Media: the power of the green lobby
Monday 1 July 2013
At the heart of its power is the ability of campaign groups to forge alliances and create networks, and in their fund-raising capabilities, often using iconic images to assist in prising cash from the gullible public. Not for nothing is the logo of WWF a panda – an animal, like the badger, which invokes strong public affection.
The networking capabilities very much came to the fore last week, as the alliance of green activists, animal rights campaigners and vegan groups, acting under the banner of Team Badger, confronted the reality that the much-opposed badger culling was due to start and time soon.
As it turns out, though, the driver of the campaign against the cull is a little-known organisation called Care for the Wild International (CWI), which works alongside another group, Network for Animals.
Amongst other things, these two groups, together with the vegetarian group Viva have been seekingto boycott dairy farms within the agreed cull areas, with some media support.
But last week, Care for the Wild decided to up the ante with a repeat of stunt pulled by Viva in June 2009, when that group sought to raise public concern via the media over bovine TB infected meat entering the human food chain. Those four years ago, there seem to have been no takers, but with practically identical claims, this time the media welcomed the story.
First out of traps was Jonathan Leake of The Sunday Times, although CWI managed to sell a variation of the story to the Sunday Express as well. But, not content to leave it there, it rushed out apress release boasting of its co-operation with The Sunday Times.
Without troubling to hide the agenda, Philip Mansbridge, the CEO of CWI, told reporters that people should know of the "infected meat story" - trialled four years previously without success - because "the government are surging forward with an unpopular badger cull based on the argument that they know what's best for farmers, and for the public". But this scandal exposes the complete failure of their bovine TB management system, from farm to fork.
Said Mansbridge, in the press release, "The government has repeatedly said that badgers must be culled for reasons including human health. But this justification is completely undermined by the fact they are placing large quantities of TB meat into the food supply chain without any labelling or cooking advice, which puts the public at risk".
Despite the partisan source of the information, however – which was quite clearly agenda-driven – few newspapers chose to reveal their source, using the "it can be revealed" phrasing so often favoured by modern journalists when recycling press releases. Most readers, exposed to the story, therefore, would have been aware that this a publicity coup inspired by animal activists seeking to prevent the badger cull.
As a registered charity, CWI is almost certainly breaching the rules by organising such an overtly political campaign, although the Charities Commissioner seems to be unduly tolerant of such behaviour these days.
However, in buying into a quite deliberate deception by the animal lobby, suggesting that the government is in some way seeking to conceal its treatment of carcases from TB-infected animals, and that a significant risk exists (even if this has not been explicitly stated) , the newspapers are most probably in breach of the Press Complaints Commission Editor's Code of Practice.
It will be interesting to see now whether the government sits back, or whether it comes out fighting, and takes on the green lobby with a series of complaints.
COMMENT: "RACE TO THE BOTTOM" THREAD
Richard North 01/07/2013
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