly. The messages on the radio were no longer simple racial joke; they were facts of the
Tutsi’s inferiority. Every day these broadcasts were heard, but no one could have expected how
fatal it would become. The spark that would cause the fire to burn ignited on April 6, 1994 with
the assassination of Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana. The messages broadcasted on the
radio were now lethal commands to murder and wipe out the Tutsi population. The fire was now
at its peak; its weapon of choice machetes in the hands of the Hutu’s whose only purpose now is
to kill. There is no longer husband and wife, parent and child no one is spared from the fire as
husbands kill their wives and brothers kill their sisters. Bloody bodies with missing limbs are
piled everywhere in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. The stench of death has replaced the smell of
Africa’s once beautiful hillside. There is no escape from this deadly fire that would end up
killing eight hundred thousand people. It started with the radio.
A simple form of media with the purpose of bringing news throughout Rwanda had
become a weapon. With media it began and with media it could have ended, but that is where the
media failed. The western media failed to report the genocide in Rwanda in a way that could
bring salvation to the Tutsis. Instead the media “obscured, distorted, and denied current events
and thus undermined the public’s ability to understand the context, causes and consequences of

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the genocide.”1 There are a variety of reasons why the American media failed in accurately
reporting the genocide in Rwanda many of them structural and institutional. Putting motives and
emotions aside the media, the violence in Rwanda simply did not fit the business side of news
making.
Before specifically addressing the role of the American media in covering the Rwandan
genocide, it is first important to understand the structure and shortcomings of the American
media coverage of international news more generally. The situation in Rwanda was ignored and
neglected by the media, simply because it was not “news worthy” enough. News is a business. If
it is not going to sell then it is not going to be published. Many publishers did not believe that
America cared about what was happening in Rwanda. Why should they? With sensational stories
like the O.J. Simpson case and the situation in Bosnia, why would Americans care about another
“tribal war” in Africa? Why would Americans even care about anything happening in a foreign
country? There are many reasons why the media neglected the genocide in Rwanda including the
gatekeeping process, foreign news coverage, and the way media covers a crisis.
News making
First, there is an order to how publishers pick what stories are printed. Publishers usually
have five criteria they use to pick stories. These are strong impact, violence, familiarity,
proximity, and timely and novel.2 People tend to read the new stories that “picture conditions
1 Noam Schimmel (2011): An Invisible genocide: how the Western media failed to report the 1994
Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi and why, The International Journal of Human Rights, 15:7, 1125
2 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics, CQ Press; 8th edition, August 3, 2009.

4. 3
that could have a strong impact on readers or listeners.”3 Americans typically only like to read
stories that will strongly impact the community they live in. Stories that also contain, “breezy
crime and sex”4 are known to excite the audience. This tends to give a false reality about how the
world is. It makes it seem that violence runs rampant through certain communities when the
crime rate may not be as high as it appears. The American people also only like to read stories
that are about familiar people and events. This is a problem because many politicians are people
with important information are ignored because they are not familiar enough. Local news also
seems to be more popular than news that is far away. For news to be really appealing, “it must be
something that has just occurred and is out of the ordinary.”5 Doris A. Graber from Mass Media
and American Politics say out of these five “conflict, proximity, and timeliness are most
important, judging from analyses of actual news choices.”6 In the case of Rwanda it fell in the
criteria of violence and conflict, but since it was not local and did not have an impact directly on
America it was not published as much as it should have been. That is not to say that Rwanda was
not published at all. In the New York Times there were a total of 401 articles about the Rwanda
genocide from April 6, 1994- July 26, 1994.7 However, compared to other events happening
around the same time this is far less.
Around the same time thousands of Tutsis were dying in Rwanda, the famous O.J. Simpson
was on trial for the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown. Since the O.J. Simpson trial was local,
3 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics,
4 Ibid.,
5 Ibid.,
6 Ibid.,
7 New York Times Archive Search-Rwanda

