Aired 08/08/11

KILL THE MESSENGER emerged from MARIA ARMOUDIAN's studies into the causes of genocide, war, peacemaking, democratization, and the protection of human rights and the environment, while she was working on her Ph.D. at the University of Southern California, as well as during her work as a broadcast journalist and public official. Looking across conflicts and policy successes and failures, she found that media (and media professionals) were among key factors in determining political outcomes, including matters of life and death.

Written in five parts, KILL THE MESSENGER shows how media fomented rage and genocide in Rwanda, the Holocaust and the Bosnian war; how they helped bring peace in the Northern Ireland Conflict and the war in Burundi; how media contributed to democratization and the protection of human rights in South Africa, Taiwan, Mexico, and Senegal, and how they aided both the destruction and rebuilding of democracy in Chile. In its final case study, Kill the Messenger explores the media's role in the fate of the world, as journalists disentangle the issue of climate change for the public.

The book's forward was written by Tom Hayden.