Quote of note:

As a visiting lecturer at USC's Annenberg School for Communication, I talked with a number of journalism students fresh from seeing the movie and fired with outrage, demanding to know why nothing had been done. Why had the world remained silent while the butchers did their work? Why hadn't there been coverage? Why hadn't it been on the news? Well, it was. I showed them the tapes of the broadcasts my "Nightline" crew did at the time. And when they were over, there was stunned silence.

There Is Evil
A TV news producer thought he'd seen humanity at its worst in Kosovo, Somalia, and other infernos, but what he saw in Rwanda was unspeakable. Until now.
By Leroy Sievers
Leroy Sievers is a former executive producer of "Nightline."
June 12, 2005

I sit outside the theater on the third street promenade in Santa Monica, dialing the same number over and over on my cellphone. "You have to come with me," I say to my friend and former "Nightline" colleague Rick Wilkinson. I demand. Then plead. "Please, I can't do this alone." We are talking about seeing a movie. "Hotel Rwanda."

I am wondering if I can sit through it. Wondering if I will start sobbing the way I did in those cursed fields in Africa more than a decade ago. Wondering if the nightmares will start again. But Rick, who was with me in Rwanda, refuses to see the movie. Doesn't even hesitate. The horrors of that place still haunt him. And he is adamant.

I sit there, in the midst of the shoppers and the tourists, the street musicians and the street people, for more than an hour, trying to get up the courage to go into the theater. It's only a movie, after all. But it's a movie having an impact, maybe a greater impact than the coverage of the actual events. It's funny how people think something isn't real until they see it in a movie. Seeing "Saving Private Ryan" let them live through the screaming terror of combat. Seeing "Hotel Rwanda" let them experience the horror of genocide unleashed. But then they went home.

As a visiting lecturer at USC's Annenberg School for Communication, I talked with a number of journalism students fresh from seeing the movie and fired with outrage, demanding to know why nothing had been done. Why had the world remained silent while the butchers did their work? Why hadn't there been coverage? Why hadn't it been on the news? Well, it was. I showed them the tapes of the broadcasts my "Nightline" crew did at the time. And when they were over, there was stunned silence.

I go in alone that night in Santa Monica. As the movie ends and the credits are rolling, I hear that same silence. And then, one at a time, slowly, people begin to speak. "Oh my God." "How could that have happened?" "Why didn't anybody do anything?" For the people in the theater, like my students, the movie is their first taste of the Rwanda nightmare. I have a very different reaction.

I walk back out to join the nighttime crowd. I think that it is a good movie. But it doesn't come close. And I feel that I am different from all of those people enjoying a spring night in Santa Monica. Because I remember.