Reading this headline left only one impression: that CNN had proof that the “opposition leader” indeed was dead. This is CNN remember, the world-renowned news organization.
Read through the article, from top to bottom however and you will realize that nowhere do they say the alleged dead man, Boniface Twagirimana of FDU Inkingi, is dead. All they have are insinuations, and the unproven claims of other FDU members.
So the headline of the CNN story, written by one Kara Fox, is misleading right off the bat. The writer is not objective in any journalistic terms.
We can all agree upon even with CNN that Boniface Twagirimana did indeed escape from the Mpanga Prison. The story was all over the local media. However the fact of his escape was the only immediately established truth of the story.
Where CNN get’s its headline that the Rwandan “opposition party leader” is feared dead, only they know. Did the CNN reporter find a body, perhaps one that looks like Twagirimana’s? They do not say. Did CNN find witnesses who saw anyone kill the man? Did anyone tell them they saw traces of blood? None of that happened.
What makes the news organisation write these things? We can hazard a guess. Is it perhaps that the only thing CNN proves with their headline is their casual contempt of Africans, or people that aren’t from America or Europe?
One doubts the organisation would ever insinuate that the government of America, or anywhere else in the West had murdered someone, with no evidence. In fact, short of a full-scale investigation and conclusive proof they never would make such a serious allegation about any of their institutions, leave alone government.
But for us, it is enough for them to harbor certain biases against a country’s leadership for them to be publishing things like the CNN story on the FDU man. It is standard practice to do something like Kara Fox did – take the allegations of the escaped man’s fellow FDU/Inkingi members (or their sympathizers) and give them prominence, as if their utterances were enough proof of the alleged death.
You can be certain that should Twagirimana turn up somewhere, alive, no one at CNN will be bothering to issue a correction, or an apology.
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