How a Radio Station Helped Facilitate the Rwandan Genocide (Feb 08, 2013)

In 1993, with the backing of President Juvenal Habvariama, Hutu extremists in Rwanda established Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines ("One Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television" or “RTLM”).

“Rwanda was a culture that was primarily radio. People listened to the radio,” says Maria Armoudian, the author of Kill the Messenger: the Media’s Role in the Fate of the World. “And they made it very listenable, and very fun, and very funny, and they had great music, so people were listening to it and enjoying it.”

However, the station gradually used that popularity and influence to exploit deeply-held divisions between Hutus and Rwanda’s other primary ethnic group, the Tutsi people. The station’s presenters referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches,” and the broadcasts eventually became known as Rwanda’s “Hate Radio.”

The tipping point came, however, on April 6, 1994, when assassins shot down a plane carrying President Habvariama, along with Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira.

“When this happened, the messages suddenly became so extreme, blaming the Tutsi people, and marking them to be destroyed,” Armoudian says. “Now, the Tutsis were a minority, and within 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis were killed. And this was not taking a pistol and shooting people, [these were] the most brutal and heinous ways you could kill people.”

In her book, Armoudian contrasts the RTLM with a media organization several non-profits set up in the neighboring country of Burundi.

“Instead of having this division - Hutu/Tutsi - they trained one Hutu journalist to go with one Tutsi journalist, together, to every news story and every kind of reporting they were going to do,” Armoudian says. “So now, not just the information had to be agreed upon, but the frame had to be agreed upon. They coupled that with broadcasts to help people understand the roots of these things, so it could no longer be a direct blame game.”

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:

On the evolution of the U.S. media’s role

Historically, the mass media screened out the extreme ideas and framed things in a way so that it would be the center. So when you had extreme messages, they got filtered through the editing process, and through the process of who became journalists, who they hired, how they trained them, the beat system. There's a whole world in that. That's starting to break down. It started to break down with cable news, and the rest of the world, with the advent of the Internet, countries that try to exclude information completely from their public, are starting to seep in - through cell phones, through social networking. And some of that is a direct result of the executives in these companies. So Facebook, and Twitter, and Google actually reengineering things so their members cannot be blocked off by their governments. We saw that with the Arab Spring in [Tunisia].

On radio’s role in the Rwandan Genocide

Rwanda was a culture that was primarily radio. People listened to the radio. In comes this privately-held radio station, the RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, or "One Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television"), that was controlled by an extremist group of one ethnic group. And they made it very listenable, and very fun, and very funny, and they had great music, so people were listening to it and enjoying it. And then there was this tipping point where the president’s plane was shot down. When this happened, the messages suddenly became so extreme, blaming the Tutsi people, and marking them to be destroyed. Now, the Tutsis were a minority, and within 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis were killed. And this was not taking a pistol and shooting people, [these were] the most brutal and heinous ways you could kill people.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

SUZETTE GRILLOT, HOST: Maria Armoudian, welcome to World Views.

MARIA ARMOUDIAN: Thank you so much. So happy to be here.

GRILLOT: Well, I read your book with interest. Kill the Messenger. And it focuses on the role of the media and how it can play a role - positive and negative - in particular, in creating conditions for atrocities, even, such as what occurred in Rwanda. Could you begin by telling us, in general terms, how the media has changed over the last many years? How people's expectations about the media and the news have been altered in our daily lives?

ARMOUDIAN: Well, certainly we've seen, in Western Society more than anywhere else, the development of new media, Internet media, social networking. What we've seen is that the traditional role of mass media as a gatekeeper has changed, because people are now exchanging information much more fluidly than just through mass media. Now, here in the U.S., what we see as a result of that is, historically, the mass media had been sort-of a moderate ideology here in the U.S. They screened out the extreme ideas and framed things in a way so that it would be the center. So when you had extreme messages, they got filtered through the editing process, and through the process of who became journalists, who they hired, how they trained them, the beat system. There's a whole world in that. That's starting to break down. It started to break down with cable news, and the rest of the world, with the advent of the Internet, countries that try to exclude information completely from their public, are starting to seep in - through cell phones, through social networking. And some of that is a direct result of the executives in these companies. So Facebook, and Twitter, and Google actually reengineering things so their members cannot be blocked off by their governments. We saw that with the Arab Spring in one case. When a lot of the young people who were trying to communicate with each other in organizing, and I believe this was the Tunisian government trying to block those avenues, the Facebook executives reconfigured things so they could continue to communicate. So it's quite fascinating what's happening. It's opening the world, and allowing people to trade information across.

REBECCA CRUISE: So it sounds like you're saying that the media is in some ways becoming more of a universal, that Western idea of what the media is. Is that the case, or is there...

ARMOUDIAN: It's hard to know, yet, honestly. It really is hard to know. I think there is some exchange with these Western ideas, but I think there are still a lot of questions. I probably would say no.

CRUISE: What does that make our responsibility then, as readers, listeners, viewers, to try to cypher out some of this information?

ARMOUDIAN: I think that's a very important question. It's starting to change. It's interesting, if you look at your Facebook page, and you notice that your friends that are very conservative will start unfriending their liberal friends, and your liberal friends will start unfriending their conservative friends. So that's unfortunately something that is happening. You're talking about our own responsibility. Maybe it's our responsibility to hear all those sides.

GRILLOT: So you've argued in your work that the media can serve as both an enabler of violence, as well as an advocate for peace. What do you mean by that? Could you give us some examples of what you...

