Blog: Media Network Weblog Friday, November 19, 2004
Post: Hate broadcasts continues in Ivory Coast
Hate broadcasts continues in Ivory Coast
Despite efforts by the UN Security Council to bring and end to the Hate broadcasts in the Ivory Coast, hate material continues to be aired. The government of the Ivory Coast defends them. According to President Laurent Gbago, they are justified because the country is in a state of war. Ivorian Radio Television, RTI, has been urging supporters of the President onto the streets where mobs have ransacked foreign-owned businesses and homes and, according to some reports, raped European women. RTI has been broadcasting patriotic songs, pictures of bloodied demonstrators allegedly killed by French troops, and appeals by politicians, preachers and Gbagbo loyalists to defend the nation against "settlers" and "imperialists."
According to RTI's Director General, Jean Paul Dahily, "It is not the journalists who are saying these things, it is the people." He said that "Radio and television are a weapon of the state at a time of war." Dahily took control of RTI after Government soldiers occupied RTI's headquarters and locked out the station's previous director, who had been appointed by a rebel communications minister in a power-sharing Cabinet formed under the truce accord. The FM relay stations of the BBC, VOA and Radio France International have been taken off the air, so people in the capital cannot hear the other side of the story.
#posted by Andy @ 10:55 UT
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but on the other hand... Wednesday, November 17, 2004
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UN says Ivory Coast hate broadcasts have ended
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The United Nations says it has intervened to stop Ivory Coast radio and television stations from broadcasting hate messages aimed at French nationals and other foreigners(see EJC media news 17/11/04). "Hate messages have given way to calls for return to work and the exercise of
restraint," UN chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said. "National radio and television have been airing peace messages significantly different in tone and content to the ones we have been hearing of late," Mr Eckhard told reporters. A UN expert on the prevention of genocide had called on the Ivory Coast authorities on Monday to condemn hate speech and put an immediate end to the messages broadcast on government-run stations, which were reminiscent of the virulent hate broadcasts that helped drive Rwanda's 1994 genocide of 800,000 people.
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Thursday, November 11, 2004
RSF says media in Ivory Coast broadcasting hate messages
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International press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says that the state media in Ivory Coast have become the exclusive mouthpiece of the government and its allies, and are being used to promote street demonstrations. RSF says that with few exceptions, the reports carried on Radio Côte d'Ivoire (RCI) and RadioTélévision Ivoirienne (RTI) have strayed completely from journalism into propaganda. Interspersed with nationalistic songs, phone-in contributions and interviews, RCI presenters flatter the "patriotism" of their listeners.
RSF also notes that a significant part of the press was silenced after the ransacking of several opposition newspapers by pro-government militia, the sabotaging of the FM transmitters that relay the programming of Radio France Internationale (RFI), the BBC World Service and Africa N°1, and the abrupt removal of RTI's director-general and his replacement by a government supporter, Jean-Paul Dahily.
Full RSF report:
Abidjan state media mix propaganda, disinformation and incitement to riot
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11824
#posted by Andy @ 09:04 UTC
#posted by Andy @ 09:04 UTC
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