Recent reports that the American Red Cross has been spending more resources on public relations than on actually helping victims of disasters is what many Africans have known for a long time. That is, Africans have known for a long time that aid organizations are often interested in appealing to their donors than to actually helping those who suffer disaster. As Marianne Gullestad has shown in Picturing Pity, an important part of aid organizations' public relations is the showing of pictures that appeal to their donors rather than to those who are the supposed beneficiaries of the aid. Which is why those who rely on aid agencies in order to get a better understanding of what is going on in disaster zones around the world often do not get a good picture. The case of the American Red Cross is therefore not new.
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