Ben Affleck's latest film: how much suffering should a journalist expose?

(Photo from my story on forced evictions in Phnom Penh).

Though gratuitous exploitation of trauma is reprehensible, journalism that ignores, hides, or sugar-coats war, poverty, and oppression should also be condemned. So how does a journalist strike a balance? New York Times/International Herald Tribune columnist Nicholas Kristof doesn't even try.

Reporter, a documentary produced by Ben Affleck and recently screened at Toronto's Hotdocs Festival, follows Kristof on his 2007 trip to the Congo. Accompanied by two regular Americans who post their observations alongside his columns, Kristof's mission is "to shine a light into the darkest pockets of conflict and poverty."

Kristof gained notoriety in 2004, when he bought two women from a Cambodian brothel in order to prove that slavery is alive and well in the 21st century.

In war zones and brothels around the world, Kristof's MO is to find the most horrific, heart-rending, stomach-churning story, and to tell it unsparingly to the world. A suffering individual, Kristof believes, shocks complacent readers into caring.

Unfortunately, Reporter hasn't been screened in Tokyo yet, but if Kristof's column is any indication, the viewer should expect merciless depictions of misery. His latest column on maternal death in childbirth (International Herald Tribune, May 18, 2009) describes the fate of Mabinti Kamara, 25, in Sierra Leone:

"On Mabinti's fourth day of labor, she was finally taken to a hospital in the city of Makeni, where a surgeon found she had a ruptured uterus. The surgeon removed the dead fetus and repaired the uterus."

Kristof often comes off as self-righteous, melodramatic, and not a little patronizing. On May 6th, for instance, he wrote about inner-city prostitution rings in his very own American backyard. Did you know that "If a middle-class white girl goes missing, radio stations broadcast amber alerts, and cable TV fills the air with “missing beauty” updates. But 13-year-old black or Latina girls from poor neighborhoods vanish all the time, and the pimps are among the few people who show any interest"?

Yeah, Nick, we did. These causes have been championed by pop-culture icons for quite a while now. The TV series E.R. was in the Congo in 2005, and Oprah has been talking frankly about incest, rape, and sexual abuse since the eighties.

So the public is, for the most part, aware of the horrors that take place around the globe. Still, very little has changed. How much of a difference does Kristof really make?

This debate reminds me of a scene from the movie Hotel Rwanda. In the midst of the genocide, a local man says to a foreign reporter that viewers in Europe and America will surely be shocked and horrified into action. The reporter answers that when people see his footage, they'll say, that's too bad, and they'll go back to eating their dinners.

I read Kristof's column every day, on the train or over lunch. I shake my head at what he tells me, and even sigh audibly at times. But when I get home at night, the newspaper goes into the recycling bin, and I to my dinner.

If we New York Times and International Herald Tribune readers are so enlightened and engaged, why does complete and utter misery continue to afflict so many of our fellow human beings? Perhaps we deserve Kristof's patronizing dispatches.