Humanitarian Advertising vs. Disaster Porn: How Far Is Too Far?

The Medecins Sans Frontieres advertisement above is brutal.  A shack.  The sounds of a boy screaming.  The only context is provided by the subtitles: One of our doctors is treating a five year old boy. Militia have just raped his two sisters.  Then clubbed his parents to death.  We can't operate without your help. Visit msf.org.uk.

It's undeniably powerful.  It makes you - me - want to give to MSF, simply to stop the child's cries.  It also deftly avoids the most blatant form of exploitative advertising, in which a humanitarian agency uses the image of a mutilated or starving child to ask for money.

That said, at what point do advertisements like the one above cross the line?  At what point do they commit the cardinal sin of treating people simply as objects of pity - disaster porn - and nothing more?  According to the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief: "In our information, publicity and advertising activities, we shall recognise disaster victims as dignified human beings, not hopeless objects."

There's also the question of perpetrating certain stereotypes.  As the good folk at Aid Watch point out, the ad lacks all context: "In the absence of detail, this 'no place' becomes 'every place' in Africa, the terrifying Dark Continent."

Pete Masters, the web editor at MSF UK, has been incredibly open in responding to criticism, explaining that the ad was a deliberate attempt to try and new approach to get people to engage.  Fair enough, and hard to argue with trying new things. I just wish those new things didn't involve reducing people to nothing more than sounds of misery.