Essay On Hotel Rwanda

In the film Hotel Rwanda, the media had a significant impact on the events that happened there. Radio was used by the reporters, and that had an impact on the events there as well. Also, reporters there faced the ethical dilemma of reporting all of the facts to the public while putting themselves in danger, or not telling the public the entire truth to keep themselves safe. I do not think that there is a way to balance these responsibilities. During the genocide in the country Rwanda, journalists used the medium of radio to do their reporting. The journalists' reporting had a profound impact on the genocide because of the use of "Hate Radio". The journalists set the stage for the genocide by referring to the Tutsi people as vermin and cockroaches; making them seem less than human. Broadcasters encouraged the Hutu to kill and they announced the names and locations of Tutsis and neutral Hutus. This encouraged people to kill and the announcers did not behave ethically by reporting the news without bias, as well as putting innocent people in danger. In the movie, a journalist primes people for genocide when he blames the Belgians for the class divisions between the Hutus and the Tutsis, saying that the picked the Tutsis to run the country based on their looks and "the width of …show more content…
The way that the media acted in Rwanda was extremely unethical. They put their lives ahead of their responsibility to report accurately. I believe that in order to be an ethical reporter, you need to report all of the news in a balanced way and state all of the facts. In Rwanda during the genocide, the reporters egged on and solidified they repulsive behavior of the Hutus. I think that they did this to protect themselves from harm, because they knew that the Hutus had the capability to kill them, along with the Tutsis, for saying anything bad about them in their