Anti-Kony campaign in
turmoil after filmmaker's breakdown
By Mary Slosson, ReutersMarch
23, 2012
Jason
Russell, co-founder of non-profit Invisible Children and director of "Kony
2012" viral video campaign, poses in New York, March 9, 2012. The director
of a viral video that calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the fugitive rebel
leader of Lord's Resistance Army militia group in Uganda, agreed on Friday with
skeptics who have called the film oversimplified, saying it was deliberately made
that way.
Photograph by: Brendan McDermid , Reuters
LOS
ANGELES, March 23 (Reuters) - The public meltdown of the man behind the viral
“Kony 2012” video has thrown his campaign into turmoil even as the film
succeeded in turning the world’s attention to capturing an elusive and brutal
Ugandan warlord.
Jason
Russell, whose 30-minute video sensation shone a spotlight on Joseph Kony’s use
of child soldiers in Uganda, was taken by police to a hospital in California
last week after suffering what doctors described as a brief psychotic
breakdown.
Videos
posted online showed him pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, naked, in broad
daylight, in an incident certain to raise questions over the viability of
Russell’s Invisible Children group.
“You
always hear people say, ’I’m so stressed out, I’m about to go crazy,”’ said
Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular
Culture at Syracuse University. “Still, the story of all this happening and
then he literally is wigging out is very odd.”
He
said the episode could serve to divert attention from the warlord to Russell.
“Now whenever you see a Kony story, it’s about the guy, not Kony.”
Kony,
accused of terrorizing northern Uganda for two decades, is wanted by the
International Criminal Court for war crimes. He is accused of abducting
children to use as fighters and sex slaves and is said to like hacking off
limbs.
Russell’s
wife, Danica, has said her husband would remain under hospital care for a
number of weeks, and might not be able to return fully to his work at Invisible
Children for months.
In
downtown San Diego, Invisible Children’s office has been locked up.
Russell’s
Invisible Children co-founders, Laren Poole and Bobby Bailey, declined through
a spokeswoman to be interviewed, as did the organization’s CEO, Ben Keesey.
Keesey
has attributed Russell’s breakdown to the severe emotional toll of the previous
two weeks in which the Kony video went viral. Even as the video drew attention
to the warlord, it sparked criticism over what some called its misleading
portrayal of current events in Uganda.
A
spokeswoman would not say how or if Invisible Children planned to proceed with
a planned April 20 day of action, in which viewers of the video were asked to
paper their homes, lawns and cities with Kony posters to turn him into a
household name.
RENEWED
EFFORTS TO HUNT KONY
Analysts
said the fate of the group may be largely irrelevant because it had already
served the purpose of persuading millions to care, and policy decisions were
taking shape.
“It’s
rare that we have literally millions of Americans calling for more engagement
in Africa,” Senator Chris Coons, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
subcommittee on African Affairs, told Reuters in an interview, noting his
subcommittee normally received far less attention than it had since the “Kony
2012” video was released.
“I
was both amused, pleased and proud that all three of my kids asked me what I
was doing to stop Joseph Kony,” Coons said.
Attempts
by regional forces and foreign troops to corner the fugitive warlord have so
far failed. But on Friday, the African Union said it would launch a
5,000-strong force in South Sudan to hunt him.
The
African Union move is in addition to 100 U.S. military advisers President Barack
Obama sent to the region last year to help Ugandan forces track Kony down.
Kony’s
Lord’s Resistance Army is a shadow of its former self, numbering about 250
members, according to a December 2011 report published by the Social Science
Research Council.
Some
200 of them are with Kony in the Central African Republic, and 50 others are in
the Democratic Republic of Congo, the report said.
The
video Russell directed, interspersing shots of his own young son with those of
suffering Ugandan children, depicts children walking into the city center of
the Uganda city of Gulu at night to avoid capture.
But
active violence like that has not been seen in northern Uganda in seven or
eight years, according to Laura Seay, a professor at Morehouse College, who
studies conflict and community in central Africa.
“LRA
victims are depicted as absolutely helpless,” Seay said, characterizing the
portrayal as neo-colonial and saying the film may have mischaracterized the
nature of Gulu, where the number of children taking nightly refuge dwindled
after a truce between government forces and the LRA in 2006.
“You
have coffee shops and pizza places in Gulu. It’s absolutely peaceful,” she
said.
Seay
suggested that those whose interest in the region were piqued by the Invisible
Children campaign turn their attention next to more active warlords in the
region such as Bosco Ntaganda, nicknamed “The Terminator,” and also wanted by
the ICC for war crimes.
