Document(s) 31 of 37

From the days of the African nationalist movements, Western news organizations have tended to paint a one-dimensional portrait of intracountry conflict occurring on the African continent. Various organizational constraints have combined with a tendency toward the stereotype to create a shallow type of reporting that has been much criticized in the past. When the ongoing violence in Rwanda suddenly burst into the news in the spring of 1994, some media observers hoped for more meaningful coverage. Many news organizations had acknowledged and pledged to overcome prior shortcomings. In addition, there was no longer a Cold War to provide a means of framing the conflict. Some positive coverage of African politics was coming out of South Africa where the first national elections were going to be held. The Rwanda crisis represented a chance for the media to truly explain to news audiences the real reasons – political, economic and social – for African violence, rather than relying on the old stereotypes of tribe versus tribe, east versus west.

Did the United States media portray the Rwanda crisis in a way that was different from past coverage? To make this assessment, I analyzed news magazine coverage of Rwanda for the entire year of 1994.

PRESS COVERAGE OF AFRICA

Organizational demands

The type of news that gets published about Africa is influenced by the general values and organizational demands of the Western media. News is not merely the random reporting of events, but is rather constructed and shaped by reporters and editors who determine what is worthy of coverage and what is not, and how events will be presented (Chang and Lee 1992; Gitlin 1980; Tuchman 1978; White 1950). Because the media tend to value conflict and crisis, especially when the news is coming from foreign countries, that is the type of story that most often gets reported (Fair 1993; Hachten 1992a; Lent 1977).

Logistic barriers also prevent reporters from covering African nations as well as they could. Reporters are often 'parachuted' into countries and expected to cover rapidly breaking, dramatic events (Rosenblum 1979). They arrive with little or no knowledge of the country's history, politics and culture and few, if any, local sources. They rarely speak local languages and quickly move on when they or their editors decide the story is growing cold (Hess 1994; Rosenblum 1993). In some countries, governments exercise various forms of censorship, which can make the work of a reporter difficult if not impossible (Hachten 1992a).

Hachten (1992a) believes that there are far too few foreign correspondents bringing news from Africa to American readers. Another problem with international reporting of Africa is the lack of widespread news bureaus. Rather than being evenly distributed throughout the world, bureaus are concentrated primarily in western Europe. In Africa, a correspondent based in South Africa may be expected to cover the entire continent. One of the reasons given is financial (Hachten 1992b). News from Africa is not seen as a money-maker for news organizations (Ebo 1992). This leaves only a handful of reporters covering the continent – correspondents who are sometimes compelled to 'look for news stories that are easy and convenient to gather' (Ebo 1992: 16).

Themes of coverage

Lack of interest in covering Africa and lack of resources devoted to finding reporters who speak the languages and know the culture have contributed to several tendencies in news media treatment of Africa. The first is toward portraying any challenge to the status quo as negative. This can be seen most clearly in the coverage of the African nationalist movements, such as the 1950s independence movement in Kenya (Maloba 1992). A second trend is toward portraying political events in Africa as irrational tribalism; such portrayals rarely probe for the underlying causes of conflicts (Fair 1993; Ibelema 1992). This can be seen in coverage of the Biafran war in Nigeria and other wars since. The third tendency is toward portraying events through an East–West lens, a particularly popular media frame during the Cold War (Fair 1992; Govea 1992). All of these tendencies rely on oversimplification of complex events. Rather than providing context for unfamiliar conflicts and settings, they can create stereotypes that become fixed in the minds of news consumers.

The reporting of Africa's wars of independence set the tone and structure of Western media coverage of African political violence (Hawk 1992). In covering Kenya's struggle for independence in the 1950s, the press relied on inflammatory adjectives and negative descriptions to describe the movement. Often the news coming out of Kenya was shaped by the colonial government, which distributed press handouts almost daily (Edgerton 1989). Colonial propagandists played up two ideas. First, Africans were primitive and irrational; therefore, Western coverage really could not make sense of their politics or positions (Maloba 1992). Second, Africans who challenged colonial powers were brutal and savage. This idea helped dehumanize African leaders in Western press coverage (Hawk 1992).

