The makers of the viral web video Kony 2012, which calls for the capture of Ugandan War lord Joseph Kony, have decided to respond to criticism by releasing a new video.
“Kony 2012” was released last week and quickly became an internet sensation with over 75 million views on YouTube alone. It caught the attention of major celebrities, like Rhianna and Oprah Winfrey and spread around Facebook and Twitter like wild fire.However, along with the media attention, came a significant amount of scrutiny. Invisible Children, the non-profit charity behind the Kony 2012 campaign, were criticized by people on the ground for oversimplifying the 26-year-old conflict involving the Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony, a bush fighter wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
After viewing the video, Victor Ochien, director of a local charity, the African Youth Initiative Network, told the Guardian: “People were very angry about the film…they were all saying, ‘This is not about us, it does not reflect our lives’.” Also, Invisible Children have faced a signifiant level of criticism over their financial transparency.
Read more: Why You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty for Resenting Kony 2012 and Kony 2012: A Viral Campaign of (Dis)Information to Save Children in Uganda
However, in the campaign’s newest video, Invisible Children CEO Ben Keesey, professes that Kony 2012 is not a “slick, “fly-by-night” campaign, yet he admits to understanding why some viewers may have felt this way if they watched the original film on its own without doing any more research.
“If all you see is the 29-minute movie and then you try to go to our website and it doesn’t exist because the traffic crashed it, so you’re not seeing any of our programs … I understand why a lot of people are wondering is this just some slick, kind of fly-by-night, ‘slacktivist’ thing, when actually it’s not at all,”Keesey says.
Also, in the video Keesey explains in detail how the charity’s money is spent, including how finances set aside for travel and transportation are used. He says that travel and transportation expenses — which totalled more than $1 million last year — include costs for 3,000 free movie screenings a year to spread the word about Kony and the LRA and also, a significant amount of money is spent on bringing former LRA captives to North America to speak on behalf of Invisible Children.
“Any claims that we don’t have financial transparency… just aren’t true,” said Keesey.
The latest video isn’t likely to keep critics at bay – it doesn’t go deep enough into explaining the charity’s goals and ambitions, which have been the cause of much consternation and also, it neglects to explain exactly how much funding goes to staff salaries. One thing that is clear though, is that Kony 2012 is still very much in our minds and so the Kony 2012 campaign is doing what it set out to do – for the mean time anyway.
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SÃle Cleary is a regular contributor to Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @silecleary.
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