[only in English this time, desculpem-me!]
More than 400 people died after a building that housed five factories collapsed in Bangladesh. They were making
clothes for brands like Primark, and the owners of the building were too greedy
to do something about its poor condition. I don’t know about you, but I decided to explore my closet to find out the birthplace of my clothes.
Made in Cambodia (Portugal in the back!)
Made in China
Cambodia... again
If you open your closet right now,
I’ll bet you the majority of your clothes will be made in Asia or North Africa.
There has been some debate about child labour and the poor work conditions of
those countries, but do you remember that when you buy that cute shirt in Zara?
I certainly don’t. But is it our fault? If you buy a packet of cigarettes,
endless warnings, some with horrific pictures, will try to dissuade you from
smoking. None of that happens with these clothes. You never see a picture of a
seven-year-old child making shoes for Nike to warn you about the harm of that
product. It won’t harm you in the process of consumption, as in the case of a
cigarette, but it most likely harmed others in the production process. So why
does no one seem to care?
Business owners have a lot to gain
with the cheap prices they offer in these countries, and in order to keep those
prices low, there is no way they can spend money on improving their employees’
conditions. Governments should be aware of this and put their foot down, but passivity
obviously pays off (bribes, benefits for the economy, etc.) and therefore do
not act. The only party left in this equation are the brands that buy from
those countries.
Primark has said it’s working
towards fixing this issue, but will it really, after the media coverage of
Dhaka stops? Realistically, and business-ly
speaking, the only real motivation for a change would be the customers. If
profit stops coming in because people are protesting against cheap labour,
brands would obviously have to do something -
I mean, we’re talking about loosing money
here. The motivation will never come from 400 lost lives if the customers don’t
care and the money keeps coming. It’s just human life, what can you buy with
that?
Another thing that got me thinking
after this horrible disaster was the unfairness of media coverage. I study media
within my degree, and one of the most eye-opening things I’ve learnt (I’m not
being patronising, it’s great if you were aware of this already but I genuinely
never realised it before) was that someone out there decides what is reported
or not and how much coverage it gets. The more coverage it gets, the more
important it should be, right? Now add the pervert underworld of ambitions,
politics, greed and money, and voilà,
the picture is not quite that logical. How else would you explain the extensive
coverage of the Boston events, and the less-than-one-minute news reports when
similar, or even worse, events happen in Iraq? It’s sad, but it’s the truth.
While doing my dissertation, I read this sentence in a book by Alan Bell:
‘News is what happens to one
Englishman, 10 Germans, and 1000 Indians.’ *
He characterises it as an ‘oldtime,
typically racist adages from newrooms walls’. It is definitely racist, but is
it oldtime? Do newsrooms work any differently nowadays? I personally do not
think so. Otherwise, the world should stop because of this building collapsing
the same way it did when the bombs exploded in Boston. Or at least get the same
coverage, letting people decide the importance they want to give to it, instead
of attaching a degree of importance by covering it more and less.
(Since we’re talking about media
coverage, I wouldn’t be surprised if brands were actually pressuring media
outlets not to extensively cover the Dhaka events, so that they do not have to
answer to us, the customers. Is this too much conspiracy for just one post?)
The blogging community could be one
the most influential factors in this debate, not only because the high street
is definitely the biggest consumer of cheap labour and that is the kind of
fashion found in blogs, but also because of the quick and extensive spread of
trends and ideologies through the internet.
From now on, I’ll be more conscious
of where the clothes I buy come from, even if the lost lives in Dhaka did not
make it to the front cover. Will you?
I'd love to hear your opinion on this issue, so please leave a comment!
*in 'Language of News Media', p.204, 1991
