Kony 2012 — What is wrong with the media?

On March 5th, "Kony 2012", a bril­liant, touch­ing and shock­ing, 30min video was posted on youtube, aimed to raise aware­ness of the abduc­tion and abuse of child sol­diers in Africa. The video was designed so well, it hit the soft spots of over 70 mil­lion view­ers in less than a week. A mas­ter­piece of mar­ket­ing that gath­ered the sup­port of mil­lions includ­ing celebri­ties and politi­cians. An instant suc­cess for Invis­i­ble Chil­dren — the NGO that decided to focus on an issue that, for decades, has been of lit­tle inter­est in main­stream media.

Only a few days after its release some­thing utterly bizarre and inter­est­ing hap­pened. Main­stream media and even many alter­na­tives aggres­sively attacked the film-maker for alleged inac­cu­ra­cies and inap­pro­pri­ate profit motifs. How­ever, they all agree that Joseph Kony is a "bad" guy and deserves to be elim­i­nated and that child sol­diers are a big and long-term prob­lem in some African countries.

Soon after the enor­mous rapid suc­cess fol­lowed an "intu­itive" hos­tile reac­tion of the media. Jason Rus­sel, co-founder of Invis­i­ble Chil­dren, who also fea­tured in the video along with his five year old son, suf­fered some­thing I would sim­ply call a pub­lic nervous-breakdown. Sud­denly the news pages were full of sto­ries about the his men­tal health break­down but also sto­ries that dive deeper into the issue of child sol­diers in Africa (now that the topic is popular).

Kony 2012: Rais­ing aware­ness of 3 decades of child sol­diers and abuse in Africa. Joseph Kony is wanted for "crimes against humanity".

The video aimed to pres­sure the US gov­ern­ment to pro­vide more sup­port to cap­ture the uncon­tro­ver­sial fero­cious crim­i­nal Joseph Kony. I would have pre­ferred to see a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of e.g. the UN — but hey, we are talk­ing about a few hun­dred troops or so to assist local gov­ern­ment forces to cap­ture the bad guy. This is hardly an Amer­i­can "inva­sion" in Africa.

So far the video has been crit­i­cised for the fol­low­ing points:

• Uganda is not any more affected by Kony's organ­i­sa­tion the Lord's Resis­tance Army (LRA) — although it has been until 2006. Appar­ently Kony has moved on  to other ter­ri­to­ries. This was also some­thing the Uganda gov­ern­ment was quick to point out try­ing to save the pub­lic image of Uganda
• Uganda like other African coun­tries have many other and big­ger prob­lems than thou­sands of abused child sol­diers forced to mur­der­ing their par­ents among others
• a too high bud­get for the mak­ing of the movie (they could have used the money in bet­ter ways)
• that he omit­ted that the cur­rent Uganda gov­ern­ment came to power using child soldiers
• a five year old — like the film mak­ers son fea­tured in the video should not know about these issues
• Invis­i­ble Chil­dren encour­ages every­one to raise aware­ness of the issue on one par­tic­u­lar day and pro­vides adver­tis­ing kits in exchange for money
• Suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing by  appeal­ing to the feel­ings of view­ers is painted as "pro­pa­ganda" [Note: the same media call polit­i­cal cam­paigns, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­mer­cials etc. great and nec­es­sary adver­tis­ing or even pub­lic relations. ]

I could now post a list of praised celebri­ties, politi­cians, CEOs, Hol­ly­wood block­busters, daily news, com­mer­cials that would make the above listed short­com­ings (in terms of ethics or accu­racy of infor­ma­tion)  fade in com­par­i­son. But I won't as I think the point I am try­ing to make is obvi­ous.
Mak­ing money with a good cause appar­ently is uneth­i­cal and so is good adver­tis­ing or sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. The growth depen­dent and profit eat­ing "beast" — our cho­sen eco­nomic sys­tem — is telling us that we must not let good things ben­e­fit from the sys­tem. At least there is much more ben­e­fit (profit) in bad­mouthing any­thing progressive.

I praise the  Kony 2012 video for the fol­low­ing points:

• effec­tively bring­ing the topic of child sol­diers and other African issues into the main­stream discussion
• rais­ing aware­ness of media des­per­ate to ride every pos­si­ble wave by turn­ing pos­i­tive devel­op­ments  into bet­ter sell­ing bad news
• per­mit­ting peo­ple to realise how mak­ing money with a good cause is con­sid­ered uneth­i­cal by our eco­nomic sys­tem with the media act­ing as gate­keep­ers. The same media par­tic­i­pate and pro­mote throw­ing mil­lions at so-called celebri­ties who do noth­ing else than act­ing as if they were some­one else or bonuses of bankers and politi­cians who mis­er­ably fail doing their jobs.

This phe­nom­e­nal aware­ness boost­ing video, almost as a side­line, effec­tively revealed the dan­ger­ous lack of objec­tive and cit­i­zen friendly, mean­ing­ful report­ing in the media. It is not infor­ma­tion but sen­sa­tion­al­ism that mat­ters in terms of profit. Unfor­tu­nately a good cause will never sell as well as a bad one in our cur­rent eco­nomic environment.

I wish Jason Rus­sell, the bril­liant film maker and co-founder of  Invis­i­ble Chil­dren, a fast recov­ery and the sup­port he deserves for his fan­tas­tic job.