Another example of the trends in the coverage of African conflict can be seen in the reporting of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran war. News coverage showed how the Western media continued to see African conflicts in simplified terms, particularly tribe versus tribe. It focused on events, not on issues, background, consequences or other contextual sorts of information (Himmelstrand 1971). The media fixated on tribal differences because that reinforced ideas about African primitivism (Artis 1970). By attributing events to tribalism, the press did not have to analyze complex political and economic situations (or any genesis of such in colonialism) (Ibelema 1992).

This way of viewing African conflict has yet to change. In looking at Western coverage of Inkatha, Brock found news stories about conflict in South Africa reported as senseless tribal violence – 'complex situations are reduced to "tribal"', – and disputes among political groups such as the African National Congress and Inkatha are seen not as political and ideological but as primitive clashes (Brock 1992: 151). Fair also found that coverage of the Liberian war focused on African tribalism and primitivism and not the political causes. She interprets the emphasis on tribalism as an attempt to make Africa appear to be located 'back in time' and, therefore, incomprehensible to Western media consumers (Fair 1993: 14).

Studies by Govea (1983, 1992) and Fair (1992) found that conflict in Africa was presented within an East–West frame even when events had little to do with the Cold War. In her examination of The New York Times coverage of US food aid to Ethiopia from 1980 to 1989, Fair (1992) found that newspaper stories suggested that the benevolence of the West saved the nation from complete ruin. The news media not only failed to focus on the political and social realities of the Horn of Africa, they failed to relate what was happening to environmental and climactic changes, instead attributing Ethiopia's food shortage to its Marxist form of government. Historical background that might reveal the link between Western policies and tragic events such as the famine are usually left out of reports about Africa (Ebo 1992).

METHODS

In this project, I analyzed all 38 full-length news reports about the Rwandan crisis that appeared in 1994 in Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report. I chose news magazines for analysis because they tend to summarize the dominant view of a news event, and also because the writing used in them is believed to be colourful and full of visual images (Buckman 1993; Schramm 1988).

Shaping my analysis was the idea that news is not a random happening of events, but a carefully selected and constructed version of reality, determined by various gatekeepers and organizational routines, such as relying on official sources (Gans 1979; Tuchman 1978). In addition to following these routines, reporters are also believed to construct news stories as a 'package' of 'condensing devices' that work as shorthand between the journalist and the reader (Gamson and Modigliani 1989: 3). Various researchers have identified these condensing devices as metaphors, keywords, depictions or visual images, agency (the person or thing responsible for the story's action, often identified via headlines) and sources (Entman 1991; Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Pan and Kosicki 1993).

Taking all of these studies into account, I analyzed a set of dimensions that I believe reveals the nature of the coverage of the Rwandan crisis: sources, metaphors, portrayals (depictions of individual people), agencies and keywords. Sources and portrayals were determined by content analysis of the text; keywords were derived by noting what words appeared in both the headlines and the text and what additional words seemed to have a particular salience within the text alone. Agency was measured by examining headlines (who or what was identified as causing the crisis and who or what was identified as solving it). Metaphors were open coded. The data gathered from studying each of these dimensions were then considered as a whole to determine overall themes in coverage.

RESULTS

Content analysis of sources (215 in all) revealed that aid workers (22 per cent) were quoted more frequently than any other source, followed closely by ordinary local people (21 per cent). Other sources included: local opposition members (14 per cent), which included the Rwandan Patriotic Front and people identified as supporting political groups opposed to the extremists; Western officials (13 per cent); United Nations representatives (13 per cent); and local officials (9 per cent), which included the ruling party and the former military leaders. Two other types of sources were infrequently quoted: experts (5 per cent), regional (2 per cent) and other (1 per cent).

