We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families

“The dead bodies looked like pictures of the dead. They did not smell. They did not buzz with flies. They had been killed thirteen months earlier, and they hadn’t been moved. Skin stuck here and there over the bones, many of which lay scattered away from the bodies, dismembered by the killers, or by scavengers – birds, dogs, bugs,” wrote Philip Gourevtich after visiting Nyarubuye, Rwanda.
The story of Rwanda reminds us of all the great failures of mankind. In these situations the failings of mankind come in two categories. First, the actual act of genocide demonstrates an extreme lack of human restraint. Humans failed to restrain their personal actions. Second, and this is where the United States and other advanced nations come in, is the failure of those who knew to intervene but chose not to. Humans with the ability to restrain evil willfully chose not to.
The problem of human restraint and the lack of responsible action can be found all throughout history and cultures and contexts. Both of those problems can be solved when people with the ability to exercise human restraint and responsibly restrain others place themselves in volatile areas. Specifically, those people are journalists. Responsible journalists practice restraint in every sentence, interview and story, and the power of the press gives them the ability to restrain the actions of others. Therefore, the most appropriate response to the past acts of incredible inhumanity is to place journalists in the present day places most likely to explode.