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Mental-health content creators are defining their own ethics
Faced with explosive demand and few safeguards, creators of mental health content are defining their own ethics
Some of her clips are general, such as a short ode to the relationship between mentally ill people and pasta, while others address real diagnoses, such as “signs you might have BPD,” or borderline personality disorder. Sometimes, people ask her to address particular conditions. She tries to to research for at least a week, checking websites and message boards and interviewing by direct message people who have the particular diagnosis. She adds disclaimers: “Everyone deals with [panic attacks] differently and not all of them feel the same.”
She has no official training and often talks about feelings that are to some degree universal, such as anxiety and depression. Commenters occasionally accuse her of pathologizing just “being a teenager” or encouraging self-diagnosis.
In real life, mental health information and care are sparse. In the United States, 1 in 3 counties do not have a single licensed psychologist, according to the American Psychological Association, and Americans say cost is a top barrier to seeking mental health help. On the internet, however, mental health tips are everywhere: TikTok videos with #mentalhealth in the caption have earned more than 43.9 billion views, according to the analytics company Sprout Social, and mentions of mental health on social media are increasing year by year.
The growing popularity of the subject means that creators of mental health content are filling a health-care gap. But social media apps are not designed to prioritize accurate, helpful information, critics say, just whatever content draws the biggest reaction. Young people could see their deepest struggles become fodder for advertisers and self-promoters. With no road map even for licensed professionals, mental health creators are defining their own ethics.
“I don’t want to give anyone the wrong advice,” Moloney says. “I’ve met some [followers] who’ve just started crying and saying ‘thank you’ and stuff like that. Even though it seems small, to someone else, it can have a really big impact.”
As rates of depression and anxiety spiked during the pandemic and options for accessible care dwindled, creators shared an array of content including first-person accounts of life with mental illness and videos listing symptoms of bipolar disorder. In many cases, their follower counts ballooned.
Creators and viewers alike say the content is helpful. They also acknowledge that embracing it carries risks such as misinformation and harmful self-diagnosis. Some high-profile accounts have been criticized for sharing advice not backed by most professionals. Many creators sell courses and books or enter advertising partnerships, opening the door to conflicts of interest. Much online content simply tells listeners what they want to hear, creators say, and relatively rare conditions such as narcissistic personality disorder receive outsize attention, with commenters diagnosing their least-favorite people. And because of algorithms, people who show interest in this type of content see more of it.
Sometimes, creators find themselves dealing with a flood of messages from followers or struggling to control how audiences interpret their content.
“It’s definitely strange seeing myself drawn into a commodifiable object for people to define ‘mental illness’ by, and to a certain extent for me to be eaten up by the algorithm that encourages people to go down this pipeline,” said Rayne Fisher-Quann, who openly talks about her struggles with mental illness with her 225,000 followers on TikTok. “There absolutely is a concerted effort to really capitalize on mental illness and particularly on young women’s mental illness. It’s a very marketable commodity right now.”
Although professional organizations such as the American Counseling Association issue some social media guidelines, they tend to misunderstand or ignore the demands of the creator economy, therapists said. Nonprofessionals, meanwhile, can say almost anything with few consequences. Young people cannot always tell the difference between experts and hacks, creators say.
“Even if a therapist isn’t on social media, their clients are, and those clients are impacted by what they see on social media, and they’re bringing that directly into the session,” said Sadaf Siddiqi, an Instagram creator and licensed therapist.
Training is valuable. So is experience, creators say.
Many creators are not experts, and many say they’ve previously been failed by experts.
Fisher-Quann’s inbox is full of the types of questions you’d whisper to a best friend at midnight: Do these difficult feelings mean I have depression? Does having a queer sexual experience mean I’m gay?
If the question touches on something she’s experienced, she might respond. Other times, the messages go unanswered, said the 21-year-old writer and cultural critic. People occasionally message her to say they’re contemplating suicide, and she says she directs them toward professional resources. But it hurts to know they might not receive the real-world help they need, Fisher-Quann said.
“Because of that institutional failure, I don’t feel comfortable basically telling people to institutionalize themselves,” she said. “But I’m also very critical of capitalistic platforms where people present themselves as experts and offer advice that could ultimately be very myopic.”
Deciding who counts as an expert isn’t always straightforward. Klara Kernig, a creator with 159,000 followers on Instagram, describes herself in her biography as a “people-pleasing expert.” She earned that title through experience, she said.
