Yellow journalism is part of the architecture of the media in Guyana

Oct 16, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Some time ago, I wrote that “In recent years, racial incitement to sustain a predatory political culture in Guyana continues to be at the top of the distortionists’ propaganda list. Particular political operatives, the private media, and now hate literature have graduated to becoming the main conduits of racial provocation. These are daily happenings, albeit in a camouflaged way, in the name of seeking political power. However, applying racial incitement not only is an illicit mechanism in the pursuit of power. Racial incitement is a violation of the rule of law.”
Today, I want to address the media’s role in ‘incitement’ activities’. Yellow journalism is part of the architecture of the media world in Guyana. And each day, in Guyana, people construct their opinions from all kinds of racially inflammatory materials the mass media throw at them.
The mass media in Guyana persist in politicizing everything, and to communicate excessive exaggeration. While they perceive themselves as having the divine right to educate the public, their prejudiced intent color and shape the education the public receives. By now, people may be aware that the private media are the new opposition. Look at how the media could get out of hand, especially, in their role to induce incitement in Egypt.
The new liberal media dispensation in Egypt provided the opening for both the independent media and the new internet and satellite media to promote awareness of the Muslim-Copt (Christian) question in Egypt. But the latter persevered to politicize, indeed sensationalize the religious divide between Muslims and Copts. People will recall that on last New Year’s eve, 25 Copts were killed and 80 injured as a result of a church bombing.
And then there was the Rwanda genocide of 1994, where 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus became victims in under 100 days. Professor Thompson (Pluto Press, 2007) saw the radio and the print media as a tool of hate, where they egged on neighbors to hate and hurt each other; and the tarnished radio broadcasts fanned the flames of hatred and violence through the 100-day genocide.
At that time, Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda Romeo Dallaire in his chapter ‘The Media Dichotomy’ talked about Rwanda media’s role in assisting and accelerating the slaughter; and then there was the international media that stood by and did nothing.
Adhikari in reviewing Thompson’s book, pointed out that hate propaganda was not just about ridiculing the Tutsis; hate propaganda was about reaching the goal of extermination. The Rwandan mass media became an accomplice in the genocide, and Rwandan radio became part of the killing machine itself.
Rwandan radio became hate radio. “Hate radio served as a primary means through which Rwandans, over a period of months, were prepared for the impending slaughter and by means of which killers were recruited and mobilized by the organizers of the genocide. The signal to start the bloodletting was delivered via radio, many an instruction to murder individuals or specific groups of people were announced over the air and once in motion much of the killing and ancillary activities were orchestrated through radio. The book on more than one occasion evokes the image of perpetrators with bloodied machetes in one hand and a radio within earshot, if not in the other hand” (Adhikari, 2008).
Amid the mass media racial incitement, there was the Radio et Television Libre de Milles Collines (RTLM), the extremist Hutu radio station created in July 1993for fomenting anti-Tutsi violence. Adhikari also spoke about a bi-monthly newspaper Kangura, created in mid-1990, which disseminated the ‘Ten Commandments of the Hutu’; and which viewed sympathy, or cooperation with Tutsis as treason.
In this Guyana election season, where parts of the private media are the new opposition, and where so much racial incitement remains the norm in both print and broadcast journalism, it is pertinent to examine and reflect on the iniquitous Rwanda mass media’s ‘extermination’ role in The Rwandan genocide against Tutsis.
And we must recognize that the masses do not goad any ethnic polarization; this reprehensible act is the work of the unwholesome new opposition, inclusive of parts of the private media. The new opposition exploits the race factor to increase electoral advantage and fine points. Nevertheless, under these circumstances, it becomes critical here in this mutietnic mosaic in Guyana to reflect on the Rwandan mass media ‘s infamous role during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Prem Misir

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