by MLouise Uwizeyimana
Rwanda, every beginning of the month of April, on a sad note commemorates 100 days of the Genocide against the Tutsi (Kwibuka) since 1994. It is this time when the nation remembers, mourns and reflects towards the past hard times. Testimonies, stories are told and reflections of the worst days brought back to the limelight through radio talk shows and community meetings. As for journalists who document the stories year after year, listening, recording, writing the testimonies of the survivors, isn’t easy as they try hold firm to be able to carry the burden of others’ trauma which later, in a many ways affect them psychologically.
Meeting Dr. Lydia Ouma Radoli: A Shared Concern
The often-overlooked psychological problem that has cropped among the journalists during kwibuka days came to my attention after meeting Dr. Lydia Ouma Radoli, a Kenyan academic, former journalist, now Associate Dean and Senior Lecturer at the School of Communication, Daystar University. Dr Radoli who once worked at Contact FM a Radio Station in Rwanda, has spent years researching on media, trauma and healing. Her work, “Healing Rwanda’s Genocide Trauma: A Re-construction of Painful Oral Historical Narratives,” brings to light how storytelling has been used to rebuild Rwanda’s social fabric after yet another of the world’s darkest chapters.
Her paper, available on ResearchGate, tells how oral narratives and video testimonies, many archived by the Aegis Trust for the Prevention of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, serve not only as tools of memory but also as pathways to healing. “Through remembering,” she writes, “Rwandans reconstruct meaning and reframe trauma.”
In year 2023 when I met her, our conversation quickly turned personal and as a journalist who has covered genocide stories for a number of years, I found that Dr. Radoli’s research is a true reflection of my own unspoken experiences and also of my colleagues who have gone through the same emotional challenges during the “Kwibuka times”. Her academic findings resonated with my livid reality of the emotional reality of reporting on trauma without receiving psychological support.
The Journalists Behind the Stories
Since 1994, Rwandan journalists have been on the frontlines of documenting history. They have recorded testimonies of survivors, listened to confessions from perpetrators, and witnessed exhumations of mass graves. They have been called upon to reconstruct the tragedy, to translate tears into sentences, and silence into soundbites, however few have ever been asked how they feel after covering such stories.
Curious and concerned, I decided to conduct interviews with several senior and emerging journalists, to understand how they cope with the emotional impact of genocide reporting. From our discussions, a shared truth emerged: journalists carry deep, often unrecognized trauma.
“Between the year 2013-2014 when I worked at Isango Star Radio I travelled to interview a genocide survivor for a portrait piece amidst uncertainty on how they might break down narrating such sad moments, but it turned out that I myself would need help by end of the day. Where I thought I was strong enough to handle such sombre moments, it was instead the survivors comforting me. After listening through all the horrible stories I couldn’t even return home that night as I found myself in a hotel, shaken and unable to finish the piece. My colleague had to complete it for me.” Said Aissa Cyiza, a journalist at Royal FM
Journalists acknowledge that each remembrance season brings back to mind painful memories. Some sob on the job, overwhelmed by what they have heard or witnessed. A few openly reveal that they encountered trauma symptoms, nightmares, anxiety, or numbness but have never accessed professional help because newsroom culture does not always support emotional vulnerability.
Another journalist called Musoni Edwin working with the New Times told me, “We get objectified to be objective, but how do you remain objective when you are standing in front of a mass grave with children? If there is a survivor weeping in front of you, you’re no longer a journalist, your human.
I once heard a testimony where an Interahamwe confessed to murdering and eating hearts of victims. Another survivor, a child I met, goes to a mass grave to write letters to her mother, asking why she left her alone. Those are memories that remain with you for life.”
The Hidden Burden
Behind the scenes for years, the mental well-being of journalists in Rwanda has been a non-story. The spotlight quite rightly fell on survivors ensuring they heal and witness justice but not on journalists recording and reporting their testimonies.
Yet, as Dr. Radoli’s research and other trauma studies suggest, secondary trauma is real. Journalists who are repeatedly exposed to distressing stories do internalize the pain of those they interview. Without professional counselling or structured debriefing, the emotional build-up becomes a silent burden.
In almost all of our news media houses, this topic is rarely talked about. Editors insist on stories to be submitted, not feelings to be shared. Some few media managers do realize the need for psychological support networks for journalists, counselling initiatives, mentorship programs, and peer support groups.
Hakuzwumuremyi Joseph, a journalist working with UmuryangoTV says, “There are some cases I can no longer report on, especially those of the genocide culprits. Sometimes you already know facts of what crimes they have committed but they continue to lie in courts and it affects me emotionally as justice is sometimes denied to the victims due to the lies of the perpetrators who are often driven by ideologies of hate, discrimination, and the desire to eliminate or control a targeted population as they did to the Tutsi.”
As one editor told me on the record, “We make our reporters cover trauma, but we never teach them how to cope. That has to change.”