After dropping out of her dream PhD program against her family’s wishes, she said, Kernig started learning about codependency, trauma and “people-pleasing” from books and the internet. Now she’s a lot healthier, she said, and makes her own mental health content, including “5 things we think are nice that are people-pleasing behaviors.”
“I don’t want to discredit therapists, but I also want to say there are other ways of educating people and of having that information,” she said. “Maybe I’ll even put something out there that’s wrong, and then I hope that my community and also the therapists there point that out to me in a loving way.”
Some creators take it upon themselves to challenge content that is not supported by research. Psychology professor Inna Kanevsky of San Diego Mesa College, who is a TikTok creator with an audience of 1.1 million, frequently rebuts what she sees as irresponsible claims in videos posted by other creators. Some of the subjects of her criticism have said Kanevsky talks down to them, invalidates their experiences or misinterprets their intentions.
“It’s funny because people will say, ‘You’re being passive-aggressive,’ ” Kanevsky said. “And I’m like, ‘No, I’m being aggressive-aggressive.’ If you posted nonsense, I’m going to tell you.”
Creators control content but not its interpretation
There’s an important difference between providing therapeutic advice and making relatable content, creators maintain. But those lines can blur quickly.
In addition to making posts for her 129,000 Instagram followers, Siddiqi treats clients over video call. They often send her posts from other mental health creators to discuss during their sessions, and she helps them to assess the information and decide whether it applies.
The posts lead to good conversations and deeper insights, Siddiqi said. But she worries about where the algorithm sends people afterward and whether audiences get enough time to reflect. It’s easy for people without real-life support to misinterpret mental health content or unfairly label themselves or others, she said.
The idea of people piecing together their own mental health journeys on a monetized, algorithm-influenced app can feel scary, but critics need to pump the brakes, said Dusty Chipura, who makes TikTok videos about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and mental health. She isn’t too worried about self-diagnosis, because totally healthy people aren’t generally the ones scrolling for information about symptoms and treatments, she said. Furthermore, health-care professionals habitually discount people’s concerns, she said, so, many people with real disorders never get formal diagnoses.
“You don’t need a diagnosis of ADHD to benefit from the tips and tricks and strategies,” Chipura said.
Audiences know to consider the context and to not accept as truth every word uttered by a creator, said Nedra Glover Tawwab, a licensed therapist and Instagram creator with 1.5 million followers. As with any marketplace, the onus is on consumers to decide whether they’re buying what a particular creator is selling, she said.
Who’s responsible for evaluating mental health content?
In the world of online mental health guidance, there’s little accountability for platforms or creators if something goes wrong.
Instagram in June launched a pilot called the Well-being Creator Collective, which it says provides funding and education to about 50 U.S. creators to help them produce “responsible” content on emotional well-being and self-image. The program is guided by a committee of outside experts, the company says.
Linda Charmaraman, senior research scientist and director of the Youth, Media & Well-being Research Lab at Wellesley Centers for Women, is on that committee and said that overall, participants seem to care deeply about using their platforms for good.
TikTok said it is “committed to fostering a supportive environment for people who choose to share their personal wellness journeys while also removing medical misinformation and other violations of our policies,” according to a spokeswoman.
“We encourage individuals to seek professional medical advice if they are in need of support,” she said in a statement.
Ideally, social media apps should be one item in a collection of mental health resources, said Jodi Miller, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Education who studies the relationships among young people, technology and stress.
“Young people need evidence-based sources of information outside the internet, from parents and schools,” Miller said.
Often, those resources are unavailable. So it’s up to consumers to decide what mental health advice they put stock in, Fisher-Quann said. For her, condescending health-care providers and the warped incentives of social media platforms haven’t made that easy. But she thinks she can get better — and that her followers can, too.
“It all has to come from a place of self-awareness and desire to get better. Communities can be extremely helpful for that, but they can also be extremely harmful for that,” she said.
Linda Chong in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Mental-health content creators are defining their own ethics
Faced with explosive demand and few safeguards, creators of mental health content are defining their own ethics
Some of her clips are general, such as a short ode to the relationship between mentally ill people and pasta, while others address real diagnoses, such as “signs you might have BPD,” or borderline personality disorder. Sometimes, people ask her to address particular conditions. She tries to to research for at least a week, checking websites and message boards and interviewing by direct message people who have the particular diagnosis. She adds disclaimers: “Everyone deals with [panic attacks] differently and not all of them feel the same.”
