the stuff you imply to as “fluff” has led me to dig a little deeper and get a little of that analytic stuff you allude to!
Which is what you should always do. It is, in fact, what any responsible person writing an article–as opposed to a press release–also would have done, so you have, in a manner of speaking, become a bit of a citizen journalist, dare I say it! I didn’t say the release wasn’t factual. What I did say is that it was a press release, not an article, meaning readers should be prepared to dig for the truth before accepting it at face value–as we should for many articles, too! Especially in the age of the internet, it’s sometimes easy for people to confuse the two, which is why, for example, PeTA press releases and newsletters sometimes get taken at face value by unwary readers as being “news” or factual, even when they’re not.
My point is not that you shouldn’t have posted it, but that everyone should always do as you have now done: try to discern what a document is, where it’s coming from, what biases/agendas might be inherent in it, and then what is or is not factual about it. That’s part of being a good, informed citizen, as well as a good, informed hunter.
You sound very triumphant about having done that, and well you should. It should be second nature for anyone living in today’s age of easily manufactured, easily distributed “news .”
As for the idea that we will “never” see anti-hunting agendas covered in the mainstream media, well, I disagree about the word “never.” You do see hunting covered favorably, often when hunting people have decided to make an effort to get their side of the story out with credible journalists, rather than writing off all editors, reporters, etc., as antis, just as antis label us all as toffs.
It’s incumbent on hunters to get their point of view out there, of course, and it is certainly true that one always needs to decide who one can trust (both among the media and among our own lobbying groups; any lobbying group claiming to represent you can go off the rails and therefore ANY lobbying/advocacy group, even one you trust, should always be subject to a little healthy scrutiny from its supporters to keep it honest).
To accuse all general media and editors of being, as a matter of course, against hunting is unhelpful at best in getting hunting’s message out there, as the Center for Consumer Freedom and any other group probably would tell you. As in the rest of human life, you decide who you can trust to be fair and go from there; writing them all off doesn’t leave a lot of options for helping to educate the public about the value of hunting, and it also abandons the PR field entirely to the antis.
As it happens, due to my work I know a fair number of “media types” who hunt, both here and in England. And does anyone remember the CBS reporter from some years back–his name escapes me now–who hunted regularly and even did a good piece on the nightly news about hunting in Ireland? When PeTA activists were caught killing animals they claimed to be adopting from vet clinics in North Carolina, the local general media covered the story and the resulting trial without taking some defense of PeTA. Even that so-called bastion of the “elite liberal media,” the New York Times, has, along with covering anti-hunting points of view, published a diverse range of friendly pieces, including a pro-hunting editorial by Frederick Forsyth on July 19, 1997; a beagling wedding in their style section; and they have at least one editor I know on their national desk who comes from unimpeachable sporting stock in the Northeast.
Here, in fact, is quite a good story they did after the ban in England which puts across the hunters’ view with little mention of the antis’ view and no quotes from antis.
http://http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/sports/othersports/13outdoors.html
And, as we have seen posted on this forum around Blessing Day, local general media also come to cover some hunts’ opening meets without criticizing them.
I realize it’s tempting to blast the media, and certainly there are biases in the media as there are in the rest of the world. The lack of countryside-understanding will likely become more pronounced in the media and society at large as urban living becomes more the norm than rural living. Which means we should really be trying actively to convert some reporters to foxhunters, as happened successfully with British journalists Jane Shilling, James Delingpole, and Molly Watson(who lived for a long time in New York), among others.
As hunters, it’s our duty to educate and inform that society accurately–and, like it or not, that also means understanding how the media works and appreciating that we do have supporters as well as enemies there, and we also have opportunities to reach genuine reporters who don’t know foxhunting from a hole in the ground but are interested in or tasked with finding out what the hullabaloo is all about. The good news is that, as traffic and congestion and disappearance of rural land become bigger issues for the public and mainstream media, there’s an opportunity for hunting to tell its very good story of land preservation. As the “slow food” movement and other back-to-the-land-and-nature initiatives become more popular, there’s a natural tie-in with hunting and its value.
That kind of strategic effort–wedding hunting’s values with mainstream values and working to show the public how the two interests are entwined–is far more helpful than writing off the people who can and, more often than you might think, WILL help you tell your story. Remember: you might not know about their world any more than they know about yours. Do hunts need to be careful when dealing with the media and the public? Certainly they do.
Careful, but not hostile.