That expert sources, such as human rights advocates or academic specialists, made up only 5 per cent of sources is notable as these sorts of sources could easily have been contacted and interviewed in the West. In fact, groups such as Human Rights Watch Africa were releasing regular press bulletins with timely, well-documented information. They were an obvious source of informed background and comment about what was really happening in Rwanda. Also notable was the dearth of sources from other African countries – people who might have been able to provide insights and African points of view on the situation.

Collapsing source categories into non-Rwandan and Rwandan revealed that non-Rwandan sources (including governmental and nongovernmental organizations) made up 48 per cent of all sources. These people, with one exception, were Westerners. Rwandans made up 44 per cent of all sources. Taken alone, this finding might suggest that Africans were given more of a voice in coverage of the conflict (compared with Fair's (1992) earlier finding that they were rarely quoted); however, when other results are considered, the presentation of Rwandans seems far from positive.

For instance, of the 76 portrayals of Rwandans, 74 per cent depicted Rwandans as passive, 10 per cent as causing problems, 9 per cent as neutral and 7 per cent as solving problems. In comparison, of the 19 portrayals of non-Rwandans, usually Westerners, 75 per cent depicted them as solving problems, 19 per cent as passive and 6 per cent as causing problems.

The headline analysis further suggests that Rwandans were not favourably portrayed. Headlines were analyzed to determine whether they listed a cause of the problem, a solution for the problem or neither. Most headlines (71 per cent) listed neither cause nor solution. Of those that did list a cause (16 per­cent), tribalism was either directly cited as the cause ('Deeper into the abyss: an orgy of tribal slaughter kills thousands as most foreigners flee for their lives' (Hammer et al. 1994: 32)) or indirectly through reference to the ethnicity of a particular group ('The swagger of defeat: in exile, the Hutu army is stealing food, intimidating refugees and plotting a return to power' (Fedarko 1994a)). Of the headlines that listed solutions (13 per cent), Rwandans were never seen as the solution, only Westerners such as the French: 'The horrific scars of Rwanda's civil war: France sends in troops to stop the carnage' (Kiley and Coleman 1994: 51, my emphasis).

The keyword results also contribute to the negative image of Rwandans and to the idea that the entire conflict was based on little more than brutal tribalism: the words 'ethnic' or 'tribal' appeared 55 times in the text and in 4 headlines. Compare this with the word 'political', which appeared 25 times. Also notable was the reliance on ethnic designations: Hutu/Hutus or Tutsi/Tutsis appeared 456 times in the stories about the crisis. Compare the appearance of these tribal designations with the designation 'extremist(s)', which was used 14 times in total. Other keywords that seem to have particular salience include 'slaughter' and 'carnage', which appeared 19 and 9 times respectively, within the text. 'Slaughter' also appeared 5 times in headlines, 'carnage' twice.

Metaphors tended to cluster in particular patterns. The clusters were examined and used to help derive the themes of coverage listed below. Patterns included: comparing the violence to explosions or eruptions; comparing the movement of refugees to natural disasters; and comparing the events to biblical scenes or diseases. Examples of metaphors are included below.

Five themes in coverage

I identified five overall themes in the magazine coverage of the Rwanda crisis:

1. The Rwanda violence was the result of irrational tribalism.
   
   
2. Rwandan people are little better than animals, ranging from the barbaric to the helpless and pathetic.
   
   
3. The violence is incomprehensible and, thus, is explained through comparison to biblical myths, supernatural causes, natural disasters or diseases.
   
   
4. Neighbouring African countries are just as violent and, thus, unable to help solve Rwanda's problems.
   
   
5. Only the West is capable of solving Rwanda's problems.

1. The Rwanda violence was the result of irrational tribalism. Instead of explaining political and other causes behind the violence, news magazines chose to present the crisis as another eruption of irrational African violence, fuelled by ethnic hatred. There was a high level of use of words that emphasized the ethnic aspect of the conflict. Consider this headline: 'All the hatred in the world: as Tutsi rebels pursue their fast moving offensive, they find they are taking over a once populous country that is now both deserted and embittered' (Purvis 1994: 36, my emphasis). Rather than 'Tutsi rebels,' the headline could have used the more accurate label 'Rwandan Patriotic Front'.