She has no official training and often talks about feelings that are to some degree universal, such as anxiety and depression. Commenters occasionally accuse her of pathologizing just “being a teenager” or encouraging self-diagnosis.
In real life, mental health information and care are sparse. In the United States, 1 in 3 counties do not have a single licensed psychologist, according to the American Psychological Association, and Americans say cost is a top barrier to seeking mental health help. On the internet, however, mental health tips are everywhere: TikTok videos with #mentalhealth in the caption have earned more than 43.9 billion views, according to the analytics company Sprout Social, and mentions of mental health on social media are increasing year by year.
The growing popularity of the subject means that creators of mental health content are filling a health-care gap. But social media apps are not designed to prioritize accurate, helpful information, critics say, just whatever content draws the biggest reaction. Young people could see their deepest struggles become fodder for advertisers and self-promoters. With no road map even for licensed professionals, mental health creators are defining their own ethics.
“I don’t want to give anyone the wrong advice,” Moloney says. “I’ve met some [followers] who’ve just started crying and saying ‘thank you’ and stuff like that. Even though it seems small, to someone else, it can have a really big impact.”
As rates of depression and anxiety spiked during the pandemic and options for accessible care dwindled, creators shared an array of content including first-person accounts of life with mental illness and videos listing symptoms of bipolar disorder. In many cases, their follower counts ballooned.
Creators and viewers alike say the content is helpful. They also acknowledge that embracing it carries risks such as misinformation and harmful self-diagnosis. Some high-profile accounts have been criticized for sharing advice not backed by most professionals. Many creators sell courses and books or enter advertising partnerships, opening the door to conflicts of interest. Much online content simply tells listeners what they want to hear, creators say, and relatively rare conditions such as narcissistic personality disorder receive outsize attention, with commenters diagnosing their least-favorite people. And because of algorithms, people who show interest in this type of content see more of it.
Sometimes, creators find themselves dealing with a flood of messages from followers or struggling to control how audiences interpret their content.
“It’s definitely strange seeing myself drawn into a commodifiable object for people to define ‘mental illness’ by, and to a certain extent for me to be eaten up by the algorithm that encourages people to go down this pipeline,” said Rayne Fisher-Quann, who openly talks about her struggles with mental illness with her 225,000 followers on TikTok. “There absolutely is a concerted effort to really capitalize on mental illness and particularly on young women’s mental illness. It’s a very marketable commodity right now.”
Although professional organizations such as the American Counseling Association issue some social media guidelines, they tend to misunderstand or ignore the demands of the creator economy, therapists said. Nonprofessionals, meanwhile, can say almost anything with few consequences. Young people cannot always tell the difference between experts and hacks, creators say.
“Even if a therapist isn’t on social media, their clients are, and those clients are impacted by what they see on social media, and they’re bringing that directly into the session,” said Sadaf Siddiqi, an Instagram creator and licensed therapist.
Training is valuable. So is experience, creators say.
Many creators are not experts, and many say they’ve previously been failed by experts.
Fisher-Quann’s inbox is full of the types of questions you’d whisper to a best friend at midnight: Do these difficult feelings mean I have depression? Does having a queer sexual experience mean I’m gay?
If the question touches on something she’s experienced, she might respond. Other times, the messages go unanswered, said the 21-year-old writer and cultural critic. People occasionally message her to say they’re contemplating suicide, and she says she directs them toward professional resources. But it hurts to know they might not receive the real-world help they need, Fisher-Quann said.
“Because of that institutional failure, I don’t feel comfortable basically telling people to institutionalize themselves,” she said. “But I’m also very critical of capitalistic platforms where people present themselves as experts and offer advice that could ultimately be very myopic.”
Deciding who counts as an expert isn’t always straightforward. Klara Kernig, a creator with 159,000 followers on Instagram, describes herself in her biography as a “people-pleasing expert.” She earned that title through experience, she said.
After dropping out of her dream PhD program against her family’s wishes, she said, Kernig started learning about codependency, trauma and “people-pleasing” from books and the internet. Now she’s a lot healthier, she said, and makes her own mental health content, including “5 things we think are nice that are people-pleasing behaviors.”
“I don’t want to discredit therapists, but I also want to say there are other ways of educating people and of having that information,” she said. “Maybe I’ll even put something out there that’s wrong, and then I hope that my community and also the therapists there point that out to me in a loving way.”
