MK forum

Sitting here watching the news on this "awful" ordeal they have had to go through and thinking to myself, it's really amazing how much news coverage this is getting and yet years and years of abuse in missions all over the world gets no attention?

What is the reason, are people just tired of hearing about it? Is it the face of abuse that puts people off? What is it that keeps these stories from blowing up all the News stations?

Anyway, just a random thought.

Those are such great questions, Yunker. I have asked similar questions myself.

No, I don't think most people are tired of hearing about abuse in missions. On the contrary, I think most people still have not heard about this.

I do think the face of abuse does put people off. It is a very tough subject to think about and face.

Yes, it is ridiculous, isn't it, that hours of new coverage are being dedicated to the news that the passengers on this cruise ship are having to deposit their waste products in plastic bags. Appalling.

Meanwhile, in the real world ....

All very upside down.

Can't imagine that mission boards have that much influence.
(To keep it out of the news.)
It could be because people "just can't believe it."
What has to happen to make it REAL to them?

People don't want to hear because then they would have to look to their own. If it happened to missionaries then what is happening in their own church? Better to stick your head in the sand.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

"Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent." Edmund Burke

Well said.

Would prefer to hear "sublime" and "magnificent"
Referring to something
Rather than hypocrisy.

But, yes, VERY well said.

I mean 'other than'

It comes down to what sells and what is the target audience. In depth journalism is becoming a thing of the past and so we are fed an increasing diet of trivial rubbish. Endless programmes of ranting cooks and wannabes and people who can't get on with each other on some imaginary island and cry endlessly about how someone won't talk to them. Reality television is cheap to make and appeals to our voyeristic nature. Meantime the real stories are left in the to hard basket.

Also look at who controls the media, predominantly middle aged or older white men who have lavish lifestyles. Stories about other middle aged or older white men doing things they shouldn't have been doing might just be not so comfortable to explore, much better to dish up the dirt on someone else. This is also why fundamentalist churches often don't reply to exposes about sexual abuse, to close for comfort.

However watch where the Catholic church is going with the sudden abdication of the Pope, this could well be interesting. The issue of child abuse is getting coverage more and more, it is a matter of timing.

As for a cruise boat making the headlines. I was in our Capital Wellington yesterday and two large cruise ships were in the city. Heaps of elderly Americans everywhere, all being charged far to much to see the less than real New Zealand. If you are venturing down this way, give the gimicky tourist traps a miss, save heaps and do what the locals do or look up Bemused, who will happily show you around or point you in the right direction .

To the passengers of Carnival Triumph
Now resting after your ordeal
Back to showers and comfort
Plus a well cooked gourmet meal

Offers of compensation
Another trip for free
Not a bad outcome
For a couple days of poo and wee

There's another group a floating
Far from a welcoming port
Who get no lovely recompense
For being dealt a hand too short

If a week of misery and hardship
Can generate such news
Imagine years of even worse
On an ark full of abused

But life don't work that way
As you show your pics to rels
Some of us are still bobbing up and down
In our own private hells

There won't be no free trip
Or even a welcome home
For some will bob up and down
And on safe ground never roam

So moving, Bemused!
You said it all.