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

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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. I’d selected and edited for publication news and propaganda output from across Africa, the Mid- dle East and Latin America – and for a brief period North Korea and China, too – for the BBC’s Summary of World Broadcasts. I had few illusions about the purity of the broadcast media. But the first half of the 1990s brought home with violent force the ways that broadcasting, primarily radio, could be used to encourage, justify, incite and support violence, particularly in regional or civil conflicts. Even before the ghastly example of RTLM, Serb and Croat radio and TV, especially local stations like the Serb one in Knin, had shown how radio and other media could be used for other ends than informing peo- ple of news and information that could enable them to make sense of, and make rational decisions in, the world in which they lived. That radio could be used to incite hatred, to sanction, justify or encourage communal vio- lence, was becoming clearer. Politicians, non-governmental organizations, journalists and academics were aware of this and were starting to call for ways of jamming or combating the hate broadcasts. But there had been little attempt to describe or define where and how this sort of hate broadcasting began, and where what one could call ‘mobilizing propaganda’ ended and incitement to hatred and violence began. Other priorities as a BBC journalist meant that at the time I went no fur- ther into the dark side of broadcasting. I moved into academia in 2008 and started research on radio; this coincided with the investigations into the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007–2008 and the suggestions that once again radio had played a role in inciting violence and hatred. This rekin- dled my interest and, on further investigation, I found that there had been little progress in defining hate radio or providing any sort of realistic guide as to how or whether one could identify where propaganda morphed into something even more sinister. A research trip to Kenya in 2010, and subse- quent dealings with the International Criminal Court in The Hague over the indictment of a Kenyan radio journalist whom I had interviewed, confirmed Preface ix that an examination of Kenya’s experience could throw a new light on the uses of broadcasting in times of conflict. Research into the role of radio in the events in Kenya inevitably threw up comparisons with Rwanda. I also related it to what I knew of the break- up of Yugoslavia – which I had been involved in covering exhaustively as a programme editor at the World Service in the early 1990s. My research led me back to Cold War propaganda, the role of radio in the Middle East, and to the Second World War and Nazi Germany, and then further back to the early uses of radio for the purpose of propagandizing and the career of the ‘hate priest’, Father Coughlan, as an early exponent of bigoted and racist radio commentary. I found more and more material but struggled to put it into context, to find definitions, to delineate the different forms and motivations of propaganda, and to decide where, how and why propaganda developed into an open engendering of hatred and incitement to violence. That is the basic purpose of this book – to tease out the strands of propaganda and present a more coherent analysis of how and in what cir- cumstances propaganda becomes incitement and then to find definitions of hate media and, in particular, hate radio. The subjects under particular study are those perpetrators of hate propaganda who propagate their ideas openly – what has been called ‘white propaganda’, which comes from an identifiable source that tries to build credibility with the audience, whether or not it does so through distortion, outright lies or a manipulation of facts or interpreta- tions (Jowett and O’Donnell, 2006, pp. 16–17). ‘Black’ or ‘covert’ propaganda is not the subject of this book, nor is the attempt by radio stations or other media to influence the beliefs or ideology of foreign audiences – as both the USA and the Soviet Union tried to do though their broadcasting during the Cold War. The focus is on those broadcasters and media that sought to influ- ence their own populations – to incite them to hatred and violence against domestic or external enemies. I have omitted, after much research and delib- eration, analysis of the American Shock Jocks, such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Don Imus. Bigoted and biased they might be but there is no evidence of a specific agenda of hate or incitement; rather just a stream of right-wing prejudice and abuse of perceived liberals and social- ists, or mindless abuse of groups within American society. Under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, this is all legal. The structure of the book reflects the origins of hate broadcasting in pro- paganda and how in certain circumstances nationalist, political party, racist or other forms of propaganda move into the area of incitement. Chapter 1 charts the development of propaganda as a weapon in conflict over his- tory and the use of hate as the most deadly propaganda weapon of all. Chapter 2 follows the development of propaganda in the 20th century and charts how radio as a means of mass and targeted communication became such an effective propaganda tool and its utilization an extremely effective medium for inciting hatred. The first two chapters are also used to set out x Preface the methodology (qualitative and contextual rather than quantitative) for examining the broadcasts, their context as part of a political and social dis- course, and their place in the historical and contemporary developments of the conflicts and political situations in which the use of broadcasting to incite hatred occurred. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are case studies of radio propa- ganda in Nazi Germany, the role of radio in genocide in Rwanda and radio incitement during the political/violent conflicts in Kenya. The book ends (Chapter 7) with an examination of the conclusions that can be drawn from the earlier chapters on propaganda, hate, radio development and the case studies, and an attempt to define hate radio as a phenomenon that goes beyond what we normally understand as propaganda. Acknowledgements

In many ways the work for this study started the moment I walked through the doors of the Monitoring Service, so there are many to whom I owe a debt. But I will keep this as brief and as to the point as possible and not make it into a tear-stained equivalent of an Oscar ceremony acceptance speech. My editor on the Middle East and Africa Summary of World Broad- casts, John Chadwick, was probably the best boss I worked for in 28 years in the BBC. Clear, focused and with a great knowledge of broadcasting, he was a model for ensuring accuracy and providing context in dealing with broad- cast material. At the World Service, the late Kari Blackburn was a mentor and friend of huge importance in getting to grips with radio. Teresa Guerreiro is a close and valued friend and colleague (at the BBC and now in academic life) who has always been willing to ask questions that make me think very carefully about what I’m doing, how and why I’m doing it, and whether my conclusions stand up to scrutiny; she has been an immense support and has cast an experienced and critical eye over parts of the work – though any faults are all mine. The support of colleagues and the Research Funding Department at Brunel University have been crucial in getting the time, the opportunity and the funds to carry out the research in Kenya – I’m particularly grate- ful for the support and friendship of Professor Julian Petley. Professor Jack Spence of King’s College London has been a great source of support, advice and inspiration over my years of studying conflict and violence in Africa. I’d also like to thank all those who spoke candidly to me in Kenya, especially those who did this at some risk and whose anonymity I have respected. In addition, Dennis ole Itumbi, Martin Githau, Ida Jooste, Brice Rambaud, Matthias Muindi and Moses Rono gave me a huge amount of help and advice. At BBC Monitoring, Mladen Bilic was invaluable in guid- ing me through the Balkan Broadcasting labyrinth and Chris Greenaway filled in a lot of gaps for me about what was monitored and when, notably in Rwanda and Kenya. Tim Butcher, despite once having tried to throttle me in a maul on the rugby field, gave me good advice and detail from his on-the-spot reporting in the Balkans and Africa. Marcus Tanner and Mark Thompson were hugely helpful on the media and the break-up of Yugoslavia. Samantha Blake and the staff at the BBC Written Archives have been consis- tently supportive in finding, sorting and supplying German wartime radio transcriptions for me. Paul Meller of the Economic and Social Research Council kindly cast a critical and expert eye over the chapters on propaganda before the radio era. Frank Chalk of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and

xi xii Acknowledgements

Human Rights Studies (MIGS) gave valuable advice and permission to use my MIGS occasional paper as the foundation for the Kenyan chapter. Finally, and most importantly, I’d like to thank my wife, Liz, and son, Tom, for support, humour and constructive advice on grammar and tone as well as keeping me reasonably sane.