Habermas and Ghosts of Rwanda

In regards to Ghosts of Rwanda, Habermas would say that in some ways, the documentary is an example of the public sphere.  “Newspapers and magazine, radio and television are the media of the public sphere,” he says.  Because the documentary appeared as part of Frontline on PBS, the documentary meets this qualification of the public sphere.  However, public broadcasting is owned by the government, and “although state authority is so to speak the executor of the political public sphere, it is not part of it.”  The documentary does have a very political subject matter and a political opinion within it.  Ghosts of Rwanda seems to criticize the United Nations and the American government for not taking more appropriate actions when the genocide began.  While it does provide a lot of information about the genocide in Rwanda, it doesn’t do so without a political bias.  Habermas would argue that political control is not being subordinated to the public’s demand for information, therefore limiting its classification as part of the public sphere.  However, Habermas also notes that “public discussions about the exercise of political power” are critical to the public sphere, therefore making Ghosts of Rwanda an example of the public sphere.  I’m not quite sure how Habermas would classify the documentary, because there seem to be some aspects of the film that support its classification as part of the public sphere and some aspects that do not.