A whole slew of words can be used to describe how I felt on the completion of this book: appalled, angry, misled, misinformed and uninformed and just generally devastated. Hired to run a class in Rwanda for journalists, the author whom had reported on the situation in the Congo, finds journalists who are afraid for their lives. Seems things are not a democratically rosy in the Kagome regime as have been reported. After the genocide rocked the country, Kagame seized power and has ruled by intimidation, threats, fear and murder. Journalists must use word games timescale the attention of this regime because criticism carries grave consequences not only for the journalist but for his family. And many countries, including my own, give this government millions of dollars in aid and hold his country up as the epitome of reform. Seriously? How screwed up is that? What is the matter with this world?

Reading this book one learns not only the problems of the journalists but of regular people swept away by what is going on and just trying to survive. The memorials of those victims of the genocide are run by the coup try are used more as a fear factor than a dedication. The United Nations is an ineffective body that generally looks the other way or chooses to not see so they do not have to confront the truth. A small book in pages but large in content, written clearly and concisely. Eventually the author's program is shut down because there are no more journalists to train. The right of reporting and the need for intensive reporting can not be overstated but is often the first thing to be threatened and taken away in these dictatorships. The appendix lists the reporters whom have been killed, threatened or who have left, naming them and what happened to them. An important book, I think but a devastating one. ( )