Today my news feed on Facebook has been filled with pictures of a little boy, Alan Kurdi*, lying dead on a beach, or being carried away by a Turkish police officer. Some of these have come from the feeds I get from newspapers, some have been associated with posts protesting about our government's attitude to Syrian refugees, and some have been posted by various angry friends on Facebook.
I fully understand why people are angry about the situation, and it appears that there has now been some movement in the British government's standpoint, although it's not yet clear what the outcome will be. There is a strong argument that an iconic image can sometimes be the only way to move things forward. For example, the photograph from Vietnam of Phan Thi Kim Phuc probably went some way to ending the US involvement in that war, and Michael Buerk's report from Ethiopia for the BBC mobilised Band / Live Aid in the mid 1980s.
Despite this, I still felt a profound unease about the pictures circulating of Alan, and I have been trying to work out why I feel that way. You may well have come to a different conclusion, and I understand, but sometimes it's good to ask ourselves searching questions. What was it that makes this different for me?
The central issue for me is the different media context we are now in. As soon as those terribly sad images became available online, they were circulating around social networks, blogs and websites everywhere. That's very different to them being embedded in a particular TV report, perhaps including warnings of the distressing nature of the material. And that's one of my uneasy feelings - publication of pictures of the dead are not commonplace, and there are usually some warnings for people about seeing them. Alan was unmissable on Facebook and Twitter today, and I'm sure many people, wanted that to be the case to get across the plight of refugees. I just don't think that was right method or the right use of images.
Let me try and explain, using a very different story. The other day I was talking to a man who, as a young soldier, volunteered to go and help at the Aberfan tragedy in south Wales, which killed 116 children and 28 adults. Understandably, the trauma of that affected him and his beliefs very profoundly, and I could still see it in his face. In fact, I can remember the grainy pictures on the TV news, and my mum explaining to me that children had died at school. I had just started school, and it happened on 21 Oct 1966 - the start of half-term.
It was a terrible tragedy, and there were a lot of difficult questions that needed answering about how the school had been put in danger. There were pictures of bodies - covered up, of course - being carried away. I vividly remember one photograph of a police officer carrying a survivor to safety. But with all that grief and sadness, if Facebook had existed, would anyone have posted a picture of a dead child, demanding answers from the National Coal Board? You can understand that anger might drive someone to do that, but it would have inflicted terrible grief on the child's family and community. Perhaps it's a mercy the technology wasn't available - I'm sure the newspapers, radio and TV were more than enough to bear for a community stricken with unimaginable sadness.
Alan's father, Abdullah, is still alive, although his mother and brother also died. It may be that Abdullah hasn't yet seen what is going on social media, and if that's true, it will be a mercy. I gather Alan's aunt lives in Canada. I wonder what it has been (and will be) like for them seeing these images coming up again and again, every time she goes on the internet. Ther's no notion of consent here. What do they think, and what are they feeling?
I've done a few children's funerals and on a couple of occasions I have been asked to hold the child, and when the request came, it was clearly important to the parents that I did so. You never forget moments like that, and I'm sure that Turkish police officer won't ever forget carrying Alan off the beach. He doesn't need constant reminders from social media, believe me.
Some posts have been even more confrontational with the image - as if using it gives the person posting an extra moral authority. Of course there need to be records of awful events - it's important lest we forget - but that doesn't mean that every detail of every awful event needs to be put out there, especially when emotions of those closest to the person are so recent and raw. And some posts seem to be portraying this as something new. Hundreds of people, including children, have been dying en route to Europe for months. That doesn't in any way diminish the terrible sadness of the death of Alan and other members of his family; they point us to a much wider community sharing similar experiences.
So I won't be sharing the pictures. That doesn't mean I don't care.
* Alan was Kurdish and according to his father, that is the correct spelling. The Turkish version of his name is Aylan.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Thursday, September 03, 2015
Monday, February 24, 2014
Clergy, poverty and moral authority
I was initially quite surprised by the tone of a recent article in the Independent. As a newspaper which is politically critical of the government, you'd expect it to be positive about others offering criticism. But no. There is a moderate defence of welfare cuts, coupled with a dismissal of the recent intervention by the Archbishop of Westminster and the recent letter signed by Anglican Bishops, Methodist chairs of district and URC and Quaker leaders recently published in the Daily Mirror.
One of the weaker arguments of the editorial is that the church leaders represent a "tiny fraction of the population", this coming from a paper with a circulation of a little over 70,000, when there are rather more than 1,000,000 attending the Church of England (not to mention our ecumenical allies).