Coverage also suggested that Rwandans were fated to kill each other. 'Once more,' one headline about the Rwandan conflict noted, 'tens of thousands are massacred,' while within the story we read: 'For four centuries, hatred between the minority Tutsi tribe and the majority Hutus has been the curse of Rwanda' – what is happening in Rwanda was only the 'latest' tragedy (Masland et al. 1994: 33). We could only expect more of the same; after all, 'Rwanda is helpless against its demons' (Hammer et al. 1994).

Supporting the idea that events in Rwanda were beyond human control was the consistent use of metaphors comparing the violence to an explosion or conflagration. Stories implied that the plane crash 'sparking the fighting' merely set off the violent tendencies that were already present within all Rwandans (Kiley and Coleman 1994: 51). News accounts made it seem inevitable that the 'violence exploded' (Hammer 1994a). After all, 'Rwanda is a crucible full of explosives' (Gibbs 1994: 57) and the entire nation was 'like a time bomb' (Gibbs, Crumley et al. 1994: 28). What happened was simply another 'tribal meltdown' (Gibbs 1994: 56) or a natural 'spasm of ethnic violence' (Anon. 1994a: 40). These sorts of metaphors implied that the violence was caused by something innate within the Rwandan people who were likely to burst into savage slaughter at any time.

In fact, the idea of this spontaneity was planted in the media by extremists who fled to Nairobi immediately after the killings began and held press conferences to make this claim, which was then reported in the Western press (Omaar and de Waal 1994). Press releases from human rights agencies revealed that extremists carefully planned and carried out the initial killings (Human Rights Watch Africa 1994). Although these releases were made available early on in the crisis, their contents were not reported in the news magazines until months later.

Although the conflict was initiated by particular political groups, we read almost nothing about them. By not bothering to name the specific parties, the magazines promoted the idea that the conflicts were about tribal rivalries and not about named opposition groups challenging the status quo. Only one magazine (U.S. News and World Report) named the Mouvement Républicain National pour la Democratie et le Développement (MRND), the late president's party, and then only in one story that ran in November, seven months after the genocide. None of the stories mentioned the MRND's ally, the Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR), which the human rights organizations listed as equally if not more virulent than the MRND, or the political party that opposed both, the Parti Social Démocrate (PSD). Instead, we read only of opposition groups, rebels and, mainly, Hutus and Tutsis.

2. Rwandan people are little better than animals, ranging from the pathetic to the barbaric. The analysis revealed that ordinary people were the second most frequently quoted group of people. If we examine the coverage more closely, however, we find that while Rwandans were given a voice, it was only within a framework that consistently presented them as pathetic and helpless victims, as insensate, animal-like creatures or as barbaric savages. This is despite the fact that some government ministers refused to go along with the massacres and some Hutus put themselves and their families at risk to protect Tutsi neighbours and friends. Some Tutsi and Hutu – armed only with sticks and stones – formed neighbourhood patrols in an attempt to protect their communities (Omaar and de Waal 1994). Such descriptions were practically absent from the magazines.

Instead, ordinary Rwandans were presented as passive victims. In a typical portrayal, we read,

As a wintry morning wind whips through the camp, a dozen dying people huddle outside a white medical tent, waiting for the French doctors to arrive from the town of Goma. A father pushes his prostrate son in a wheelbarrow; a woman props up her husband as his head lolls. (Hammer 1994b: 17)

Ordinary people were rarely described as helping each other or fighting off the perpetrators of the violence. Instead, we are overwhelmed with descriptions such as this one of Father Oreste Incimatata who recounts what happened when the death squads came to his church: '"The women and children sang religious songs, cried and prayed," said Incimatata who hid under his bed in an adjoining rectory during the killing' (Hammer 1994c: 46, my emphasis).

If not passive victims, then Rwandans were compared with animals. Accounts described fleeing Rwandans as 'a mad stampede' of refugees (Watson et al. 1994: 26) or as a 'human swarm' (Hammer 1994d: 34). Comparing their movements with animals suggests that they are not rational, fully evolved human beings, but something less. This sort of metaphor dehumanizes the refugees and can make it difficult for Western media consumers to summon much sympathy. Evidence revealing the humanity of some Rwandans was rarely if ever presented.