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timely, and familiar it took center stage. In fact, the O.J Simpson trial outshined many other
important events around the same time with a total of 1,364 articles in The New York Times and
seventy minutes of Television coverage at its peak.8 While O.J. Simpson was busy stealing the
spot light Genocide was happening along-side Rwanda. The genocide in Bosnia was receiving
twice the number of coverage in newspapers like The New York Times, Washington Post and
Chicago Tribune according to a 1996 study by Garth Myers.9 The Bosnian genocide was mainly
covered more because it lasted longer and became more familiar with the American people. If
the Rwandan genocide lasted longer it may have been covered more. The media spent more of its
limited space on these two situations and not enough on Rwanda. However, this was not solely
because of the news making criteria.
Foreign Affairs Coverage
According to Graber, “Americans profess a modest interest in foreign news, but when
given a choice, they do not seek it out.”10 In a 2008 survey 56 percent of people claimed to watch
foreign new selectively when asked what types of news they watched routinely.11 With this lack
of interest foreign news is barely covered in the mainstream media. “Compared with attention to
domestic affairs, foreign news is a neglected stepchild in terms of space, time, and prominence of
display,” says Graber.12 Thus, the criteria for picking foreign news stories are more precise and
demanding. For foreign news to make the mainstream media it must have a, “more profound
8 New York Times Archive Search-O.J Simpson
9 Anne Chaon, Who Failed in Rwanda, Journalists or the Media?; The Media and the Rwanda Genocide;
Editor, Allan Thompson, Pluto Press 2002; 162.
10 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics; 8th, 2009. 287
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 289

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impact on the political economic, or cultural concerns of the United States than domestic news. It
must involve people of more exalted status and entail more violence or disaster.”13 Similar to
domestic news foreign new is largely selected for, “audience appeal,” rather than political
reasons.14 Unfortunately, this means that stories that have an angle that interests Americans is
published more, while news that does not include an angle is ignored. The reality is “black-on-
black violence in Africa seems to hold little interests to the Western world, but throw in a
Caucasian angle and international limelight is likely.”15 According to Sociologist Herbert Gans
there are seven subjects the media favors that he discovered through foreign affairs news in
television newscasts and in newsmagazines.16 The first subject is American involvement in the
foreign country whether it is war or just prominent figures visiting.17 Second, if the event or
events affect Americans directly like oil embargos then they are undoubtedly covered.18 The
third and fourth subjects are “relations with the United States with potentially hostile states” and
“upheavals and leadership changes in friendly states.”19 Stories about dramatic political conflicts
such as wars are the fifth subject.20 Disasters that involve a great loss of life are the sixth
subject.21 There is even an equation to calculate the severity of the conflict in different countries:
13 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics; 8th, 2009. 289
14 Ibid., 300
15 Harvey, Nick. "Why Do Some Conflicts Get More Media Coverage than Others?" New Internationalist
(2012): 40-43. Print.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.

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“10,000 deaths in Nepal equals 100 deaths in Wales equals 10 deaths in West Virginia equals
one death next door.”22 The seventh subject deals with foreign dictators who use brute force
against political dissidents.23 However, even if with all these subjects there are still restrictions
that limit the amount of foreign news stories. Such examples are space and time limitations and
the lack of journalists. The limitations on space and time are “particularly troubling for reporting
foreign events, which are often unintelligible without adequate background information or
interpretation.”24 This causes many of the foreign news stories to be oversimplified and lacking
of important knowledge. This is also a result of the “extinct breed” of elite specially trained
journalists that supplied most of the foreign news coverage in the past.25 As a result there are so
many other untrained foreign correspondents that provide a plethora of oversimplified and
sometimes inaccurate news. Consequently, because of the way foreign affairs are covered many
stories, such as the violence in Rwanda, are ignored or distorted.
Crisis Coverage
There are three stages on which the media covers a crisis, according to Graber. Stage one is
where the disaster is “announced as impending or has already struck.”26 During stage one regular
television shows are interrupted to bring news of the crisis to the people. Regrettably, the
genocide in Rwanda did not interrupt the regular programs like this, but the majority of the print
coverage does fit into stage one. The majority of The New York Times articles during this time
22 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics; 8th, 2009.300
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 301
25 Ibid., 290
26 Ibid., 116

