A San Diego nonprofit group’s video drawing attention to the atrocities of an African warlord has become the talk of the internet, snapping up more than 50 million views on YouTube and Vimeo.
Says The New York Times of Invisible Children’s “Kony 2012”:
This week, in a testament to the explosive power of social media, he managed to do so in a matter of days, baffling diplomats, academics and Ugandans who have worked assiduously on the issue for decades without anything close to the blitz of attention that [Jason] Russell and his tight-knit group of activists have generated.
The story stops in on Invisible Children’s Bankers Hill office. You’ll see some familiar names on it, too, with reporting credits to Rob Davis and a sharp photo from Sam Hodgson.
The video has been met with strong backlash. Writers have criticized it for exaggeration, soft bigotry and hypocrisy, Reuters columnist Jack Shafer points out. And MIT’s Ethan Zuckerman has deconstructed the whole phenomenon.
Here’s the video:
— Excerpted from the Morning Report. You can sign up for it to stay in the loop every day on the news that matters.