Interview about independent publishing online and the Rwanda election
Rachel at journalism.co.uk asked me a few questions about publishing kigaliwire.com and specifically about how this worked during the 2010 Rwanda Presidential election period. Here’s the article that ran. The entire email Q&A is below,
Just generally first can you give a brief desc of Kigali Wire (is it more image-based now?) Can you clarify what you do.
There are number of components to Kigali Wire. Firstly, it’s a place for me to blog about events I witness in Rwanda and showcase the photojournalism I do. Secondly, it’s an aggregation service (fed from my delicious account) for news about Rwanda and thirdly, it’s effectively the “homepage” to a far larger experiment in using social media tools to distribute news and interact with people who are interested in Rwanda.
I distribute links, blog posts, images and occasionally video across 100 or more different social media sites. I’ve been doing this for a year now and while some sites garner zero connections or interest in Rwanda, others - like Twitter, Flickr, Moblog and Ipernity - are quite highly engaged, particularly Twitter.
I’ve found publishing in this manner is a good way to make yourself more visible and an excellent way to interact. I documented the whole process I went through in setting up the site on, what I call, the Kigali Back Wire.
What were your concerns when covering the Rwanda elections? What challenges did you think you would face as a reporter? What are the challenges for other media?
As regards safety, I had very few concerns. It might sound like Rwanda is a dangerous place to live given it’s horrific history, recent grenade attacks in Kigali, assassinations and suppression of the political opposition, but in general, and especially for foreigners, Kigali is a calm place to live.
The biggest challenge for any reporter in Rwanda is separating rumour from fact. I lived in Vietnam for ten years where rumour, gossip and suspicion are normal, but Rwanda takes that concept up several notches, rungs and gradations of difficulty. And then some.
I’m not really reporting in the conventional sense, as I am not affiliated with any one news agency. I’m not looking to sell features and photography. I’m just trying to document what I see, where I see it on Kigali Wire.
I earn my living by training journalists and consultancy work. Having said that, without having a big media organisation’s name behind me, I’m sure I will find certain doors closed to me in the future. Asking someone for an interview for a blog post as opposed to a feature in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times or wotnot is still a step too far in many countries. And Rwanda is no different in that regard.
I am talking to a couple of big media outlets about possible “working arrangements” but I’m loathe to go down that line if it takes too much time away from Kigali Wire.
As for other media, the biggest challenge for Rwandan journalists is self-censorship. This is a necessity if they want to continue earning a living. For parachuted in foreign correspondents, the problem is getting to the story. This is an incredibly complex part of the world, a place that requires a lot of time in country to get to know, far more than anywhere else I’ve visited. And most media organisations simply do not have the resources to do this place justice, to really get to understand Rwanda.
How did you report on the matter? How did social media help you report?
I travelled around Rwanda on the campaign trail of all the parties for a week. I worked in tandem with Hereward Holland, the Reuters correspondent based in Kigali and Finbarr O’Reilly, a Reuters photographer who used to live in Rwanda. Reuters have far greater access than I do. What they don’t have, and I do, is a reliable car. So, we spent a lot of time covering a lot of miles on dusty roads, talking to a lot of people and taking a lot of photographs.
On election day, we drove through Kigali and the eastern provinces taking pictures and talking to people from before 5AM. It was an exhausting day, but I think we got a good sense of what was going on both inside the showcase election in the capital and with some of the more dubious goings on in the countryside.
I used an iPhone in the field to upload images, tweets and video across the reliable cellular network. However, I was concentrating predominantly on photography using a Ricoh GRD III point and shoot.
I typically took 400 or more images a day and would edit them at night and upload some of them to a number of photosharing sites using Pixelpipe and append the better ones to blog posts on Kigali Wire and the slideshow that greets you on the homepage.
During the day, what difficulties did yourself and other journalists come up against, or did you find it easier to cover than you thought?
I didn’t expect any problems to be honest. Again, maybe the question reflects the perception of Rwanda as seen from overseas. Security was fairly tight at the Presidential rallies. At other rallies it was virtually non-existent. At one PSD rally - I saw just one policeman. No-one asked to see any credentials at the opposition rallies.
On polling day, the fact that I forgot my press pass meant I couldn’t get into the polling booths to photograph the insides. Although Finbarr did and took some great images.
It’s important to listen to local journalists about how best to talk to people, how best to approach people. I learned a lot from Rwandan journalists. They are the experts on their culture. There’s nothing worse than some safari suit bumbling about as if he knows it all. Listening is the first step towards respect and understanding.
In regards to pressures on the media not to report negatively on the President - have these become heightened since his re-election?
Well, that’s a little too early to say. The official result is only due today. I think this is a problem that impacts Rwandan journalists more than foreigners. However, it is definitely an issue for all journalists. It’s something I hope Rwanda can get to grips with in the coming months and years. The government, quite rightly, points to the hideous role of hate media during the Genocide in 1994. They want to minimise the chances of that ever re-emerging. However, there are some very good arguments that the time is now right to start opening up the media space (and the President would seem to agree. Media should operate freely, he says)
What are your immediate comments as a journalist now the election is finished? What are your concerns for the immediate future?
The election was theatre. I’m more interested in where Rwanda will be in two years’ time, and certainly in seven years when the Presidential term ends.
Rwanda has gone through something of a PR shit storm these past few months. It’s difficult to see how it will emerge in the eyes of the world when the dust settles.
However, this country has proven itself to be remarkably savvy at public image management. Only time will tell whether public perception of Rwanda and the “African success story” it is so often labelled as has changed permanently for the worse, or whether recent events are just a series of rather nasty blips.
