We live in an age where the fourth estate is under attack like never before. ‘Fake news’ has firmly entered the lexicon as a direct result of repeated attacks from the US President, and newsrooms around the country have been gutted due to changing media consumption habits and the influence of social networking sites.
Given the external pressures facing journalists, you would hope that now more than ever, vigilance would be applied to ensuring that their sources are impeccable and media outlets only publish what they have investigated and verified.
However, the last few years would suggest that some activist groups are being given a rails run by certain media outlets, with next to no scrutiny applied to their frequent media releases.
They spoon-feed patently false propaganda to some journalists, who willingly regurgitate the fear-mongering that is the stock in trade of these groups.
It is also distressing to see some politicians getting suckered into this shallow game, when they should take the time to peel back the rhetoric from these groups and investigate what is happening at a deeper level.
This has never been better evidenced than by the recent furore surrounding live sheep exports. Despite overwhelming evidence that on-shore processing is not a solution for affected WA graziers or the importing customer, the activists repeatedly run the argument that it is a viable alternative. No surprises that the customer is always right, and Kuwait is adamant that it requires live animals, not boxed meat.
But this inconvenient fact is perpetually ignored, as is the clear evidence that when Australia has stopped sending live exports to certain countries, the shortfall is not picked up by an increase in boxed product.
I am certain that if you grilled some of these activist groups behind closed doors they would freely admit that large parts of their campaigns are not factually based, as they know from lengthy experience that their crusades work far more effectively if they focus heavily on manipulating emotions.
In effect, their campaign process is relatively simple – inflate, manipulate, exaggerate, hyperventilate – then repeat ad nauseam.
However, these groups are far from squeaky clean when it comes to their own conduct, as evidenced by the following examples:
- In the mid-1980s, Greenpeace used a film called ‘Goodbye Joey’ as a successful fundraiser in Europe and the United States, which allegedly showed Australian farmers mutilating live kangaroos. The two farmers in the film were convicted for their conduct, however following the farmers’ testimony, the court concluded that they had been paid by the film crew to perform the cruelty on the kangaroos.
- In 2013, North America's third biggest paper maker, Resolute Forest Products of Canada, commenced a number of court proceedings against Greenpeace, which were grounded in racketeering, tortuous interference, defamation, conspiracy and trademark violations. Resolute tossed out the usual corporate appeasement playbook and forged a new path, largely due to the relentless campaign waged by Greenpeace.
- The Resolute court documents allege, amongst other things, that: ‘For years … Greenpeace has fraudulently induced people throughout the United States and the world to donate millions of dollars based on materially false and misleading claims about its purported environmental purpose and its 'campaigns' against targeted companies.’; and, ‘Maximising donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace's true objective. Consequently, its campaigns are consistently based on sensational misinformation untethered to facts or science, but crafted instead to induce strong emotions and, thereby, donations.’
I would submit that for most of the Australian agricultural industry, this pleading has an uncanny ring to it when it comes to certain animal rights groups.
The court filing also makes repeated use of Greenpeace’s inadvertent disclosure of an unfinished press release in 2006 on the dangers of nuclear power, which stated: ‘In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE].’
For clarity, the above quote is verbatim from the Greenpeace press release – it actually contained the phrase in square brackets.
In 2015, the RSPCA was ordered to pay $1.16m in damages to graziers in Victoria, when the Court ruled that it was negligent in the way two of its officers “hastily and negligently” put down 131 head of cattle.
Finally, Greenpeace has been at the forefront of delaying the approval of Golden Rice, a crop genetically engineered to supply more vitamin A to third world countries. The British medical journal, The Lancet, estimates that vitamin A deficiency kills 668,000 children under the age of 5 each year.
To oppose the introduction of this much-needed technology in third world countries is utterly immoral. So immoral that in June 2016, 107 Nobel laureates signed a letter which specifically asked Greenpeace to abandon their campaign against GMOs in general and Golden Rice in particular.
These cases reveal that the activist groups are capable of making major ethical and operational mistakes. If the same standards were applied to these groups that they seek from those that they target, there would be universal condemnation of their conduct and widespread demands for them to be shut down.
And there can be little doubt that activist groups would scream like banshees if they were subject to the same level of scrutiny that they expect from the ag sectors that they focus on.
The only sheep in this whole sorry charade are those that blindly follow the talking points of the activist groups and do not make the effort to ask a few simple questions, like are they actually telling the truth?
History may ultimately judge the bully pulpit of activist pressure harshly when people actually take the time to investigate what they have been told, rather than the wafer-thin rhetoric, half-truths and misleading arguments that they perpetually run.
– Trent Thorne, agribusiness lawyer
