Ben trades acting for reporting
2008-06-27 09:37
Los Angeles - Oscar winner and
actor Ben Affleck has taken on a new job, if only for one
assignment, travelling to the war-torn eastern Congo to do a
report for Thursday's edition of ABC television news programme
Nightline.
Affleck has gone to the Democratic Republic of Congo three
times this past year, and in an essay posted on ABC's website,
he said he wanted to draw attention to the violence, starvation
and disease in the region that kills 1 200 people a day.
"It makes sense to be sceptical about celebrity activism,"
wrote Affleck, 35, star of movies such as Hollywoodland and
and Oscar winner for the screenplay of Good Will Hunting.
"There is always the suspicion that involvement with a
cause may be doing more good for the spokesperson than he or she
is doing for the cause," Affleck said.
But Affleck said he hoped viewers could separate any
reservations about his involvement from "what is unimpeachably
important about this segment: the plight of eastern Congo".
'Observations documented'
Emily Lenzner, a spokesperson for ABC News, said Affleck was
not a correspondent for Nightline, and that the programme shows
only one trip he took to Congo from last month.
"We basically went with a camera and a producer and just
basically followed him around," Lenzner said. "It was his
observations, his journey that we pretty much documented."
Accompanying Affleck were producer Max Culhane and
cameraman Doug Vogt, who along with ABC journalist Bob Woodruff
was injured in a 2006 roadside bomb attack in Iraq.
Affleck approached Nightline about doing the programme.
In his essay, he talked about young boys being widely used
as child soldiers and girls being forced into marriage.
He said
he met with warlords, peacemakers, survivors and aid workers,
and he described bands of roaming militias brandishing AK-47s.
Frequent suspension of peace talks
On Wednesday, the head of Congo's UN peacekeeping mission
said that a million people are prevented from returning to
their homes because of frequent suspension of peace talks.
Conflict in eastern Congo has lasted for many years with
ethnic violence growing out of neighbouring Rwanda's 1994
genocide in which Hutu extremists attacked Tutsis.
Since 1998, about 5.4 million people are estimated to have
died in the Congolese violence and the ensuing humanitarian
crisis, most from hunger and disease.
Affleck is not the first Hollywood actor to draw attention
to Africa.
George Clooney and Don Cheadle have long advocated
for relief in the Darfur region of Sudan. Brad Pitt visited the
continent in 2005 with ABC's Diane Sawyer for Primetime Live
to talk about fighting poverty and the spread of Aids.