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were the factual news about what was happening. However, they were mostly short paragraphs
under the title, “News Summary.”27 Stage two is when corrections are made and the media
attempt to “put the situation into a proper perspective.”28 There were a few examples of this in
the New York Times: “An article on Tuesday about violence in Rwanda misstated the tribe of its
Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who was one of those killed. She was a member of the
Hutu tribe, not the rival Tutsis.”29 Though some corrections like this were made during the
genocide, many others were not made until a lot later. Stage three is when the media try to “place
the crisis into a larger, long-range perspective and to prepare people to cope with the
aftermath.”30 This is the stage that America’s media failed to do in this crisis. Once the violence
had stopped after a hundred days, so did the news coverage.
The Truth
To really understand how the media distorted the truth about the Rwandan Genocide it is
important to know the truth? First, “the Rwandan genocide did not appear out of nowhere, it has
historical, political and cultural precursors which the media failed to examine and report.”31
Contrary to popular belief “Tutsis superiority over Hutus had been in place before the Europeans
arrived, but was crystallized under the Belgian colonizers who fixed once fluid labels into rigid,
27 News Summary .New York Times, 4/9/1994, p2, 0p
28 Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics; 8th, 2009. 117
29 News Summary .New York Times, 4/9/1994, p2, 0p
30 Ibid., 118
31 Noam Schimmel (2011): An Invisible genocide: how the Western media failed to report the 1994
Rwandan 1126

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ethnic categories and established a system of discrimination against Hutu as a whole.”32
Eventually this system was reversed in the Hutus favor once the Hutus began to become fed up
with their position. Even before the assassination began and the killings started, there was
widespread segregation and discrimination towards the Tutsis. After the assassination, the Hutu’s
were the ones killing thousands of innocent people. The Tutsis rebel group, Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF), was trying to gain their power back, but they were not the initial igniters of the
conflict. The Majority of Newspaper articles portrayed the idea that it was the Tutsis killing the
Hutus in articles that focused on the RPF killings and the Hutu refugees (French in Rwanda
Discover Thousands of Hutu Refugees)33. Journalists went to refugee camps where Hutu
murderers sought hiding from the RPF and reported them as the victims.34 After the hundred
days of genocide the Tutsis finally regained their power with help from France. However,
throughout the whole conflict Americans were given distorted information about actually was
happening. Though some Journalists have since apologized, the consequences of their failure are
seen in the bloodstained Rwandan roads.
Oversimplified News
The stereotypical and simple views that the American media portrayed about the Rwanda
Genocide played a huge role in its failure to adequately report the Rwandan Genocide. Because
of the way international news is framed and oversimplified many of the frames that were used
32 Lee Ann Fujii, (2001): Origins of Power and Identity in Rwanda, San Francisco State University,
http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/archive/fujii.html, accessed November 2, 2012
33 Raymond Bonner, French in Rwanda Discover Thousands ofHutu Refugees New York Times,
6/28/1994, p3, 0p
34 Tendai Chari (2010): Representation or misrepresentation? The New York Times’s framing of the 1994
Rwanda genocide, African Identities, Vol. 8 Issue 4, p333-349

