Director Edward Zwick noted in the DVD commentary that Captain Poison's touching of Dia Vandy has a sexual undercurrent. Who knows what kind of abuse poor Dia had to endure from this monster offscreen?
Although Colonel Coetzee gets killed, he and his private military company essentially get everything they wanted—money for diamond smuggling, selling arms to both the RUF and Sierre Leone government, and diamond mining concessions for "liberating" the diamond fields from the rebels. In short they pulled off a The Bad Guy Wins unless Maddie's exposure of them got foreign governments to crack down on them.
More simply, Maddie's article probably had a big effect on the consumers. This is reflected in the real-life effect the film had on a company suspected of dealing in blood diamonds - whose sales dropped. So appalled white middle and upper class readers likely refused to buy any more, greatly affecting their business.