Some creators take it upon themselves to challenge content that is not supported by research. Psychology professor Inna Kanevsky of San Diego Mesa College, who is a TikTok creator with an audience of 1.1 million, frequently rebuts what she sees as irresponsible claims in videos posted by other creators. Some of the subjects of her criticism have said Kanevsky talks down to them, invalidates their experiences or misinterprets their intentions.
“It’s funny because people will say, ‘You’re being passive-aggressive,’ ” Kanevsky said. “And I’m like, ‘No, I’m being aggressive-aggressive.’ If you posted nonsense, I’m going to tell you.”
Creators control content but not its interpretation
There’s an important difference between providing therapeutic advice and making relatable content, creators maintain. But those lines can blur quickly.
In addition to making posts for her 129,000 Instagram followers, Siddiqi treats clients over video call. They often send her posts from other mental health creators to discuss during their sessions, and she helps them to assess the information and decide whether it applies.
The posts lead to good conversations and deeper insights, Siddiqi said. But she worries about where the algorithm sends people afterward and whether audiences get enough time to reflect. It’s easy for people without real-life support to misinterpret mental health content or unfairly label themselves or others, she said.
The idea of people piecing together their own mental health journeys on a monetized, algorithm-influenced app can feel scary, but critics need to pump the brakes, said Dusty Chipura, who makes TikTok videos about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and mental health. She isn’t too worried about self-diagnosis, because totally healthy people aren’t generally the ones scrolling for information about symptoms and treatments, she said. Furthermore, health-care professionals habitually discount people’s concerns, she said, so, many people with real disorders never get formal diagnoses.
“You don’t need a diagnosis of ADHD to benefit from the tips and tricks and strategies,” Chipura said.
Audiences know to consider the context and to not accept as truth every word uttered by a creator, said Nedra Glover Tawwab, a licensed therapist and Instagram creator with 1.5 million followers. As with any marketplace, the onus is on consumers to decide whether they’re buying what a particular creator is selling, she said.
Who’s responsible for evaluating mental health content?
In the world of online mental health guidance, there’s little accountability for platforms or creators if something goes wrong.
Instagram in June launched a pilot called the Well-being Creator Collective, which it says provides funding and education to about 50 U.S. creators to help them produce “responsible” content on emotional well-being and self-image. The program is guided by a committee of outside experts, the company says.
Linda Charmaraman, senior research scientist and director of the Youth, Media & Well-being Research Lab at Wellesley Centers for Women, is on that committee and said that overall, participants seem to care deeply about using their platforms for good.
TikTok said it is “committed to fostering a supportive environment for people who choose to share their personal wellness journeys while also removing medical misinformation and other violations of our policies,” according to a spokeswoman.
“We encourage individuals to seek professional medical advice if they are in need of support,” she said in a statement.
Ideally, social media apps should be one item in a collection of mental health resources, said Jodi Miller, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Education who studies the relationships among young people, technology and stress.
“Young people need evidence-based sources of information outside the internet, from parents and schools,” Miller said.
Often, those resources are unavailable. So it’s up to consumers to decide what mental health advice they put stock in, Fisher-Quann said. For her, condescending health-care providers and the warped incentives of social media platforms haven’t made that easy. But she thinks she can get better — and that her followers can, too.
“It all has to come from a place of self-awareness and desire to get better. Communities can be extremely helpful for that, but they can also be extremely harmful for that,” she said.
Linda Chong in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Genetic heart conditions could be cured for first time in ‘defining moment’ | Heart disease
Scientists are to develop the world’s first cure for genetic heart conditions by rewriting DNA in a move hailed as a “defining moment” for cardiovascular medicine.
A global team of experts from the UK, US and Singapore are joining forces to design a jab in the arm for patients to save thousands of lives after being awarded a £30m grant from the British Heart Foundation.
The team will use precision genetic techniques, called base and prime editing, in the heart for the first time to design and test the first cure for inherited heart muscle diseases, with the aim of silencing faulty genes. Animal studies have already shown the techniques work.
“This is a defining moment for cardiovascular medicine,” said Prof Sir Nilesh Samani, the BHF’s medical director.
Inherited heart muscle conditions are driven by different abnormalities in the heart but can cause sudden death or progressive heart failure. About 260,000 people have the condition in the UK, which can cause sudden death at any age.
Every week in the UK, 12 people under the age of 35 die of an undiagnosed heart condition, very often caused by an inherited heart muscle disease, also known as genetic cardiomyopathy.
