What happens when journalists attack? To find out, look no further than the pages of this month’s “Columbia Journalism Review.” The story begins with “One Man’s Rwanda,” Tristan McConnell’s feature on American journalist Philip Gourevitch, most famous for his best-selling book on the Rwandan genocide, “We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.” As McConnell notes, the feature is “an exploration of the debate over how Paul Kagame and his Rwanda are represented in the Western press, a debate approached through the frame of one Rwanda’s best known chroniclers.” McConnell’s point, which I don’t dispute, is that as the dominant narrative about Paul Kagame has begun to change, Gourevitch’s writing and reporting has failed to change with it. This, despite the release of high-profile documents implicating Kagame and his government in serious crimes, including most recently the UN mapping report, and signs of growing repression within the country. It’s a fair piece, which in the end, also reveals that almost 17 years after the fact, no one has yet to figure out how to talk about Rwanda, least of all Gourevitch.

Gourevitch, of course, responded by doing his best Alex Perry impression. You’ll remember fellow American journalist Alex Perry’s freakout last year over criticism about his coverage of the Congo, or as Perry likes to put it, “the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be.”

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