Joseph Kony is a real life “Last King of Scotland”.
He is the founder and deeply feared leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a radical rebel group in Northern Uganda seeking to establish a Christian theocracy based on the 10 Commandments.
One Commandment that Kony seems to have missed is ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’.
His Lord’s Resistance Army is populated by AK47 bearing adolescents who have no compunction about killing at random – or about cutting off ears, noses and limbs.
You probably have not seen a lot about Kony. Maybe you have never heard of him.
Conventional network and cable TV operations don’t spend a lot of time on him.
He’s hard to cover.
He’s in hiding.. and if you find him, he is incredibly dangerous.
Not the kind of place you would expect to find Katie Couric.
But it is the kind of place you can find Ruud Elmendorp.
Elmendorp is a Dutch videojournalist who covers Africa. He has been covering this beat alone, with a camera and a laptop for more than 10 years – going where no one else will dare to go.
This kind of work is real reporting – not like showing up at the Green Zone and being escorted around by a bunch of US troops and given a dog and pony show by the US Military.
Networks won’t go here.
It’s too expensive.
And too difficult to get to.
And far too dangerous.
The world might never have heard of Darfur, except for Nick Kristof at The New York Times. Now, you’ve heard of the Lord’s Resistance Army.
5 Comments
pencilgod September 24, 2007
You know if the guy actually knew how to shoot he might get played on mainstream networks… just a thought.
! September 21, 2007
Don’t expect me to defend Katie either.
I won’t for reasons we both agree on.
rosenblumtv September 21, 2007
Yes,
I think Katie’s groundbreaking coverage of Kony is far better…. oops…..
$ September 20, 2007
I appreciated the effort he made to get where this Kony fellow was but what he presented was nothing more than a press conference.
Not much journalism. Just a one sided story with press conference video. If he’s done so much, how come he didn’t have video of the accused atrocities or interviews with victims?
He made a half attempt to talk a couple of the young guards with Kony and that didn’t illicit anything worthwhile.
That’s the problem with some of this I’ll-do-it-for-free-all-on-my-own VJ work. A half-product with no context.
That was nothing more than a photo-op press conference.
Cliff Etzel September 19, 2007
Ruud has contacted me on more than one occasion – nice to see him getting more exposure for the excellent solo VJ work he does (read – Real Reporting).
Much more compelling (and palatable) than the pablum fed over the network news channels.