Washington, D.C. — [Tuesday through Friday the ABC television news program "Nightline", hosted by Ted Koppel, will continue with the final four parts of a 5-part series on Congo that began airing Friday. The series digs into the roots and cost of Congo's devastating three-year-war that has cost an estimated two-and-a-half million lives, and involved seven nations. The decision by a mainstream network television program to tackle the complex Congo story has caught many observers by surprise. AllAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr. spoke with Nightline Executive Producer Tom Bettag about the series]
Q: Why did you decide to do this particular series? I was struck by Ted Koppel's apologetic tone introducing the first program. Television should have been in Congo sooner, he said. "We have let you down," were his words.
A: Ted and I have talked for an incredibly long time about the terrible job that television news in general is doing covering Africa. And the assumption that people don't care is probably our fault. It is our job to help people care. People ask the question, 'Why should I care?' and we should be able to answer that. So, we started off saying, 'How can we approach Africa in a way that makes people care?' and in looking [at Africa] we started seeing some general things. One of them: States that have more wealth have had more problems because of outside interference because of all the money that's at stake. And the second we started going down that road, we...your eye goes immediately to the Congo. About the time that we were looking really closely at that, the IRC came out with its report [International Rescue Committee report on death as a result of conflict in the Eastern Congo, released in May 2001] and on the day that a story about it appeared in the Washington Post both of us called each other at the crack of dawn saying, 'God, did you see that!' and 'Why haven't we heard about this?' [Editor note: The report found a disproportionate number of women and children killed in the conflict.] and 'If this is true - if it's even half true, it's absolutely outrageous that nobody's taken a look at it. This is what we've gotta do!' Congo's story became one of the obvious choices. This story is of such magnitude and the coverage has been so minimal that it became a very easy call. And then the question became one of danger. The word had come through the journalistic community that Congo was about as dangerous as you can get. So, could you do it safely and the logistics of pulling that off were time consuming.
Q: You are all news people. Congo has been in the news for three or four years. I'm wondering if anything you encountered doing this series surprised you?
A: I think there were surprises at every turn. Its been in the news but I think that for the mainstream American press it hasn't been in our consciousness. The magnitude was surprising, not having a very good sense of how large a population is affected by this conflict. Neither Ted nor I had ever been to Congo and were blown away by the country and the people - by the beauty, the wealth - the country has so many resources, fertile land and whatever, and to see such poverty and starvation just kind of knocked our heads back. The other part of this is that for the Congolese people who had been through so much to be so warm and hospitable was an absolute surprise and delight.
Q: What are you trying to get across to your audience here, an audience which doesn't know very much about Congo?
A: First, people simply need to know that this is happening. Secondly, to try and take what is a very complicated story and turn it into something that is more coherent, break through the complexity. An awful lot of people say, 'This war with its various factions and nations involved is just too complicated for people to be able to understand. It is our job to make complicated things clear but to not run away from the background of the thing. That was one of the big challenges. I am sure legitimate criticism can be leveled that we've over-simplified but getting it [Congo's conflict] to the level of complexity that is there would be very tough [for television to do].
Q: There has already been some criticism of the name, 'Heart of Darkness.' How and why did you come to use that name for the series?
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A: Ted uses the line that this is at times still 'the heart of darkness.' And we do a lot of linking to the idea that for a hundred years this is a country that has been in torment largely because of its riches, linking a lot to its colonial history. So we hope that the title is one thing that people know about Congo and they have a little bit of sense of the Congo in Belgium days and can see that the agony still goes on. We're hoping that we can make that connection. We are saying that this is a country in agony and that the people of Congo are suffering enormously. It seems to us that Conrad is at least a point of reference. Clearly, the Conrad book is a huge point of controversy but it is at least a known point. We've run into people who are very concerned that this is one more 'tragedy' story of Africa that gives the sense that Africa is nothing but a set of tragedies. But to report what's going on in Congo right now is a huge tragedy; you just can't mask that. That's what's there.
