Tate Watkins on the Old-Fashioned War Propaganda of KONY 2012
The 30-minute documentary KONY 2012 is closing in on 100 million YouTube views. How did filmmaker Jason Russell achieve the improbable goal of getting Americans excitedly talking about child soldering in Africa, after years of failed media efforts by a constellation of NGOs and four national governments? As Tate Watkins explains, the film's success is due in no small part to the fact that Russell boils down Uganda's agonizing history into a simple call for the arrest of Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.