ARMOUDIAN: Right. Absolutely. And I think this was one of the key threads. Mass media have been a force for change, for good or for bad, Depending on how you define good and bad, of course, but I think most people would define genocide or a holocaust as very bad. Or mass murder. Or any kind of human rights violations. So I started this book with three worst-case scenarios. I looked at the Rwandan genocide because that was the clearest case of mass media having such a profound effect on the life and death decisions that were made. What you found is that media itself had become a battleground. Extremists had taken over the messaging in such a way that they could use what we call a frame - putting information in such a way that it meant something to people. Usually the frame was, "Those people over there are bad. They are going to take something that belongs to you, or harm something that's so dear and important to you, and the only way to stop them is by stripping them of civil rights and maybe destroying them, or pushing them off the land, or in the worst-case scenario, annihilating them." I'll start with Rwanda because it's the clearest case. Rwanda was a culture that was primarily radio. People listened to the radio. In comes this privately-held radio station, the RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, or "One Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television"), that was controlled by an extremist group of one ethnic group. And they made it very listenable, and very fun, and very funny, and they had great music, so people were listening to it and enjoying it. And then there was this tipping point where the president’s plane was shot down. When this happened, the messages suddenly became so extreme, blaming the Tutsi people, and marking them to be destroyed. Now, the Tutsis were a minority, and within 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis were killed. And this was not taking a pistol and shooting people, [these were] the most brutal and heinous ways you could kill people. And I think one of the most really devastating parts of this particular genocide is that people who had been husbands and wives, and brothers, sisters, doctors killing their patients, and teachers killing their students, putting them into schools and burning the schools down. These were people who had relationships, teammates, destroying each other. Long relationships. Now, was it just the media messages? No, it never is. But what started to happen is because this was the primary information source, it started to get this sense of what we call a hegemonic nature. It's all-encompassing. It starts to feel like a truth. It's repeated enough. It's all that you hear. You don't hear anything on the outside. You've got on the grounds people organizing the genocide. And mob behavior starts to kick in. All of these psychological elements develop. So in group behavior, what we notice if we look at it from a psychological perspective is the individual's autonomy starts to go away. People's own individual emotions start to conform to the group. And these frames - us against them, what I call "blame frames," and "hate frames," and "genocidal frames" - generate, aside from these group-based kinds of phenomena they also develop these emotional phenomena in which there's an automatic behavioral response. So when you can generate anger, there's an automatic attack response. Trying to fix it. Trying to change it. Resentment. Automatic. Hatred. Destruction. And it's not like people think about it. It's getting the message. It generates fear, and there's either a fight, or a flight. If you generate a message that is more of an embrace message, like love, then you see people coming together more. Now, what I'd really like to do is contrast what happened in Rwanda with its neighbor in Burundi, because I think this is where we really start to see how really remarkable the role of mass media has been. So, Rwanda and Burundi used to actually be one country. Two ethnic groups, primarily, Tutsi and Hutu, and similar history, almost exact. Similar religion, almost exact. Power structures close together. A lot of fratricidal fighting going on anyway. Why did Rwanda end up in a genocide? Why did Burundi, they still had some fratricidal killing going on, but why did they end up going down the peace process? After the Rwandan genocide, people started to realize what had happened, and the power of this one radio station to generate so much hatred, and so much foment for genocide. A bunch of non-profits came together and set up a media in Burundi, where instead of having this division - Hutu/Tutsi - they trained one Hutu journalist to go with one Tutsi journalist, together, to every news story and every kind of reporting they were going to do. So now, not just the information had to be agreed upon, but the frame had to be agreed upon. They coupled that with broadcasts to help people understand the roots of these things, so it could no longer be a direct blame game. "You're causing all the problems here, and therefore the only way to resolve it is to destroy you and your buddies." That's the blame frame, and the hate frame, that they completely steered clear of. Now, there was much more to this. They used drama where they had the strife of everyday people in Burundi, but they never identified their ethnicities, so people started to empathize. And the one that I think is most profound, and then I'll stop, I know, I'm just yammering on here, is that during these talk shows, they started to challenge meanings that come from frames. Frames give meanings, and these meanings give the psychological responses. One of those meanings was that before this mass media started to work with the population, if a Hutu were to rescue a Tutsi, that person would be marked by his own group as a traitor. And he'd be marked for death. So people were afraid to help anybody that was not of their own tribe. This "us versus them" that gets created. Over the radio they started re-defining what it means. "If you rescue somebody from the other side, maybe you're a hero." And they started to talk about this, and callers would call in and say, "Well, you know, I wasn't going to say this before, but I rescued my neighbor, and I'm a Hutu and she's a Tutsi, and I hid her under my bed." They started to acknowledge these people more and more as heroes. More stories started coming in. And then it encouraged people to go start saving people from the other side, and it completely changed the meaning of the word "traitor" and "hero," as what the behavioral component of that was.

GRILLOT: So it sounds like then, very quickly, if there was more training, if you had more professionalization within the media in these situations and environments, that is what will help us avoid the kind of things we saw in Rwanda?

ARMOUDIAN: I think professionalization is important. There are flaws in Western journalism. I did a talk recently at the Center for Human Rights in New Zealand, where I took three headlines, because Gaza had just happened, and the headline from Haaretz, which is an Israeli progressive newspaper, was "Gaza Militants Renewing Bombardment." Then you look at The Guardian. It was almost the opposite. It was "Israel: Third Day of Destruction in Gaza." Then, you look at a more radical left-wing radio station, and it said, "United Nations trying end U.S.-backed massacre of Gazans." They're all professional, but the frame is still a blame frame, and the frame is still an emotional, anger-provoking us-versus-them frame. There's no depth to it. So that's something that I think even in Western journalism, we are challenged with.

GRILLOT: Well, definitely more work to be done in that area, then. Thank you very much, Maria, for joining us on World Views for a very interesting topic.

ARMOUDIAN: It's been a pleasure, thank you.

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