He’s a household name in Ghana, but few have seen his face. Investigative journalist Anas Aremewaw Anas is on a mission to ferret out corruption in every corner of his country. Wearing an array of disguises, he regularly goes deep undercover to trap suspected criminals – splashing their faces across newspapers and handing them over to delighted police.

Despite his notoriety, Anas’ methods attract criticism from other journalists, who believe his investigations go too far in luring and catching suspected criminals to achieve sensationalist stories.

Director Ryan Mullins follows Anas during a chaotic, adrenaline-filled period which sees him revelling in fulfilling his three-pronged approach: naming, shaming and jailing. Whilst some journalists look on in dismay at his tactics, Anas enjoys being worshipped by the people, and is welcomed back to his old elementary school like a rock star. But as he begins his next big case – the exposure of a church he suspects is guilty of human trafficking – the lines begin to blur, as we witness the human fallout of his actions.

Director: Ryan Mullins
Producers: Bob Moore, Mila Aung-Thwin
Running time: 90′
Year: 2014
Country: Canada
Distributor: Dogwoof

On Tuesday 27 November, a group of experts gathered at the Frontline Club to discuss the issues and nuances that surround the task of: Covering poverty in an indifferent world. This subject was recently explored by the BBC’s Why Poverty? series in an episode covering the campaigning efforts of Bob Geldof and Bono, and the resulting phenomena were also addressed by the panel.

Covering poverty in an indifferent world panel discussion

The Live Aid and Make Poverty History movements have been criticised for failing to fully achieve their ambitious aims. But today – as writer and activist Paul Vallely explained – millions of lives have been saved due to the public’s response and lobbying efforts in fora such as the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005.

“Most aid works, yet that’s not the perception as it comes across in the media.”

Paul Vallely also criticised an attitude of ‘cognative dissidance’ from issues of poverty as seen in the media today. This reflects, he said, an attitude of wilful ingnorance and cynicism currently adopted by many:

“They feel they want to defend the status quo which includes them not having to take any kind of responsibility for the fact that they are in a exploitative relationship with a lot of the other people in the world.”

On, the other hand, Andrew Hogg, head of media at Christian Aid, argued that in fact it is a matter of messaging:

“In terms of getting people to address that poverty, when it is presented in terms that they can understand, at the moment the door seems to be further open than it is closed.”

So what terms are currently being used to the most effect when communicating these issues? Lilie Chouliaraki, Professor of Media and Communications at LSE, proposed that currently a ‘post- humanitarian’ form of solidarity prevails. This approach, she said, moves the focus away from those who are suffering and onto the self:

“It’s about ‘us’, it’s about how we feel good, and by feeling good we are also contributing to other people’s well being… no distant sufferers are being portrayed in these campaigns, the others are completely left outside.”

It is within this paradigm that we find a significant use of celebrity she argued.

In defense of a celebrity focussed strategy, Jamie Drummond, co-founder and executive director of ONE explained:

“Every time somebody says ‘I hate it when celebrities are used to promote a cause, my answer is ‘well let’s try and get that cause, that mission, to get the same amount of coverage without a celebrity – what would it take? … Until we can do that, sometimes, we’ve got to live in the world we live in, we’ve got to use them, but we’d all like not to.”

As a closing thought, Lilie Chouliaraki added:

“Perhaps we can reverse the terms and then say ‘well why don’t we use that celebrity, that popular culture to celebritize people who are not celebrities yet, but who are doing incredible work… and make them the heros that they diserve to be.'”

Watch the full event here:

The verdict of a panel of celebrity experts at the Frontline Club on Thursday – speaking at an On The Media panel debate in partnership with the BBC College of Journalism – was that, if anything, the dominance of "slebs" on public discourse and news media will only increase in the age of online social networking.

If you couldn’t make the event in person, here’s a video of the whole thing and our roundup is below…

Jane Bussmann, a showbiz writer turned comedy writer and stand-up comic, admits her job as an LA-based journalists was to make boring famous people sound attractive, suave and star-like. She admits hers pieces gave a "sanitised version of celeb life in Hollywood."

In a frank admission that would shock most (but not all) journalists, Bussmann recalled interviewing a star from the TV drama Desperate Housewives, only to lose her tape recorder straight afterwards. Despite having not really listened during the interview, she then "made the whole thing up":

I write about his dreams hopes, aspirations… And did anyone notice? No, they didn’t. People said it was the most accurate thing ever written about him.

Bussmann also expressed misgivings about describing unhealthly thin stars as being in great shape: "I’d write ‘Nicole Ritchie looks amazing’ when she looked like she was made of dessicated coconut."

The debate centred to the question of access to celebrities, who employ legions of PR managers to filter news about them and offer increased access to friendly and uncritical media. Heat magazine editor Sam Delaney argued that his title does better commercially when there is no access at all.

Heat depends on celebrities but not on access. In our case an endorsed story is far less commercially succesfful… (Glossy celebrity mag) OK! is the antitthesis of what we do. It’s better to have a pap(arazzi) shot on the cover because people feel they’re getting something real – not something sanitised

But one area where stars do have the upper hand is in the realm of media law – case after case in the High Court has curbed the right of the media to report embarassing allegations, on grounds of libel and privacy.

Camilla Wright, founder of gossip site Popbitch – no stranger to an occasional writ – said: "The Max Mosley case said that we’ve no right to know anything that they don’t want to tell us. The John Terry case brought it back a little bit, as the judge agreed that he’s selling his life (through the media)."

But is all this coming to an end? Is the very word "celebrity" rendered meaningless by its extreme over-use? No chance, says Wright:

"What we have now are celebs who are happy just to be famous.. it’s still growing because people who grow up now are living their lives much more externally through social networking.

Delaney added that his young readers "want to be like (singer) Beyonce" and that for the current young generation, it isn’t impossible that they could one become a star. "When I was at school if I said I wanted to be famous for a living, I might as well have said ‘I’ll probably travel through time’… but now it’s a real possbility."

Jane Bussmann is appearing again at the club in a special comedy night on Friday April 30. Tickets are on sale now.