Radio Propaganda and the Broadcasting of Hatred
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Radio Propaganda and the Broadcasting of Hatred This page intentionally left blank Radio Propaganda and the Broadcasting of Hatred Historical Development and Definitions Keith Somerville University of Kent, Kent, UK © Keith Somerville 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-27829-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-32609-9 ISBN 978-1-137-28415-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137284150 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10987654321 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Contents Preface vi Acknowledgements xi 1 Propaganda: Origins, Development and Utilization 1 2 The Advent of Radio: Creating a Mass Audience for Propaganda and Incitement 1911–1945 33 3 The Cold War and After: Propaganda Wars and Radio in Regional Conflicts 55 Case Studies 4 Nazi Radio Propaganda – Setting the Agenda for Hatred 87 5 Rwanda: Genocide, Hate Radio and the Power of the Broadcast Word 152 6 Kenya: Political Violence, the Media and the Role of Vernacular Radio Stations 208 7 Conclusions: Propaganda, Hate and the Power of Radio 238 Bibliography 247 Index 259 v Preface It was late evening on Wednesday, 6 April 1994 in studio S36 in Bush House, the home of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service. My Newshour team was coming to the end of a long shift and there were about 15 minutes of programme time to go. And then came the moment when a newsflash both set my pulse racing and also set off alarm bells in my head. The breaking news came in on the BBC newsgathering system, from Agence France Presse. It said that the plane carrying presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi had crashed near Kigali – all on board were presumed dead. It’s not every day that you get two presidents killed in the same crash, so that alone meant that it would develop into a big story for the World Service audience. But these two men were from Rwanda and Burundi, two of the most volatile states in Africa. They were returning from Arusha, from a summit at which pressure was put on Habyarimana to proceed with implementing the Arusha Peace Accords designed to end four years of war in Rwanda. His death would at the very least put the accords in doubt but could lead to full-scale civil war or worse. As I sought more information from BBC newsgathering and the African service at Bush, and checked incoming news wires, I was simultaneously assessing what we actually knew and could therefore report to the audience and whether we could cover the story accurately before the programme came off air. I checked with my trusted studio producer, Fred Dove, if we had room for the Rwanda story and, professional as ever, he said he could make room. So I had to decide. While not an expert on the minutiae of Rwandan politics, I had been there, reported stories from there, followed the four-year civil war and had good background knowledge of the decades of conflict, massacres and repression of the Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority. I knew very well how unstable the ceasefire was between the government and the opposing Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and how an event like this and any sugges- tion that the Tutsi-led RPF was responsible for Habyarimana’s death could lead to not just renewed fighting but the mass killing of Tutsis. I did not want to risk having any role in starting rumours or broadcasting suggestions that could have catastrophic results – and I knew our programme was lis- tened to by English-speakers in East and Central Africa. All journalists want to report the news and report it now, but it is better to be a bit late on the news and get it right than to jump in fast, perhaps speculate and then have to take responsibility for the consequences. vi Preface vii I opted for safety and caution. When we had confirmation of the crash and the deaths of all those aboard, we still had time within the programme to broadcast a short newsflash. I decided not to try to get hold of the African service stringers in Rwanda, not all of whom broadcast in English anyway, or to go to our regional office in Nairobi, as the correspondents there would know little more than I did. The priority was to broadcast only what I could confirm and avoid potentially inflammatory speculation. When the pro- gramme came off air, we were none the wiser about the cause – a crash, shot down and, if so, by whom? But speculation was already being aired in some follow-up news agency reports, including accusations from Rwanda that the Tutsi-led RPF had been responsible. I didn’t get the chance to follow up the story on subsequent programmes. As it did for most of the continent of Africa and much of the world, my focus switched to South Africa. Within days, I was in Johannesburg leading the World Service news programme team reporting the elections that were to bring the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela to power and transform South Africa. But even in the hectic run up to the start of voting on 27 April, the horrifying news emerging from Rwanda was being discussed in South Africa – of the killing of the prime minister and several ministers in the coalition government, and reports of large-scale murders of Tutsis. Days before the official announcement of the election result by the election com- mission on 6 May, it was clear that the African National Congress (ANC) had won and that international leaders and diplomats were beginning to sound out ANC leaders about a South African role – political and military – in end- ing the Rwandan violence. The man soon to become South Africa’s deputy defence minister and a key figure in the ANC military and intelligence set up, Ronnie Kasrils, told me that he was already having to fend off suggestions of a South African-led African force to keep the peace in Rwanda. By the time I was back in London and running programmes again, Rwanda was one of the lead stories for the World Service, despite being ignored by much of the rest of the British and international media. They seemed only to be able to cope with one African story at a time and they already had South Africa. For many news editors across the world, the main questions were, ‘Where the hell is Rwanda?’ and ‘Why should we care enough to report it?’ Our programmes were different. We had correspondents there and I despatched one of our best radio documentary makers, Hilary Andersson, to Rwanda and Tanzania to get us more depth on the story – which was still patchy and unclear. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, were being killed but by whom and to what end? Over the next couple of months the extent, intent and sheer horror of the attempted genocide became clear. What also became obvious was the role of the media in Rwanda in inciting hatred of and violence against Tutsis, and against Hutus seen as opposed to Hutu chauvinism. The phrase ‘hate radio’ became synonymous with Rwanda – ‘radio that killed’ and ‘radio machete’ viii Preface were just a couple of the phrases used regularly to describe Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the Hutu station that encouraged and aided the killings. That radio should play such a role was anathema to someone like me who had worked for years in the World Service and was wedded to the motto on the BBC coat of arms that ‘nation shall speak peace unto nation’ – even though I knew well that, in its way, BBC World Service output was, like most other news, a form of propaganda even if it was a soft, benign and well-intentioned one. I was also aware that there was a wide spectrum of broadcasting, from the World Service near one end to stations like RTLM at the other. Before working as a radio producer, reporter and editor, I had spent eight years at the BBC Monitoring Service directly monitoring Soviet, Czech, Israeli, Afghan, apartheid South African and, during the Falklands/Malvinas War, Argentinian news and propaganda broadcasts.