Very compelling read from Jakob Schiller on WIRED’s Raw File below. (Also, worth reading this Washington Post article if you have not come across it):
The video calling for a national campaign to raise awareness about Joseph Kony, the International Criminal Court’s #1 most-wanted warlord, has been viewed more than 100 million times since it was published on March 5. The day of action it calls for is tomorrow, April 20. While most people agree that Kony should be brought to justice for his crimes against the Ugandan people and children, the video has come under criticism for oversimplifications that could actually do harm to the people it aims to help.
For photographer Glenna Gordon, the inaccuracies were particularly shocking because she had spent two years in Uganda as a stringer for the Associated Press and knew that the facts on the ground were much different than what was portrayed. Not only is Kony no longer a threat to Northern Uganda, a fact glossed over in the video, but his army has shrunk to a few hundred.
“There was an enormous blank left in the video,” she says.
Gordon is also the photographer who took the now-famous photo of the video’s creators, Jason Russell and the founders of the charity organization Invisible Children, holding guns with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army during peace talks between Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government. In it, the founders look more like frat boys playing at war than serious humanitarian workers…
Read More: WIRED’s Raw File