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incessantly was that the whole situation was another African tribal rivalry, when in fact it was a
full-blown genocide. They blamed the tragedy on a “long-running tribal hatred between the Hutu
and Tutsi.”35 Most newspapers used words like “tribal issues” and “tribal warfare” and headlines
like “Tribal fighting flares again around Rwandan capital” were common.36 Every characteristic
of the conflict was tribalised in the media and the very first articles published all contained some
sort of tribal spin. Even the Hutus were classified as people that lived in the “forested hills,”
people of nature and not developing people. They were even once compared to gorillas in an
article in the New York Times titled ‘Gorillas still in Rwanda’s mist.37 This spin on things gave
the world the idea that Rwanda was “not worthy of world attention.”38 They were too
undeveloped and clannish, while the rest of the world is far too developed to even worry about
something like another tribal battle. This stereotype projected the idea that nothing could be done
to stop it. They implied that it was too uncontrollable and not even worth trying to control.
However, there might have been an ulterior motive with the tribal frame-“Tribalism of
the conflict relieves the New York Times of the burden of explaining to its western audience the
multilayered causes of the conflict.”39 These over-used stereotypes made it possible for the
media to avoid reporting the real reasons for the genocide and not depicting it “as an organized
project of extermination.”40 Instead, the media propelled the conflict as mysterious
circumstances. Even the plane crash that killed President Juvénal Habyarimana was described as
35 Tendai Chari (2010): Representation or misrepresentation?, 333
36 Ibid., 341
37 Ibid., 339
38 Ibid., 333
39 Ibid., 341
40 Ibid.

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“mysterious” in a May 1994 New York Times Story.41 Only one article in the New York Times
titled, “The World; Once Chosen, Tribal Elites Now Suffer Consequences,” by William E.
Schmidt, got the story right42. He accurately classified the Hutu’s and Tutsis with mention of the
historical precursors. Not only that, he was able to explain the multilayer causes without
oversimplifying the conflict. Sadly, this is only one article out of four hundred that correctly
portrayed the violence in Rwanda. The majority of news stories focused on the Hutu refugee
camps and continued to use words like “rival tribal groups.”43 “With this “smokescreen of
confusion” the Hutus were able to “proceed with their diabolical plans.”44 With the medias
audience thinking that the massacres in Rwanda was just another uncontrollable tribal war, they
could sleep peacefully at night knowing nothing could be done as others slept in mass graves.
The reason that Rwandan Massacres were describes as tribalism was because the West had little
to none accurate knowledge of Africa and its politics and affairs. The view that has always been
portrayed about Africa is, “Africa is a far-away place where good people go hungry, bad people
run government and chaos and anarchy or the norm.”45 To assume the massacres were caused by
other factors including colonization by the Belgians did not fit this western view. Thus, in the
New York Times, Rwanda is portrayed as “another hopeless country” in articles titled similar to,
“Anarchy rules Rwanda’s capital and drunken soldiers roam city.”46 Rwanda was just another
41 Ibid.
42 William E. Schmidt , “The World; Once Chosen,Tribal Elites Now Suffer Consequences,” New York
Times, 4/17/1994, p3, 0p
43 News Summary .New York Times, 4/9/1994, p2, 0p
44 Hammond, Peter, “Holocaust in Rwanda-The Roles of Gun Control, Media Manipulation, Liberal
Church Leaders, and the United Nations” (Frontline Fellowship, 1996) pge. 43-47
45 Tendai Chari (2010): The New York Times’s framing Vol. 8 Issue 4, p333-349
46 Ibid,. 334

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example of how “violent, irrational, and immoral” the continent of Africa is.47 This was yet
another “smokescreen of confusion” that led the American people to believe that this was just
normal behavior of the African people and not a deadly plan to wipe out a whole ethnic group.
Avoidance of the Term Genocide
Evidence suggests that the American media may have been directed to shape its coverage
to avoid use of the term genocide. Since the beginning of the massacre in Rwanda, the media
was told not to use the word genocide to describe the situation. Instead the New York Times
used words like “massacre,” and “mass killings.”48 David Rawson, a United States Ambassador
to Rwanda said: “As a responsible government, you don’t just go around hollering ‘genocide.”
You say that acts of genocide may have occurred and they need to be investigated.”49 Even if the
government chose not to follow with their obligation there would still be an outcry from the
American people to act that would be hard to ignore. Sadly, that was never even an option. A
New York Times spokesperson was advised not to refer to the killings in Rwanda as Genocide so
that it would not, “inflame public calls for action administration was unwilling to take.”50 This
may have been because the media had no idea that genocide was actually taking place. On the
other hand American officials might have been refrained from describing the massacre as
genocide so that they would not be responsible to act. When the United States signed 1948
Genocide Convention, they agreed to “respond to genocide by investigating and punishing those
47 Ibid
48 Tendai Chari (2010): The New York Times’s framing, 334.
49 Douglas Jehl, Officials told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’, The New York Times. June
10, 1994
50 Ibid.