Another way in which the animal metaphors were used was in the description of the youth wings that perpetrated much of the violence. In one account, one such group was compared with dogs, noting that the extremist leaders 'let Interahamwe off the leash' (Ransdell 1994a: 67). In making those who committed horrendous crimes so abstract, the story made it more difficult for readers to understand that the violence took a great deal of planning and thinking to carry out.

Also contributing to the savage barbarian image were metaphors such as the violence was letting Rwanda 'feed its hatreds' (Gibbs, Marlowe et al. 1994: 38) and Rwanda was 'Central Africa's slaughterhouse' (Ransdell 1994b: 47), as if the people butchered each other with the same regularity that people in other cultures slaughter beef. Stories suggested that Rwandans have little regard for human life, noting that bodies were 'dumped like garbage' (Anon. 1994a: 41).

How can people engage in such brutal behaviour? The stories implied because they are so unfeeling. 'Rayontina Mukansonera, 19, describes being raped repeatedly by Hutu militia before escaping in the confusion following the rebel advance. "They showed no mercy," she says, matter-of factly' (Purvis 1994: 36, my emphasis). Another story described this scene outside one of the refugee camps in Zaire: 'A shoemaker mends a pair of battered loafers, only inches ways from a small dead boy. "After a time you don't even notice them," he says, shrugging' (Hammer 1994b: 15). Meanwhile, the United Nations burial squad loads dead bodies onto a truck under the tutelage of a European: 'Louis Biritsen, 37, directs the team's movements. "Softly, softly," he orders, as the workers toss a dead pregnant woman onto the heap of corpses. "You must be compassionate"' (Hammer 1994b: 17).

3. The violence is so incomprehensible, it can only be explained through comparison to biblical myths, supernatural causes, natural disasters or diseases. In refusing to consider political, economic or other causes for the violence, the magazines were left with explanations that seemed to indicate that the violence was simply beyond the comprehension of Western logic. They compared the violence to events from the bible, supernatural causes, natural disasters and diseases – none of which provided the news audience with an understanding of the underlying reasons for violence in Rwanda. Particularly striking was the use of biblical images or myths to explain what was happening in Rwanda. Four headlines referred to Rwanda and the events there as constituting hell: 'Tribal bloodlust and political rivalry turn the country into an unimaginable hell' (Mutiso 1994: 45); 'Hell postponed' (Michaels 1994: 56); 'Escape from hell' (Hammer 1994d: 34); 'Descent into hell' (Ransdell et al. 1994).

The text of the stories contained other biblical references. One story noted, 'There are no devils left in hell ... they're all in Rwanda' (Gibbs 1994: 56). Other metaphors included 'a biblical array of pestilence' (Watson et al. 1994: 26) and an 'exodus of biblical sweep' (Hammer 1994d: 34). These images seem to reflect the idea of a nation, as Fair (1993) puts it, from back in time, so far behind the West that what occurs there can only be related to bible stories. Other comparisons suggested that the violence was the result of supernatural causes, also unfathomable to rational, Western minds: 'Rwanda is helpless against its demons' (Hammer et al. 1994) and 'Rwanda is tormented by its own implacable demons' (Watson et al. 1994: 26). Here, so-called modern reason and rational thought have yet to take root.

Another means of dehumanizing the Rwandans was to describe the movements of great numbers of people so as to suggest that they were a natural occurrence in this region of the world. This naturalness was particularly suggested by metaphors that compared the refugees' exodus to movements of water, which was the most frequent type of metaphor in the news magazines' coverage. Stories included the following water metaphors (emphasis added): 'flood of refugees' (Fedarko 1994a); 'choking the flow of refugees' (Fedarko 1994b: 56); 'terrified men, women and children poured' (Hammer 1994d: 34); 'slow moving river of humanity' (Fedarko 1994b: 56); '[returning refugees] like trying to turn back a tidal wave one teacup at a time' (Gibbs, Marlowe et al. 1994: 38); 'tide of terrified humanity' (Anon. 1994b: 30); 'latest tide [of refugees]' (Fedarko 1994b: 56); 'trickle of Rwandans' (Nelan 1994: 53); 'few [refugees] trickled back' (Watson et al. 1994: 26); 'streams of misery stretch for miles' (Mutiso 1994: 44); 'stream of refugees' (Ransdell 1994b: 47).