When Tears Become Testimonies
When I was filming my short documentary about this, I experienced moments that revealed the vulnerability of journalists under their professional strength. Some lost composure and wept in the middle of an interview, not being able to continue. Others requested that I don’t show their faces because they feared it would expose their “weakness.”
But I saw no weakness but humanity. There is a human being behind every by-line or broadcast report who has absorbed pieces of Rwanda’s pain, without at times the chance to shed it.
One such person, is a well renowned journalist that currently works with AfriMedia. She narrates her encounters with lots of pain over the ordeal she endured covering one of the worst human catastrophic moments that happened during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
“Just a year after the genocide, in 1995, I was reporting on people searching for their loved ones’ bodies. I encountered a body of a woman who had been killed in labour/giving birth, with some protruding parts of the baby still insider of her. It is something that has stayed with me since.” said Solange Ayanone sadly
Healing Through Telling
Dr. Radoli’s research reinforces the idea that storytelling, whether by survivors or journalists can also be a form of healing. She draws from oral history methodology, which involves systematically gathering testimonies from people who experienced significant events. These testimonies, when shared and preserved, do not only record facts; they humanize history.
Her work holds fast to my conviction that healing comes from sharing our suffering as journalists.
In the same line, Rushingabigwi Jean Bosco, former Lecturer, School of Journalism, University of Rwanda now working at Rwanda Governance Board as Head of Media Department notes that;
“Even the student journalists who weren’t born yet during the genocide period get emotionally affected when covering stories in their intern programs. You can feel their pain transferred in their reporting; it’s always in our collective memory. Therefore, there is need for us the stakeholders to look at this matter seriously in regards to supporting journalists during those trying times.”
The Call for Psychological Support
During the course of different interviews, reporters repeated the same call: they need access to psychological support.
Not as an add-on, but as a core part of their work.
Several suggested establishing collaborations with trauma therapists or mental health professionals through journalist organizations or unions, especially during the remembrance period while others called for regular workshops on trauma-sensitive reporting and self-care.
Psychologist Aimee Josiane Umulisa, working at GAERG a Group of Former Students and Pupils who Survived the Genocide and was once a journalist with Radio Izuba, agrees that reporters covering genocide and other traumatic events are subjected to severe emotional dangers that are ignored. She feels they need not only professional awards but also structured psychological counselling and peer emotional support.
She points out that reporters need to receive elementary training in trauma sensitivity and not merely to deal with their own emotions but also to look after each other through the painful realities they encounter in the line of duty.
“Journalists require a secure environment where they are able to share what they go through,” Josiane explains. “They carry heavy emotional loads with barely no one to talk to. Media associations should provide rooms for discussions where journalists are able to sit together, debrief, and recover as a group because emotional scars, if not treated, only get deeper.”
She also says that such programs could prevent burnout, depression, or withdrawal, which many journalists silently endure while carrying out their work under pressure.
These proposals follow global recommendations by media development organizations emphasizing journalist safety as not just physical danger but also emotional well-being.
The emotional well-being of reporters who report on war, genocide, or human rights abuses is essential not just for their own health but also for the integrity and compassion of their work.
Learning from Research and Practice
Dr. Radoli’s academic and professional background gives her a unique lens on this issue. As a former broadcast journalist in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, she understands the first-hand of emotional demands in journalism. Today, as a scholar and founder of Diaspora Radio, she advocates for media that humanizes narratives and supports those who tell them.
Her work supported by universities in Germany, the UK, Sweden, and Norway has been recognized internationally for its contribution to understanding media, migration, and trauma.
Dr. Radoli notes that just as much as everyone every person needs pyscological support during the genocide commeration days. Due consideration should be highly given to journalists as they carry the passive psychological burdens of the victims of genocide by reporting their stories
By connecting academic research with field experience, Dr. Radoli’s study offers both insight and validation: the emotional cost of genocide storytelling is real, and journalists need structured spaces to heal.
Towards a Culture of Care in Journalism
Rwanda remains a leader in reconciliation and resilience and now is a perfect time to impart the such virtues and wisdom to those that tell the stories of the nation. Journalists are not only witnesses but also carriers of memory. They witness the tears of grief from survivors and tell the path to peace but hid their own grief.
Rwanda’s recovery must be mutual, and journalists are not any exception to be left out. Journalists who have worked on the genocide stories and others call upon on all concerned to react positively to their plight.
Embedding trauma sensitivity into the curriculum of journalism school, news management, and media policy may be an enduring legacy.
Three decades down the road, journalists have been the nation’s chroniclers of hurt, justice, and rebirth. Their own stories, however, are not told.
By recognizing and attempting to reduce the psychological weight of reporting on the genocide, Rwanda’s media sector can be a model for the remainder of the world because healing is not solely for other people but also for the journalists.
Sometimes, the most agonizing narrative is the one you must recount not to other human beings, but to yourself.
