Critic Says ‘Icky Baby Shots’ Mislead Viewers : Wrenching TV Appeals Key to Success of World Vision

The child stares at you with pleading eyes. As the camera zooms in for a close-up, it’s easy to see why. He’s starving: another victim of famine-plagued Ethiopia. It’s wrenching, this television “documentary.”

But it is also the key to success that has turned its producer, Monrovia-based World Vision International, into something of an overnight star.

“Africa Update: The Tears of Famine” and a string of other fund-raising documentaries produced by the Christian relief agency have almost single-handedly hoisted World Vision above the competition.

Effective, Controversial

Television has been essential to the growth of World Vision, said its president, Ted Engstrom. “It’s our strongest emotional tool. The response to it is tremendous.”

And controversial.

“I’m concerned about the way they market misery,” said Larry Hollon of New York-based Church World Service, the relief and development arm of the National Council of Churches.

“Most relief agencies, while they may see some ultimate good in it, would feel uncomfortable putting a camera in a mother’s face while she watches her baby starve to death,” added Beth Griffin of Catholic Relief Services, one of the nation’s leading relief groups.

Evangelist Bob Pierce organized World Vision 35 years ago to help orphans in China. It had a staff of three. Today, World Vision has more than 11,000 employees providing emergency relief and aid programs to 80 nations.

The group sent $265,000 worth of blankets, medicine and other supplies to Colombia following the deadly volcanic eruption of Nevada del Ruiz.

Helped in Mexico

It also sent nearly $1 million worth of supplies for emergency relief and rebuilding to earthquake-devastated Mexico City. Another $17.5 million was spent last year alone for continuing relief in Africa, where World Vision has 678 projects in nearly 30 countries.

The organization struggled along for years with the rest of the fiercely competitive international relief community in a constant tug-of-war for contributions, until about 14 years ago.

That was when it produced its first fund-raising documentary film. Entitled “Children of Zero,” the special about Cambodian war orphans was the first of its kind and so successful that World Vision has been doing two fund-raising documentaries a year ever since.

The cost for each of the specials is a whopping $500,000, not including the price of buying television time in each of the 200 major metropolitan areas in which they routinely appear.

Profits Enviable

But even Hollywood would envy the profits. Each of the one-hour films has brought about $20 million in donations.

The format is much the same in each. They air from studios designed like a television news set and are hosted by anchors such as talk show host Gary Collins, his actress-wife Mary Ann Mobley, or Art Linkletter.

Each film has scores of brief vignettes from scenes of disaster. Most of them involve the famine in Africa. “The Tears of Famine” includes footage of crowded feeding centers and the burial of a dead infant. Such scenes are accompanied by frequent pleas for donations from the hosts.

Coupled with public concern over Ethiopia, these specials helped push donations to $210 million in 1985--or 58% higher than the $145 million contributed in 1984.

Last year, World Vision added another 120 employees to its staff in the United States and 710 more in Ethiopia. It now has a total of about 800 workers in that troubled country.

‘Icky Baby Shots’

Critics contend that World Vision’s reliance on “icky baby shots,” as one relief worker calls the organization’s specials, misleads the public.

“The problem is that they (the specials) are very simplistic,” said Andrea Cana from the World Council of Churches, an ecumenical organization of 300 churches based in Geneva. “They appeal to emotions. They make people think that donating blankets will take care of the problem, when the solution is really much more complex.”

World Vision is little troubled by such complaints. “We feel there is a little bit of envy there,” said spokesman Brian Bird.

Bird said World Vision actually did produce a few specials that concentrated more on intellect and less on emotion. The documentaries emphasized development in impoverished countries--the digging of wells, agricultural improvements. They earned the organization “a lot of pats on the back” but no money, he said.