All those with genetic cardiomyopathies have a 50/50 risk of passing faulty genes on to each of their children and, often, several members of the same family develop heart failure, need a heart transplant, or die at a young age.
The team behind the new research was selected by an advisory panel chaired by Prof Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser.
Prof Hugh Watkins, from the University of Oxford and lead investigator of the CureHeart project, said cardiomyopathies were “really common” and affected one person in every 250 around the world.
“This is our once-in-generation opportunity to relieve families of the constant worry of sudden death, heart failure and potential need for a heart transplant,” he said. “After 30 years of research, we have discovered many of the genes and specific genetic faults responsible for different cardiomyopathies, and how they work. We believe that we will have a gene therapy ready to start testing in clinical trials in the next five years.”
Under the new programme of research, experts hope to permanently correct or silence mutant genes involved in causing these heart problems.
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Christine Seidman, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in the US and co-lead of the CureHeart project, said the idea was to “fix the hearts” and revert them to more normal function.
“Most of the mutations that we find in our human patients – and while there are vast numbers of them [mutations] – they all frequently will alter one single letter of the DNA code,” she said. “That has raised the possibility that we could alter that one single letter and restore the code so that it is now making a normal gene, with normal function.”
She said some “very elegant chemistry” had already advanced this field of science, adding: “Our goals are to fix the hearts, to stabilise them where they are and perhaps to revert them back to more normal function.
“We may be able to deliver these therapies in advance of disease, in individuals we know from genetic testing are at extraordinary risk of having disease development and progressing to heart failure. Never before have we been able to deliver cures, and that is what our project is about. We know we can do it and we aim to get started.”
‘Napalm Girl’ at 50: The story of the Vietnam War’s defining photo
In Snap, we look at the power of a single photograph, chronicling stories about how both modern and historical images have been made.
The horrifying photograph of children fleeing a deadly napalm attack has become a defining image not only of the Vietnam War but the 20th century. Dark smoke billowing behind them, the young subjects’ faces are painted with a mixture of terror, pain and confusion. Soldiers from the South Vietnamese army’s 25th Division follow helplessly behind.
Taken outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, the picture captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict that claimed, by some estimates, a million or more civilian lives. Though officially titled “The Terror of War,” the photo is better known by the nickname given to the badly burned, naked 9-year-old at its center: “Napalm Girl”.
The girl, since identified as Phan Thi Kim Phuc, ultimately survived her injuries. This was thanks, in part, to Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, who assisted the children after taking his now-iconic image. Fifty years on from that fateful day, the pair are still in regular contact — and using their story to spread a message of peace.
“I will never forget that moment,” Phuc said in a video call from Toronto, where she is now based.
Her childhood village of Trang Bang, less than 30 miles northwest of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), had then been occupied by communist forces from the country’s north. According to a New York Times report from the time, the South Vietnamese army had spent three days trying to drive them out and reopen the nearby highway. That morning, the south’s air force dispatched propellor-driven Skyraider planes to drop napalm — a substance that causes severe burns and sticks to targets — on enemy positions.
Phuc and her family had been sheltering with other civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers in a Buddhist temple. Upon hearing their own army’s aircraft overhead, the soldiers urged everyone to flee, fearing an attack. Tragically, the group was mistaken for the enemy.
“I turned my head and saw the airplanes, and I saw four bombs landing down,” said Phuc. “Then, suddenly, there was the fire everywhere, and my clothes were burned up by the fire. At that moment I didn’t see anybody around me, just fire.
“I still remember what I thought,” she added. “I thought: ‘Oh my goodness, I got burned, I will be ugly, and people will see me different way. But I was so terrified.”
Another of Ut’s images from that day shows a Vietnamese grandmother carrying her severely burned grandson. Credit: Nick Ut/AP
Phuc ripped off what remained of her clothes and ran down the Route 1 highway. Vietnamese photographer Ut, who was 21 years old at the time, was among several journalists positioned outside the village anticipating further conflict that day.
“I saw Kim running and she (screamed in Vietnamese) ‘Too hot! Too hot!'” he said on a video call from Los Angeles. “When I took the photo of her, I saw that her body was burned so badly, and I wanted to help her right away. I put all my camera gear down on the highway and put water on her body.”
Ut then put the injured children in his van and drove them for 30 minutes to a nearby hospital. But upon arrival, the hospital told him there was no space, and that he would need to take them to Saigon.
