Hate Radio – A Violent Echo Chamber

Michael Hedges January 18, 2011 Follow on Twitter

The radio medium has shown through its 100-year history an incredible power. That power has delighted, informed and entertained; a testament to its enduring strength. Radio’s power, too, has been a force for evil and madness.

Violence following contested elections in Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) has been universally deplored. State radio, controlled by President Laurent Gbagbo, has been accused by international human rights and media watchers of significantly contributing to a climate of violent actions and reactions.

“The use of national radio and television to incite hatred and violence among the population,” was specifically cited by Deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-Wha Kang at a special session of the UN Human Rights Council (December 23, 2010). United States Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva Betty King, at the same meeting, said the US “was disturbed by reports that the Laurent Gbagbo-controlled media were encouraging conflict, among other things by propagating hate speech against members of ethnic groups and those who opposed Laurent Gbagbo.”

Monitoring the Ivory Coast election campaign, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reported (October 29, 2010) preferential news coverage given to Laurent Gbagbo on state radio Radio Côte d’Ivoire (RCI) and state television channel La Première. During the election’s second round RSF noted “hate messages liable to spawn violence…(that) cannot currently be regarded as professional news media that meet the standards of ethical journalistic conduct.” Non-government media in Ivory Coast has been effectively closed, along with access to international media, though independent newspapers have returned to the kiosks.

People ready to be inflamed can find through any medium sufficient fuel for their prejudices and passions. Radio, though, “affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener,” wrote media theorist Marshall McLuhan in 1964. “That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.”

The current exposure to hate radio in Ivory Coast is haunted by the Rwanda genocide nearly two decades ago where violence claimed 800,000 lives in 100 days. Radio Rwanda, State radio, directly encouraged killing ethnic Tutsi tribe-members. It was the notorious Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) – known also as Radio Machete - that effectively intermingled language, imagery and popular music to incite violence. “You (Tutsis) are cockroaches,” repeated the RTLM broadcasts. “We will kill you.”

RTLM leaders Ferdinand Nahimana, and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza were charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) with genocide, incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity. They were convicted and received 30 year prison terms. “The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility,” wrote the ICTR justices in their decision. “Those who control such media are accountable for its consequences.” On appeal both were acquitted of conspiracy to commit genocide.

The ICTR decision has become a standard in international law. It also came with controversy, case law cited from countries where freedom of speech is curbed, and dissent. The Appeals Chamber took issue with the distinction between “incitement” of a crime (genocide) and direct incitement to genocide. It affirmed the ICTR opinion that “cultural context… could be evaluated to determine if the words used were clearly understood by the intended audience,” explained Sophia Kagan in a Hague Justice Portal review (April 24, 2008).

Free speech absolutists argue against any curbs lest democratic values be undermined. Many countries ban incendiary speech in all or most media when specific groups are targeted. Hungary’s new and controversial Media Act banning “hate language” is representative of European law sensitive to historical ethnic-bourn violence. Some national law curbs hate speech on radio and television outlets citing limited broadcast spectrum.

New media has given unlimited opportunities to hate speech, precluding any idea of limits to free speech. After a European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) seminar in Istanbul, Turkey’s Human Rights Association chairman Ozturk Turkdogan, quoted in Daily Zamen (January 16), observed “the internet should not be used as a platform for any form of violence.” Lessons learned from hate radio will only heighten the debate over the distinction between “yelling fire in a crowded theater” and “theater of the mind.”

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