Bloomberg: Children Toil With Bare Hands in Burkina Fields
Bloomberg reporter Cam Newton gets attention for his story slamming "fair trade" cotton. He reports that "Victoria's Secret" uses "fairtrade cotton" and that a 13 year old girl worked for 6 months in the fields. Slate attempts to put the story in a little more perspective (organic cotton means that weeds are pulled by hand, the girl is not a "slave")... but still, "Tsk-Tsk" is the word.
I work with fair trade and attempts to organize and improve life in Africa. Specifically, I had Burkina Faso refugee in my home for 6 months, and lived in DR Congo and Cameroon. The Slate correction to this story needs to be amplified. Women are typically/frequently married at 13 in Burkina Faso, and for a foster child to be forbidden to work means... I guess bad news for foster children. Because the farm went "organic" and used manure rather than chemical fertilizers, the farmer let his foster daughter carry the manure to the fields and put it on the crops. Bloomberg says "gotcha"... thirteen year olds should be in school.
So what does Cam Newton leave us with? Companies like Victoria's Secret will see that "no good deed goes unpunished", and the neighboring Burkina Faso fields which are not participating at all in Fair Trade will be happy they used chemical fertilizers and never got involved with "do-gooders".
This "gotcha" journalism, man-bites-dog story, attacking people who are trying to make a difference, deserves no praise. Bloomberg is the profiteer in this story. The reporter gets interviewed on NPR (J School 101: Reporter Becomes Part of the Story) like some kind of a Scott Pelly Jr. Melissa Block speaks to him as if he had done something brave, not asking a single difficult question. I've visited the cotton plantations in the Sahel, and know how brave it ain't. This is not war-time footage, this is not child soldiering, or toxic mining. This is black faces growing crops.
"Sparse mud walled hut home to Burkina Child Worker". How very brave of the reporter to visit. We are so grateful. Listen, I lived in a house like that, and all my friends (African friends) did too. And to suggest that we should not buy cotton from people because they are poor is beneath contempt. If we just DON'T buy fair trade cotton, I'm not sure Clarisse will live in a ranch house, go on to college and leapfrog the whole situation...
Bloomberg reporter Cam Newton gets attention for his story slamming "fair trade" cotton. He reports that "Victoria's Secret" uses "fairtrade cotton" and that a 13 year old girl worked for 6 months in the fields. Slate attempts to put the story in a little more perspective (organic cotton means that weeds are pulled by hand, the girl is not a "slave")... but still, "Tsk-Tsk" is the word.
 |
| View outside my best friends home in Cameroon 1986 |
So what does Cam Newton leave us with? Companies like Victoria's Secret will see that "no good deed goes unpunished", and the neighboring Burkina Faso fields which are not participating at all in Fair Trade will be happy they used chemical fertilizers and never got involved with "do-gooders".
This "gotcha" journalism, man-bites-dog story, attacking people who are trying to make a difference, deserves no praise. Bloomberg is the profiteer in this story. The reporter gets interviewed on NPR (J School 101: Reporter Becomes Part of the Story) like some kind of a Scott Pelly Jr. Melissa Block speaks to him as if he had done something brave, not asking a single difficult question. I've visited the cotton plantations in the Sahel, and know how brave it ain't. This is not war-time footage, this is not child soldiering, or toxic mining. This is black faces growing crops.
"Sparse mud walled hut home to Burkina Child Worker". How very brave of the reporter to visit. We are so grateful. Listen, I lived in a house like that, and all my friends (African friends) did too. And to suggest that we should not buy cotton from people because they are poor is beneath contempt. If we just DON'T buy fair trade cotton, I'm not sure Clarisse will live in a ranch house, go on to college and leapfrog the whole situation...
