Things I’ve learned recently on social media (part 1)

1. If a TV producer makes a programme about people on benefits, then s/he is exploiting both the folk in the programme and our tawdry desire to look down upon those who are worse off than us. It is a shameful thing and there is a name for it: ‘poverty porn’.

2. If a pro-life organisation uses images of aborted foetuses in its literature, it is using scare tactics to make its point and is disgracefully trying to traumatise children, young women and indeed any woman who has gone through the abortion process. It is coercive, exploitative and shameful to use these images in campaign literature.  

3. It is perfectly acceptable to use the image of someone’s dead child washed up on a beach to make a point about your response to a humanitarian tragedy.

I think it’s going to take me a while to get the hang of these rules.