Ntaganda,
a Rwandan operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is accused of conscripting
child soldiers under age 15 to carry arms and fight in open conflict.
“He
walks freely,” Seay said. “I know where he eats dinner every night.”
© Copyright (c) Reuters
Reflections
1.
What is the link to Crisis Management?
The story of Invisible Children and their Kony2012 campaign has
unfolded and taken a bizarre turn. It seems that Jason Russell, one of the
co-founders and the narrator of the Kony2012 video has had a very public psychotic
breakdown. Russell ran through the streets of San Diego naked and was later
arrested by police for lewd behaviour. This has put his organization Invisible
Children in crisis. Their head office in San Diego has been shut down and their
campaign has been tainted by this event. Their supporters are now unsure of
what they should do on April 20th, which the video had marked as a
day of action by putting posters of Kony up all over the world in order to make
more people aware of the warlord and his crimes against humanity.
2.
What stage of Crisis Management does the system
appear to be at?
The organization Invisible Children is now in a full blown crisis. This
is because their head offices in San Diego have been closed since this
incident. This incident has directly affected the organization’s business
continuity and has adversely affected the services they provide to their primary
stakeholders because their campaign and the organization are now under further
scrutiny and have lost credibility and the trust of the public. The speed at
which news travels through social media has further amplified this crisis.
Videos of Russell screaming profanities and running through the streets of San
Diego have been shared through social media and traditional media outlets.
Since the organization’s video campaign (Kony 2012) went viral through social
media, this is the same medium being used by the public to share the crisis
that the organization is going through now.
The Invisible Children is not handling this situation well. They have
refused to make any statements about this event to the media and have not
responded through social media or through their blog on the Invisible Children
website. Before this particular crisis, the organization had been responding to
all the criticisms of them and their campaign through their blog but has not responded
to this event through that medium either. Jason Russell’s wife is the only one
that has made a statement to the media but that is a personal response. The
organization needs to have a spokesperson that can respond to this event and
this crisis. This spokesperson should be someone that had been prepared
beforehand and who had addressed the previous para-crisis of criticisms in the
media. This spokesperson should also be a subject matter expert on the
organization, its finances and the health of the founder and what lead to his
breakdown. Lastly, this spokesperson should address the public and their supporters’
concerns about the business continuity of the Invisible Children and the “action
day” that is planned for April 20th of this year.
Because of the peculiarity of this event, the media has
picked up on the story and is using it to justify the criticism of the campaign
that was brought to light when the video first went viral. This also seems to
justify their critiques of the organization and the intentions of the founders.
4.
What level of crisis preparedness does the
system appear to have?
The organization did not seem very prepared for this crisis
at all. They should have seen that Russell was “overworked and overstressed”
and told him to take a break before he had his psychotic breakdown and ran through
the streets of San Diego naked. If his breakdown was caused by all the
criticism that his organization or campaign had attracted, the organization should
have been prepared for this as this criticism came about in less than a day after
the video went viral. Furthermore, the organization should have learned from
the para-crisis that had started with the criticisms and been better prepared
for this one. They should have made a public statement about the incident and
posted it on social media.
5.
What personal reactions/feelings does the
description trigger in you?
Although this event taking place is very sad because Russell
seems to have good intentions and couldn’t cope with the public pressure and
sudden limelight, I am not surprised that the organization went through some
sort of crisis so early after they gained notoriety. As mentioned in my last
blog post, the organization should have seen the criticisms as a para-crisis
and should have prepared for an actual crisis by having a crisis management team
and spokesperson. It is not likely that this scenario would have been thought
of when they did their crisis planning, but they could have at least had some
sort of crisis communication when it did occur. Invisible Children spends
almost 30% of its funding on advocacy and campaigning. This should have alerted
them to the fact that their primary and secondary stakeholders would be affected
by the type of media coverage that their organization received. This is why
they should have responded to this crisis right away and not refused to comment
on it.
6.
What advice would you offer to those involved?
I would tell the Board, CEO and co-founders of the Invisible
Children organization to put together a crisis management team and prepare a
plan to deal with this and other possible crisis that could happen. Next, I would
tell them to immediately draft a crisis communication plan and implement it
through their own blog on their website, social media and traditional media. Finally,
I would tell them to monitor other signs of crisis and ensure that they address
these early, in the pre-crisis phase so that an event like this does not catch
them off guard again.
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