No one wants to be the person who criticizes Oprah, but it’s time to call her out. She’s created some pretty great stuff. From reuniting families to recognizing heroes, Oprah has built a career on making the world a better (or at least a more hopeful) place.

For over 20 years, she has routinely inspired other celebrities to follow in her lead, donating millions of dollars to worthwhile charities around the world. All this time, she’s done so with finesse, grace and has built a brand that is one of the most respected of all time.

Oprah is an amazing lady, but this time she’s gone too far. Continue Here: http://www..com/index.php/41-blog/blog-articles/377-exploiting-communities-for-a-cause-how-oprah-is-in-the-business-of-poverty-Indecency

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^^^^^^^
I think you should be banned.

Ekpele oo...i'm not clicking, post it here

Post the complete' story here.

LaRoyalHighness: Post the complete' story here.

seconded

Op is trying to lure people to his crappy blog.

This is the full story below.



No one wants to be the person who criticizes Oprah, but it’s time to call her out. She’s created some pretty great stuff. From reuniting families to recognizing heroes, Oprah has built a career on making the world a better (or at least a more hopeful) place.

For over 20 years, she has routinely inspired other celebrities to follow in her lead, donating millions of dollars to worthwhile charities around the world. All this time, she’s done so with finesse, grace and has built a brand that is one of the most respected of all time.

Oprah is an amazing lady, but this time she’s gone to far.

On Monday, June 23, the 10-part documentary series "operation change" premiered on OWN. According to the press release, the show “gives viewers unprecedented access to some of the world’s most dangerous, desolate and poverty-stricken places.” Sounds pretty cool.

Problem is, the story of these places isn’t being told by those most qualified to do so.

Rather, OWN has decided to ship some of America’s best-known faces including former President Bill Clinton, Donna Karan and Harry Connick, Jr. to bring “change” to far off places including Haiti, Colombia and Papua New Guinea. Behind all this are Bill & Tani Austin and their son, Steven Sawalich, from the Starkey Hearing Foundation.

So, yet again, the stories of those most in need are being told by those most unqualified to do so. Stealing stories is a developed world specialty. Why let people tell their own complicated history, when you can have an American celebrity sum it up in a matter of seconds?

Furthermore, why bother to dive into the political climate, environmental challenges and economic instability the people you are visiting are facing, when you are producing television for an audience that is switching to “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” whenever it becomes too mentally stimulating?

It’s not that the work that OWN, and by extension Oprah, is trying to do that is necessarily bad. Community centers are not the enemy and everyone deserves access to quality medical care.

It’s the way that the stories are told, and who is doing the telling, that is at fault. Sticking cameras in the face of Maasai leaders does not make a project more successful or sustainable.

Turning the lens on victims of sex trafficking does not better their situation. In short, creating television content for American viewing out of other people’s struggles is just another way of exploiting them. Take away their ability to tell their own story, and you’re adding insult to injury.

Oprah, I know that you mean well. I know that you want to do good and inspire others to follow your lead, but this isn’t the way to do it.

Flying into a country and delivering western civilization does not address the reasons for that community being where it is in the first place. Without facing those underlying issues, the ‘change’ you make won’t last.

The wells you build will go into disrepair, the clinics will once again run out of medications, and the children will return to working in the fields, more focused on survival than statistics.

You might counter my argument by saying something like, “But this will inspire more people to donate and get involved” and you might be right.

The problem I have with Operation Change, and this argument, is that yet again it puts the power and the focus on the wrong people.

If the show is about the Tanzanians, Indians or Malaysians you are trying to help, why are you thinking about how Americans react at all? Why aren’t you asking yourself whether the Maasai would be empowered by how you portrayed them?

If you insist on turning turmoil into television, put the cameras and the control in the hands of the people who most need to be empowered. Saving sex-trafficking victims, and then fetishizing their plight for an American television audience is not good TV, it’s poverty porn.