Editor, RE: “No Rwandan peacekeepers killed in S. Sudan – Ministry of Defence” (The New Times, November 25). Whether based on factual or fiction, the word Rwanda in any article seems to sell. And so, this kind of failure by foreign – supposedly “major” – media organisations to undertake the most cursory of fact-checks in their stories on the country. We are faced with a paradox; the more the coverage, the less reliably informative it seems to be! With a few honourable exceptions, relying on the mainstream western media to understand Rwanda developments is almost akin to watching Hotel Rwanda (another mainstream western offering) to understand the history of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. In both cases, you almost invariably end up with a highly distorted understanding of the reality. MK