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who are responsible.”51 By avoiding using the word genocide America would not be obligated to
respond and thus endanger the lives of American soldiers and get involved with a conflict that
did not concern them. Genocide is defined by international law as “the systematic killing of any
ethnic group, with intent to destroy it in whole or in part.”52 Another reason why the media
evaded using the word genocide was because they did not a repeat of Somalia where 18
American soldiers died when America decided to send troops. Even so, the media’s audience
was not given the right representation of what was happening in Rwanda so they found no need
to take action. As a result “another Holocaust may just have slipped by hardly noticed.”53 The
western media is expected to report the news in its entirety and when they decide not to,
American citizens are not the only ones that suffer.
Conclusion
The media failed on doing their job by not correctly reporting on the Rwandan genocide. They
misrepresented what was taking place and fed the American people distorted truth. If the Media
would have spent the time to find out what really was going on instead of relying on their old
stereotypes, then maybe some action could have been taken. Maybe the mass graves would not
have gone so deep. The fire that burned for one hundred days killing eight hundred thousand
people could have been contained by the chorus of disapproval of the American people. But the
American people were not given the truth to disapprove and so the genocide continued. The
media holds a great deal of responsibility and in this case they failed with the power they have
51 Douglas Jehl, Officials told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’, The New York Times. June
10, 1994
52 Linda Melvern, Missing the Story; The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, Editor, Allan Thompson, Pluto
Press 2007;
53 Ibid.

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been given. However, the blame does not rest on the media alone but on the American people as
well. If the American people could change their ethnocentric, apathetic ways and began to learn
about the world around them, then conflicts like that of Rwanda will not be repeated.
.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bonner, Raymond, French in Rwanda Discover Thousands of Hutu Refugees New York Times,
6/28/1994, p3, 0p
Chaon, Anne, Who Failed in Rwanda, Journalists or the Media?; The Media and the Rwanda
Genocide; Editor, Allan Thompson, Pluto Press 2002; 162.
Fujii, Lee Ann, Origins of Power and Identity in Rwanda, San Francisco State University,
http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/archive/fujii.html, 2011, accessed November 2, 2012
Graber, Doris A, Mass Media and American Politics. CQ Press 8th edition. 2009.
Hammond, Peter, “Holocaust in Rwanda-The Roles of Gun Control, Media Manipulation,
Liberal Church Leaders, and the United Nations” (Frontline Fellowship, 1996)
Harvey, Nick. "Why Do Some Conflicts Get More Media Coverage than Others?" New
Internationalist (2012): 40-43. Print.
Jehl, Douglas, Officials told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’, The New York
Times. June 10, 1994
Melvern, Linda, Missing the Story; The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, Editor, Allan
Thompson, Pluto Press 2007;
News Summary .New York Times, 4/9/1994, p2, 0p
Schimmel, Noam; An Invisible genocide: how the Western media failed to report the 1994
Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi and why, The International Journal of Human Rights,
2011,
Schmidt, William E. , “The World; Once Chosen, Tribal Elites Now Suffer Consequences,” New
York Times, 4/17/1994, p3, 0p
Tendai Chari; Representation or misrepresentation? The New York Times’s framing of the 1994
Rwanda genocide, African Identities, Vol. 8 Issue 4(2010):,