However, this misses the point. The article also implies that the welfare cuts and austerity agenda are moral because they are endorsed by the majority:
"Is the pursuit of policies that are supported by the majority of the electorate of no value, for example? And would it be a more moral course to fail to tackle our dysfunctional welfare system and even more dysfunctional public finances, risking not only the standard of living of all but also the taxes out of which benefits are paid?" full article
Whether the majority of the UK population endorse current austerity policy is an interesting question in itself. Even if they did, this wouldn't automatically mean that such policies were beyond moral questioning. There have been times in our history when the prevailing view needed to be challenged. When those campaigning against the slave trade started, they were a small minority, but that didn't make their moral case invalid. Neither would it address the very real question of whether this government's austerity policy was the best way out of the financial crisis, but that's for another blog post!
I'd like to suggest that many clergy are actually remarkably well placed to comment on the effects of current policy on the poor. Many of us have people knocking on our vicarage doors asking for help with food, energy bills or clothing. It's hard to know what to do, and it leaves us all with a feeling of not doing enough. That's because clergy, unlike many other professionals, live in contact with people in need and live in the middle of the communities they serve. We meet people on the street, outside the school, in the pub and in the paper shop. That doesn't make us special - it just comes with the role. People come to the church with their needs, and we hear a lot about them, simply because we're here. Quite a few church leaders have been vicars and ministers in similar circumstances, and even if they haven't, the ministers they lead have plenty of opportunities to share and to show what is going on in their patch.
Perhaps the most instructive thing about the Independent editorial is that it indicates a shift in credibility and reputation for the Church, and especially for its senior leaders. When the Faith In The City report was published by the Church of England in 1985, it stung the government, and was welcomed well beyond the active membership of the Church. In the period when the Labour party was in turmoil, the Church was seen as providing genuine alternative critique and even opposition to some of the policies having a detrimental impact on the poorest areas of England, and by implication the whole of the UK.
I doubt that could happen now. Perhaps the decrease in church affiliation is part of it, but I suspect it's the public perception of the church's leaders that is a bigger problem. Some the scandals in churches over the neglect of child protection, the public statements on gay issues and equal marriage, and the endless Synod debates over women as bishops haven't commended us to the population as a source of moral leadership worth listening to.
This is a loss, as I think the contents of the church leaders' letter and the capacity of the churches to refer to real hands-on experience in communities across the nation would be well-worth listening to.
One of the weaker arguments of the editorial is that the church leaders represent a "tiny fraction of the population", this coming from a paper with a circulation of a little over 70,000, when there are rather more than 1,000,000 attending the Church of England (not to mention our ecumenical allies).
However, this misses the point. The article also implies that the welfare cuts and austerity agenda are moral because they are endorsed by the majority:
"Is the pursuit of policies that are supported by the majority of the electorate of no value, for example? And would it be a more moral course to fail to tackle our dysfunctional welfare system and even more dysfunctional public finances, risking not only the standard of living of all but also the taxes out of which benefits are paid?" full article
Whether the majority of the UK population endorse current austerity policy is an interesting question in itself. Even if they did, this wouldn't automatically mean that such policies were beyond moral questioning. There have been times in our history when the prevailing view needed to be challenged. When those campaigning against the slave trade started, they were a small minority, but that didn't make their moral case invalid. Neither would it address the very real question of whether this government's austerity policy was the best way out of the financial crisis, but that's for another blog post!
I'd like to suggest that many clergy are actually remarkably well placed to comment on the effects of current policy on the poor. Many of us have people knocking on our vicarage doors asking for help with food, energy bills or clothing. It's hard to know what to do, and it leaves us all with a feeling of not doing enough. That's because clergy, unlike many other professionals, live in contact with people in need and live in the middle of the communities they serve. We meet people on the street, outside the school, in the pub and in the paper shop. That doesn't make us special - it just comes with the role. People come to the church with their needs, and we hear a lot about them, simply because we're here. Quite a few church leaders have been vicars and ministers in similar circumstances, and even if they haven't, the ministers they lead have plenty of opportunities to share and to show what is going on in their patch.
Perhaps the most instructive thing about the Independent editorial is that it indicates a shift in credibility and reputation for the Church, and especially for its senior leaders. When the Faith In The City report was published by the Church of England in 1985, it stung the government, and was welcomed well beyond the active membership of the Church. In the period when the Labour party was in turmoil, the Church was seen as providing genuine alternative critique and even opposition to some of the policies having a detrimental impact on the poorest areas of England, and by implication the whole of the UK.
