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Angelina Jolie's Today programme: these testimonies went to a deeper place

Radio 4 guest edit featured warnings of upsetting content, but it was more likely listeners would abandon all faith in humanity

The lasting memory of Angelina Jolie’s one-day Christmas tenure as editor of the Today Programme will be the horrific descriptions of violence: Rohingya Muslim women describing gang rapes; Denis Mukwege, Nobel peace prize-winning doctor from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, describing injuries so barbaric that no “common sense of humanity” could survive them.

Every second interview was prefaced with a warning to listeners that they may find it upsetting: but what an inadequate phrase that was. Swear words, natural disasters, sudden, high-pitched noises are upsetting; these testimonies went to a deeper place. The warning should have been: “Some listeners may find themselves bereft of all faith in humanity.” And it wouldn’t have put anyone off: the value of beholding barbarism is only properly understood against its opposite, ignoring it.

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2VdmzmB
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