 | New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch says he finds it difficult to remain objective in the face of "outrage." |
While most of the world stood aside, at least 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in just 100 days when the government of that country charged all of its Hutu civilians with the task of killing all of its Tutsi population.
Reporters have a responsibility not to stand aside in the midst of such events, contends Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of the award-winning book "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda."
Gourevitch described some of his experiences reporting on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in his Dec. 2 William W. Goldman Lecture on "Writing About Wrongs: Moral Clarity vs. Political Reality." His talk in Linsly-Chittenden Hall was sponsored by Branford College and the Goldman family.
Before a near-capacity crowd, Gourevitch decried what he described as a tendency of American journalists not to cover events in places of the world where there are no national interests at stake. One of the lessons learned from Rwanda, he said, is that when there is no American presence in a country experiencing conflict, journalists operate under the assumption that the problem will eventually just "go away."
On the other hand, Gourevitch said, in countries where there is a strong American presence, such as in Iraq, journalists often take the words and language of government leaders and politicians at face value instead of offering a "fresh view" of a particular conflict.
"There is a strange sameness to the language in the paper, on television and that is used by politicians," the journalist said. "Reporters need to look and ask: What does [the language] mean?"
In the case of Iraq, Gourevitch said, "people on both sides of the debate [over American intervention in the country] are using the same language.
"It's hard to know what they are saying," he continued, "and the language starts to become more and more vague. We in the press can insist on a greater clarity, on a greater precision in trying to describe the things we are looking at and by constantly thinking about and looking for a different point of view. One of our ambitions should be to look at words and how we use them."
Sometimes, Gourevitch told his audience, the best way to understand what is happening in a place where there is an abundance of press coverage is to look in places on which there is little reporting.
For instance, one way to enhance public understanding of the current situation in Iraq would be to look at Afghanistan, "about which we heard a lot of the same rhetoric about rebuilding the country," he noted. He also cited Liberia -- where many al-Qaeda leaders have bases of operation -- as a country that the media has largely ignored, even though it has a connection to issues in the Middle East.
Gourevitch also emphasized the difference between being objective as a reporter and being neutral about what he covers.
"[A] lot of the trouble that I was seeing in Rwanda was the result of either neutrality or ideas of neutrality," he explained. "As a result of that, it seemed morally scandalous to have a neutral response to genocide. To be neutral -- which is to say that you refrain from making any judgments in the face of outrage -- seems outrageous."
Reporters do, however, have a responsibility to be objective, he said, adding that being objective does not mean that they do not make judgments related to their stories.
To illustrate this fact, Gourevitch recalled an interview with a physician who served as president of Rwanda during the 100-day mass slaughter of Tutsis in 1994, who was then in exile in Zaire (now Congo). Unhappy with the interview, the former president insisted that Gourevitch remain objective and without prejudice -- to the point of being "scientific."
"I told him 'Yes, I must be objective, I agree,' and then said, 'Objectively, it's possible that you're a mass murderer,'" recalled the journalist.
While issues in the international political realm may not be black-and-white, events such as Rwanda's genocide are "morally unambiguous," Gourevitch asserted.
"A genocide -- it's simple," he said. "It was one group of people who systematically slaughtered another group of people."
In the countries he visits while on assignment, Gourevitch said, he often is viewed as an "ambassador" of the United States. Americans, on the other hand, often ask the journalist how they should respond to the events he reports on abroad, particularly those that "appeal to the conscience," such as the Rwandan genocide.
While he said that his particular interest as a journalist is to investigate how the world responds to political conflicts and problems, Gourevitch maintained that it is not his job to provide answers to those who are searching for the proper individual response to such atrocities as the Rwandan genocide.
"I think my job is to tell them what's happening," he commented. "People who come up with ideas about what to do are part of my story, and interpreting and examining what these people do is also part of my story."
To tell his stories, Gourevitch explained, he sometimes does as little research as possible before he begins his journalistic investigations. "It's sometimes reasonable to approach things with as much ignorance as you can muster," he said, adding that such an approach often leads to a "freshness" of perspective.
He told his audience that there is very little that happens in the world that doesn't have some kind of impact somewhere else, and said he believes that those in the press can do a better job of making those connections clear to their audience, especially by disengaging from the rhetoric of the moment.
"The press could be less of a servant to the flighty attention of government and more of a service to its audience by trying to explain what goes on in the world," he said.
-- By Susan Gonzalez
T H I S
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