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In this excellent and well-organised volume, Allan Thompson brings together a diverse team of writers to consider the media and the Rwandan genocide. There are two principal themes: the role that Rwandan media played in fueling the 1994 genocide, and the failures and responsibilities of international reporters to report mass atrocities. Neither topic is new, but at least three dimensions set this volume apart. First, the domestic and international angles are rarely considered together. Second, the book incorporates multiple viewpoints, ones that span discipline, profession and opinion. And third, the book is comprehensive, with essays on Nigerian and Kenyan newspaper coverage of the genocide, to journalists' eyewitness accounts, to media repression in contemporary Rwanda.
The book is ambitious. Thompson, a former reporter for the Toronto Star and currently assistant professor at Carleton University in Canada, has assembled a collection with 35 distinct chapters and an opening statement from Kofi Annan. There are introductory chapters by eminent personalities on Rwanda, such as Canadian General Roméo Dallaire and human rights activist Alison Des Forges. The main text is divided into four sections: (1) the domestic media in Rwanda...