Why I live in Minnesota and write about Ethiopia - Twin Cities Daily Planet - August 13, 2008

By Doug McGill

"Why the hell are you messing with my country's political affairs?" goes a typical e-mail from the dozens I've received this summer from readers living in Ethiopia, from immigrants living in Minnesota, and from throughout the Ethiopian Diaspora.

And this was among the milder messages to ping my inbox.

To a degree I've never before experienced as a journalist, articles I'm publishing about human rights abuses in Ethiopia-based on interviews with Ethiopian immigrants living here in Minnesota - have triggered profusely grateful e-mails, and yet also a torrent of messages scorching me with bitter denunciations, extremely pungent abuse and amorphous threats.

"You are only spreading hate," an Ethiopian reader snapped after reading an article about the Ethiopian army wiping out entire villages in the country's Ogaden region. On Ethiopian web sites around the Internet, my articles are bashed as often as they're lauded. To admirers, my writings make me a "hero," a "journalist of integrity" and "a voice for the voiceless." But to others I'm a "very sad," "naive" and "mediocre" journalist who is "fed by propaganda" churned out by bitter Ethiopian refugees. To detractors my pieces are "nonsense," "rubbish" and "eye-gouging lies." Read More.