“I said, ‘If she goes one more hour (without treatment), she will die,” he recalled, adding that he initially feared Phuc had already died in his vehicle during the drive.
Ut eventually convinced doctors to take them in by producing his press pass and telling them the children’s image would be seen across the world’s newspapers the next day. (Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2015, he recalled his exact words to the hospital as: “If one of them dies you’ll be in trouble.”)
Seen around the world
From the hospital, Ut went to the Associated Press office in Saigon to develop the photos. His images told much of the day’s story: A bomb captured in mid-air beneath a Skyraider, thick black smoke rising from Trang Bang, a victim being transported on a makeshift stretcher. A lesser-known image shows TV crews and South Vietnamese soldiers gathered around Phuc, the skin of her back and arms scorched by the flammable jelly that made napalm such a controversial weapon.
But the photographer immediately knew that one image stood out among the rest.
“When I went back to my office, the (dark room technician) and everyone who saw the picture told me right away it was very powerful, and that the photo would win a Pulitzer.”
They were right: Ut was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography in 1973. His image was also named World Press Photo of the Year after it appeared on the front pages of more than 20 leading US daily newspapers.
A file photo taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut on June 8, 1972 of a Skyraider dropping a napalm bomb over Trang Bang village. Credit: Nick Ut/AP
There is no evidence to support the apocryphal claim that “Napalm Girl” accelerated the end of the Vietnam War, which continued until 1975 and saw the communists eventually take control of the country’s US-backed south. Nor did it appear to greatly impact American public opinion, which had already turned against US involvement in the conflict by the late 1960s (American military presence in South Vietnam had, after almost two decades, been almost entirely withdrawn by the time Ut captured his image). But the photo became a symbol of anti-war sentiment nonetheless.
Its depiction of the horrors of napalm was so poignant that Richard Nixon privately queried whether it was “a fix.” In White House recordings released decades later, the US President speculated that the picture had been staged — an accusation that Ut said had made him “so upset.”
Phuc, meanwhile, spent 14 months in hospitals being treated for her injuries. Two of her cousins had been killed in the bombing. But she tried to move on from the attack — and the image that was seen around the world.
“As a child, I was so embarrassed, to be honest,” she said. “I didn’t like that picture at all. Why did he take my picture? I never wanted to see it.”
She dreamed of being a doctor, but Vietnam’s communist government quickly removed her from medical school to use her in propaganda campaigns. She recalls journalists traveling from overseas to hear her story, but she struggled with the attention.
“It really affected my private life,” she said, saying that she sometimes wanted to “disappear.”
“I couldn’t go to school. I couldn’t fulfill my dreams. And so, I kind of I hated it.”
A symbol of hope
It was only after Phuc was granted political asylum by Canada in 1992 that she felt inspired to use her personal tragedy for wider good. She wrote a book about her experiences and established Kim Foundation International, a charity that provides aid to children of war. She was named a United Nations goodwill ambassador in 1997 and gives speeches around the world about her life story and the power of forgiveness.
Last month, she and Ut — whom she still affectionately refers to as “uncle” — presented a copy of the photograph to Pope Francis in St Peter’s Square.
“I realized that, ‘Wow, that picture has become a powerful gift for me — I can (use it) to work for peace, because that picture has not let me go,” she said.
“Now I can look back and embrace it… I’m so thankful that (Ut) could record that moment of history and record the horror of war, which can change the whole world. And that moment changed my attitude and my belief that I can keep my dream alive to help others.”
Nick Ut and Kim Phuc pictured together last month in Milan, Italy. Credit: Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images
After years of operations and therapy, Phuc still suffers adverse effects from the burns sustained that day. She recently underwent laser treatments in the US, though she experiences ongoing pain because of her injuries.
But, now with two children of her own, Phuc credits her Christian faith for helping her “to move on.”
“Now, 50 years later, I am so thankful and I’m not a victim of war anymore. I am a survivor and I have the opportunity to work for peace.”
Ut, who is now retired, still believes in the power of conflict photography. Referencing the war in Ukraine, he said the discipline is “just important now as it was in Vietnam.” And while today’s readers are bombarded with images from various sources, the cumulative effect can be just as impactful as the single, iconic newspaper images of generations past, he said.
