An interesting story (and WHY I BLOG!)

The following story really grabbed my attention.

An Austrian filmmaker has been strongly criticized by the Tanzanian president for his the documentary known as Darwin's nightmare. The film shows the impact of globalization on a fishing region on western Tanzania near lake victoria. Nile perch one of Tanzania's biggest export earners whilst at the same time, this non native fish that was introduced in 1950s has dramatically altered the ecological balance in what is the 2nd largest lake in the world. If that's not enough, the film tries to make a link between the fishing trade with the wars in the Congo, supposedly the Russian pilots who fly out the fish on a regular basis to the Europe bring back with them arms and munitions... Being a curious Tanzanian, I was actually able to watch the whole documentary within moments after first reading the article (so is the power of YouTube!- see it here)- I was further shocked and reminded of the difficult lives that people in the region have to live- particularly not being able to afford the very fish that is so abundant in the lake, instead being restricted in eating the fish heads, bones and other left-overs from the fillet packing processing units. This scene repeats itself across many parts of Tanzania, and I understand how sensitive this must be to Tanzania as it may damage a very lucrative trade between Tanzania and Europe- the trade balances are already hard enough for African countries to establish without needing to worry about a filmmaker's "negative portrayal" of the region. And indeed, the claim that guns make it back to Africa through the very planes that export the fish is definitely the weakest factual part of the documentary- once again, many may people in the western world may automatically assume that this is true- hence the president's concern on damaging the trade and negatively portraying Tanzania, which has a solid record of peace compared to other African countries in the region...

It raises issues- I have recently finished reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail, as a deeper dive into this interesting phenomenon that the Internet has unleashed. I won't go into details here- but please follow up if you have the time and are not familiar with it, I should mention that we are taught this concept in the E-commerce class at Stanford GSB. Anyway, the long-tail phenomenon allows stories such as the one I cite which would otherwise not make it to mainstream media to actually make it to someone like me living in the US who cares. Chris Anderson also makes a claim that as you progress down the long tail, it is likely that the stories are of "less quality", again, applying it to this story, it is becoming increasingly easy for anyone to create media, publish it and potentially reach millions of people without the story actually being factually verified, it simply becomes one viewpoint. I'm not trying to say that the film-maker is making things up, but highlighting the dangers of such media being misinterpreted as factual and making it into the mainstream (up the long-tail). Its interesting to see how far this story escalates...

 

If this post isn't crammed enough as it is- this raises the opportunity for me to explain why I blog. Its to get stories like these out to a wider audience and put my own interpretation on it- so beyond the materials on the GSB website and other publications about b-school, this and  many other blogs will report things about b-school in a different light- its not official, but I'm hoping readers appreciate it.