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Armoudian, Maria. Kill the Messenger: The Media's Role in the Fate of the World. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2011. 389 pp. $25
Maria Armoudian's engaging book, Kill the Messenger, succeeds in providing both examples of when journalism helped relieve or exacerbate major societal problems apd giving the reader mini-history lessons of important movements outside of the United States. That alone makes it worth reading.. What she does less well is to fulfill ber premise in the introduction: to explain the how and why media affects us.
Armoudian's compelling writing moves us quickly through several chapters of twentieth-century history, both horrifying and inspiring. She first tackles the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and, as throughout the book, she does not spare the reader the gruesome details. Other chapters in this section cover the Nazi Holocaust and the Bosnian War. The next section focuses on media involvement with building community and peace, including chapters on Burundi averting the genocide that its neighbor experienced (although it did experience massacres of less intensity and scope) and Northern Ireland's buildup to the Belfast peace accords of 1998. In the section that considers human rights and democracy, she...