This type of metaphor implies that these movements of people – like floods or other natural events – cannot be stopped by human intervention. Such terms exclude clear explanations of why the people are fleeing or what other options they have. The use of this metaphor also overlooks some of the man-made problems that created the circumstances for the violence. Rwanda had been trying to carry out Western-dictated economic reforms. Structural adjustment had created incredible strains on the infrastructure with schools, health services and the nation's entire economic system in near collapse (Chossudovsky 1995).

Other imagery suggests that what occurred in Rwanda was like malaria or some other disease that is endemic to Africa and has nothing to do with the rest of the world. Thus, readers find that 'Rwanda is infected by tribal hate' and 'madness spread like an eager germ' (Gibbs, Crumley et al. 1994: 30). This type of metaphor seems to be used merely to 'jazz' up what ought to have been a story compelling enough on its own merits. Thus, readers are told that 'statistics seep out of Rwanda like blood from an open wound' (Roberts 1994: 11). This incurable disease/untreatable wound imagery works only if reporters forget to look into Rwanda's past. Any 'infection' of hatred can be traced back to the colonial occupiers, who stressed tribal designations in ruling the country (Chossudovsky 1995; Kane 1995).

4. Neighbouring African countries are just as violent and, thus, unable to help solve Rwanda's problems. The news magazines suggested that there could be no local solutions because the entire region was just as chaotic and violent. Readers might assume that all African countries are inherently disorderly when they read about the lack of stability in Rwanda's neighbouring countries. One magazine noted that the surrounding nations created a 'logistical nightmare for U.S. forces ... the disorganization, lack of fuel and congestion at all central African airports grounded many planes meant to ferry supplies' (Gibbs, Marlowe et al. 1994: 39). Readers were told that Zaire has 'been tottering on the brink of collapse' (Ransdell et al. 1994), while Zairian troops loot and its ministers drink champagne but refuse to help. Likewise, ethnic violence was 'the trigger that will blow Burundi apart' (Michaels 1994: 56). In only one story do we read that Tanzania was 'one of Africa's most stable countries' (Ransdell et al. 1994: 42). No story discussed Tanzania's willingness to take in and try to care for thousands of refugees, nor did the stories include information about Uganda, which was working to overcome its own history of violence and genocide.

One means of making surrounding nations appear unable to help was by not quoting any sources from them. Thus, a regional perspective was practically nonexistent (only 2 per cent of all sources). We do find one quote and a portrayal buried within a detailed story about the horrors of the Rwandan refugee camps. A Kinshasa student had come to help tend ailing refugees. Nevertheless, she was not asked to comment on what the crisis meant to Zaire or Africa, or even why she chose to come and help. If one Zairian was helping, we might assume there were others, although they did not appear in the magazine coverage.

An obvious source to comment on the situation, the Organization for African Unity, was mentioned only twice by the magazines. Government officials or others from Tanzania or Zaire could have perhaps given some perspective on managing the influx of half a million refugees. Only one of the magazines quoted a Tanzanian (a general who advocated military intervention). Zairian officials were only quoted in the context of their country being yet another example of African chaos. The Rwandan Patriotic Front was based in Uganda, where many of its members had previously been part of the Ugandan army. What was the Ugandan perspective on the conflict? Do their officials see any workable solutions? If the magazines were unable to unearth any alternative explanations or solutions from the sources they were relying on, then perhaps they should have considered there might not have been a lack of solutions so much as a lack of broad perspective.