“When I was taking photos in Vietnam, things were so much slower, and we didn’t have social media,” he said. “Now, you have an abundance of photos, but it’s so instantaneous — in terms of telling the truth and bringing it to the world — that it’s also incredibly powerful.”
Renewing democracy is ‘defining challenge of our time,’ Biden tells summit
WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden gathered over 100 world leaders at a summit on Thursday and made a plea to bolster democracies around the world, calling safeguarding rights and freedoms in the face of rising authoritarianism the “defining challenge” of the current era.
In the opening speech for his virtual “Summit for Democracy,” a first-of-its-kind gathering intended to counter democratic backsliding worldwide, Biden said global freedoms were under threat from autocrats seeking to expand power, export influence and justify repression.
“We stand at an inflection point in our history, in my view. …Will we allow the backward slide of rights and democracy to continue unchecked? Or will we together have a vision…and courage to once more lead the march of human progress and human freedom forward?,” he said.
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The conference is a test of Biden’s assertion, announced in his first foreign policy address in February, that he would return the United States to global leadership to face down authoritarian forces, after the country’s global standing took a beating under predecessor Donald Trump.
“Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. And we have to renew it with each generation,” he said. “In my view, this is the defining challenge of our time.”
Biden did not point fingers at China and Russia, authoritarian-led nations Washington has been at odds with over a host of issues, but their leaders were notably absent from the guest list.
The number of established democracies under threat is at a record high, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance said in November, noting coups in Myanmar, Afghanistan and Mali, and in backsliding in Hungary, Brazil and India, among others.
U.S. officials have promised a year of action will follow the two-day gathering of 111 world leaders, but preparations have been overshadowed by questions over some invitees’ democratic credentials.
The White House said it was working with Congress to provide $424.4 million toward a new initiative to bolster democracy around the world, including support to independent news media.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the summit her department was cracking down on money laundering, illicit finance and tax evasion. “After all, the United States cannot be a credible voice for free and fair government abroad if at the same time, we allow the wealthy to break our laws with impunity,” Yellen said.
This week’s event coincides with questions about the strength of American democracy. The Democratic president is struggling to pass his agenda through a polarized Congress and after Republican Trump disputed the 2020 election result, leading to an assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6.
Republicans are expanding control over election administration in multiple U.S. states, raising concerns the 2020 midterm elections will be corrupted.
The White House on Thursday issued a statement of support for legislation introduced by Democratic lawmakers that would put new limits on the use of presidential pardons and strengthen measures to prevent foreign election interference, among other measures intended to safeguard U.S. democracy.
The summit also included Taiwan, prompting anger from China, which considers the democratically governed island part of its territory.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said the invitation of Taiwan showed the United States was only using democracy as “cover and a tool for it to advance its geopolitical objectives, oppress other countries, divide the world and serve its own interests.”
‘LIP SERVICE’
Washington has used the run-up to the summit to announce sanctions against officials in Iran, Syria and Uganda it accuses of oppressing their populations, and against people it accused of being tied to corruption and criminal gangs in Kosovo and Central America.
Further measures against foreign officials for graft in their countries’ COVID-19 responses, as well as other allegedly corrupt schemes, were announced as the summit began on Thursday.
U.S. officials hope to win support during the meetings for global initiatives such as use of technology to enhance privacy or circumvent censorship and for countries to make specific public commitments to improve their democracies before an in-person summit planned for late 2022.
Some question whether the summit can force meaningful change, particularly by leaders who are accused by human rights groups of harboring authoritarian tendencies, like the Philippines, Poland and Brazil.
Annie Boyajian, director of advocacy at nonprofit Freedom House, said the event had the potential to push struggling democracies to do better and to spur coordination between democratic governments.
“But, a full assessment won’t be possible until we know what commitments there are and how they are implemented in the year ahead,” Boyajian said.
The State Department’s top official for civilian security, democracy and human rights, Uzra Zeya said civil society would help hold the countries, including the United States, accountable. Zeya declined to say whether Washington would disinvite leaders who do not fulfill their pledges.
Human Rights Watch’s Washington director Sarah Holewinski said making the invitation to the 2022 summit dependent on delivering on commitments was the only way to get nations to step up.
Otherwise, Holewinski said, some “will only pay lip service to human rights and make commitments they never intend to keep.”
“They shouldn’t get invited back,” she said.
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Reporting by Simon Lewis and Humeyra Pamuk; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Nandite Bose;
Editing by Mary Milliken, Heather Timmons and Alistair Bell
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.