I doubt that could happen now. Perhaps the decrease in church affiliation is part of it, but I suspect it's the public perception of the church's leaders that is a bigger problem. Some the scandals in churches over the neglect of child protection, the public statements on gay issues and equal marriage, and the endless Synod debates over women as bishops haven't commended us to the population as a source of moral leadership worth listening to.
This is a loss, as I think the contents of the church leaders' letter and the capacity of the churches to refer to real hands-on experience in communities across the nation would be well-worth listening to.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Episcopal Foot in it
My previous experience of Pete Broadbent, the Bishop of Willesden, was pretty positive. I heard him at Spring Harvest about 10 years ago. He was engaging, challenging and also clearly had a passion for social justice.
So it was with some surprise that I read of his offensive comments made in an exchange on facebook relating to the forthcoming royal wedding. The press were quick to report it, and the wrath of the Daily Mail descended. They soon came up with "loony Pete". It's worth noting that in the midst of a royal photo-fest, the very same Daily Mail described the Royal family as "one of the most famous – and notoriously dysfunctional – families in the world". [just search for "dysf"; it's there]
Thanks to the Church Mouse, those of us who don't have access to Bp Pete's facebook profile can now see the actual text from the exchanges he made. They were obviously made in a more off-guard moment, and Mouse gives us a very balanced analysis of what went wrong and the difference between comments that he was fully entitled to make and ones which were out of order. He also clarifies what was said and the context, so it's worth reading.
I have no problem with +Pete being a republican - to me it's always been hard to see how heredity can be justified as a means of choosing a head of state. As someone whose political tendencies have always been left of centre, I don't have problem with that either. Furthermore, when Charles and Diana got married I went walking in county Durham to avoid having to watch endless coverage of it, so I also quite liked the idea of a party in France to keep out of the way this time around. There are also legitimate questions about cost, although the VAT take on associated memorabilia will probably cover that nicely. It would even have been fair to signal concern about the pressure the future marriage will be under.
However "I managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll, and hope to avoid this one too." was just plain nasty. And no clergyperson, should be making negative predictions about a forthcoming marriage, let alone one under such scrutiny between people he admits he doesn't know. It's a very bad error of judgement and fundamentally undermined the perfectly fair questions he sought to raise.
I'm very pleased and relieved to see that the Bishop has apologised unreservedly on the Diocese of London website. It was the right thing to do, and hopefully that will bring things to a close.
I suspect the media will be less forthcoming with an apology for any of its actions. In the meantime, I recommend you read what Church Mouse says and the very considered first comment from Bishop Alan Wilson.
So it was with some surprise that I read of his offensive comments made in an exchange on facebook relating to the forthcoming royal wedding. The press were quick to report it, and the wrath of the Daily Mail descended. They soon came up with "loony Pete". It's worth noting that in the midst of a royal photo-fest, the very same Daily Mail described the Royal family as "one of the most famous – and notoriously dysfunctional – families in the world". [just search for "dysf"; it's there]
Thanks to the Church Mouse, those of us who don't have access to Bp Pete's facebook profile can now see the actual text from the exchanges he made. They were obviously made in a more off-guard moment, and Mouse gives us a very balanced analysis of what went wrong and the difference between comments that he was fully entitled to make and ones which were out of order. He also clarifies what was said and the context, so it's worth reading.
I have no problem with +Pete being a republican - to me it's always been hard to see how heredity can be justified as a means of choosing a head of state. As someone whose political tendencies have always been left of centre, I don't have problem with that either. Furthermore, when Charles and Diana got married I went walking in county Durham to avoid having to watch endless coverage of it, so I also quite liked the idea of a party in France to keep out of the way this time around. There are also legitimate questions about cost, although the VAT take on associated memorabilia will probably cover that nicely. It would even have been fair to signal concern about the pressure the future marriage will be under.
However "I managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll, and hope to avoid this one too." was just plain nasty. And no clergyperson, should be making negative predictions about a forthcoming marriage, let alone one under such scrutiny between people he admits he doesn't know. It's a very bad error of judgement and fundamentally undermined the perfectly fair questions he sought to raise.
I'm very pleased and relieved to see that the Bishop has apologised unreservedly on the Diocese of London website. It was the right thing to do, and hopefully that will bring things to a close.
I suspect the media will be less forthcoming with an apology for any of its actions. In the meantime, I recommend you read what Church Mouse says and the very considered first comment from Bishop Alan Wilson.
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