5. Only the West is capable of solving Rwanda's problems. Consistently, when the magazines did portray people taking positive steps to deal with the violence in Rwanda, they were almost always Westerners, either French troops or American aid workers. The idea that these were the sorts of people capable of dealing with the troubles was reinforced by relying on them for quotes and portraying them as actively helping solve the problem. The coverage suggested that groups from the North such as the United Nations or international nongovernmental organizations would provide the order the world needs.

One of the ways the stories emphasized the ability of the West to fix Rwanda's problems was by relying on Westerners as the primary sources. Not only were aid workers quoted most often (22 per cent), they were more likely to be portrayed as solving Rwanda's problems. Typical of the coverage is this portrayal: A '27-year-old American noticed an emaciated woman sitting in the dirt with three small children. "She didn't look at me, but I saw her eyeing my water bottle"... [he] sauntered over to the woman and dropped his water bottle next to her. "It's not fun to play God and figure who gets what," he said' (Hammer 1994a: 32).

In the headline analysis, the French were most often mentioned as solving the conflict (named four times in the headlines). The magazines further implied that the preferred saviour among these groups was the United States, noting that diligent American aid workers were in 'a race with death' (Watson et al. 1994: 26), trying to save Rwandans from themselves. Examples of Rwandans (or citizens of Tanzania, Zaire, etc.) helping to cope with the disaster are seldom found. Ultimately, coverage implied that only the US military could truly save Rwanda. As one headline noted, 'Nice idea, wrong army, Rwanda: are the French the ones to make peace?' (Stanger and Hammer 1994: 48). In addition, metaphors referenced the Nazi atrocities of World War II as well as suggesting that just as the United States devised the Marshall Plan (Gibbs, Marlowe et al. 1994: 38) for war-torn Europe after World War II, it now needed to reassemble Rwanda.

CONCLUSION

Western news coverage of Africa has always tended to distort and oversimplify complex events. The Rwanda coverage continued the adherence to old patterns such as interpreting conflicts in Africa as evidence of backwardness. Some new trends seemed evident as well. With the end of East–West rivalry, the Cold War framework has been removed and now the coverage seems to suggest that violence is simply tribal or inexplicable. Western officials played less of a role in the coverage, probably because of the lack of government involvement. Western aid organizations seemed to be filling the gap, although locals were quoted more than has previously been the case. While these were all changes, they did not necessarily herald better, more comprehensive coverage. For instance, if we look at the total portrait of these locals, we find mainly graphic descriptions that confirm that Rwandans are helpless wretches or brutal savages.

While reporting from an area with such violence can be logistically difficult, there were other ways to obtain information. Early on, various human rights organizations publicized the names of those who systematically planned and executed the genocide. These names were made readily available through written press releases as well as via the Rwanda Crisis Web site on the Internet. Yet magazines failed to use this information. Also, reporters could have sought comment from surrounding countries in the region. Instead, these countries were described as more examples of the instability of the entire continent, implying that Rwanda's violence is the rule, not the exception to life on the African continent and that no regional government was competent to comment.

By relying on tribalism as the explanation for the violence, the magazines rarely mentioned who planned and executed the genocide that started the violence. Readers were left to believe that this tribal violence just exploded. By attributing the violence to tribal strife and not to the known individuals who were truly responsible ('an orgy of tribal slaughter kills thousands'), the coverage let the real perpetrators off the hook.

Because Africa is one of the continents about which we often know little, news coverage about it takes on a special importance. In many cases, it represents the only information about that area that many Westerners ever encounter. Instead of supplying readers with full, explanatory portraits of Africa, news organizations have tended to stick with the easy stereotype, the image that can be easily absorbed by readers, however false it may be. The coverage of the Rwanda crisis proves no exception to the negative, shallow coverage of the past. Granted, events such as this conflict were complicated and violent, using metaphors to try to produce 'colourful' reports was a disservice not only to Africans but also to American news consumers. The tendency to write off Rwanda (and perhaps all of Africa) as naturally violent and not worth analyzing on any insightful level made American news coverage one more terrible element in the entire crisis.

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