Summary: In this picture, thirteen hands are reaching into a large bowl of food from all directions and the caption tells us that these hands belong to Sudanese children in a displacement camp.
Topic: Should the state department of the Obama Administration double foreign aid for Africa?
Category: Journalistic Mainstream
What Is It? A photograph
Title: Freedom from Hunger: the most basic of human rights
Publication Information: Australian Broadcasting Association (abc.net.au), December 10, 2008
Author (photographer): Mustafa Ozer
Location: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/10/2442296.htm
Accessed: March 10, 2009
Support:
• The Food and Agriculture Organization
• John Holmes, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs
• “The Australian Government”
The article that this picture is published with concerns Australia’s contributions to the World Food Programme and informs Australian citizens (the majority of their audience) of the extent of the current food shortages that are ravaging Africa. The Food and Agriculture Organization is referenced for their statistics on the sheer number of undernourished people and how quickly that number is multiplying. John Holmes is cited as commenting on the situation in Africa as not only being a food price crisis, but a food production crisis, a food aid crisis, and a food security crisis. “The Australian Government” is referenced several times for their contributions to and plans to address these issues. Within the picture itself, it’s simply the arms and hands of these hungry children; no faces are shown which could be commentary on the millions of nameless, faceless children and adults who are starving and malnourished in Africa. The arms all create lines to the bowl of food, drawing the eye of the viewer to the most important thing in these peoples’ lives, something that is so essential and yet something that most of the people seeing this image take for granted every day, nourishment.
Audience and Agenda: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is funded completely by the Australian government on top of a little revenue from its retail outlets. ABC is a conglomerate media organization that does radio, television, and internet news, sports, and pop culture reporting. It has an immense, mainstream audience and has also gone international with a satellite television service. ABC has been criticized for being biased against both sides of the political spectrum at one point or another, which we all know is a sign that it’s actually fairly unbiased and reporting accurately.
Usefulness: This picture would make a strong argument for more food aid, or aid in general. Seeing thirteen different hands all reaching into the same bowl for nourishment when there is clearly not going to be enough food to fully satiate all of them makes an emotional impact on the viewer. It highlights the problem of malnourishment and dwindling resources that is impacting millions of Africans at this very moment, and captures it all in a single frame. In answer to the question of whether the U.S. state department should double foreign aid, this image would argue that yes, they should. When so many Africans are plagued by hunger, surely doubling foreign aid could help at the very least some of those people to have a proper meal every day.
Works Cited:
ABC about page http://www.abc.net.au/corp/
ABC wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Broadcasting_Corporation
