There was a short piece in The Telegraph today with the headline, Packham ‘won’t let royals off the hook’ over game shooting.
Written by ‘royal correspondent’ Hannah Furness, it claimed Packham “will interrogate the Royal family over its participation in game shooting when he receives his CBE” and it also stated “Packham pledged that he would use his visit to the Palace to question the Royal family’s enjoyment of shooting game, which he “deplores“”.
These statements, and others in this article, paint Chris as an aggressive combatant which is about as far away from his personality as it’s possible to get.
Here’s the Telegraph article in full:
Ms Furness purportedly based her article on a piece recently published in the Radio Times which includes an interview with Chris and his colleagues in advance of the BBC’s Winterwatch programme which returns to our screens next week.
We thought we’d have a look at this Radio Times interview to see whether Ms Furness’s claims about Chris were a fair and accurate report of what he’d said.
It turns out they weren’t.
The Radio Times interview (by Emma Cox) was wide-ranging and the discussion about Chris’s impending visit to the Palace was just a small part of a six-page spread. If you read what Chris actually said there was no mention of “interrogating” anyone and he wasn’t just focusing on the Royals or even game shooting when he spoke about ‘not letting anyone off the hook’, as Ms Furness’s headline suggests he did. Nor had Chris said he “deplores” game shooting – that word was used by interviewer Emma Cox, not by Chris. (He may well deplore it, but Ms Furness should not attribute quotes to Chris that didn’t appear in the original interview).
Have a read of the Radio Times article yourselves (or at least the small relevant bit) and you’ll see the implied portrayal of Chris’s aggression in Ms Furness’s article is simply not there; Chris even talks about the bravery of Princes William and Harry for speaking out on mental health issues:
Will Chris mention grouse shooting during his visit to the Palace? Of course he will, he’s not going to let an opportunity like that slip away but he’ll do it politely, factually and non-aggressively because he knows doing it any other way would just be counterproductive.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Aye, crap journalist writes a crap article for a crap newspaper.
The sad state of journalism nowadays.
When the bulk of our media is controlled by just five people, who would expect anything else?
At least Chris is honest about any agenda.
Anti conservasion pro shooting
Fake news……Don’t buy the Telegraph.
It seems disingenuous to me that the younger royals at least campaign against the senseless killing of animals in Africa – elephants and rhinos – because they are facing extinction, yet their acitivities here in small game shooting threatens our native raptors and mammals who live in or near shooting estates/grouse moors. They need to know some of us notice this hypocricy.
Well said Aurora my thoughts exactly………………….
The only reason the younger parasites (and their equally parasitic father) do this, is to give the impression that they are dedicated conservationists, and have deep concerns about wildlife.
And our wonderfully “impartial” media are only too happy to propagate these myths.
Sadly, many have been brought up on a diet of BBC and newsprint journalism, and take everything they are told as fact, and they simply cannot see any other way, or force themselves to challenge what they are being told.
The royal family are to conservation what ISIS are to human rights, and the quicker the public realise this, and shun these people who are partly responsible for the mess in our countryside, the better.
The worst purveyors of calculating fake news are the media themselves, especially the right wing media.
To be fair, it’s more likely: Journalist (who wants to keep her job … even if it’s a crap job) writes an article ordered by her editor – who was ordered by the owner os said crap newspaper.
Personally … and i know many people feel the same .. i would rather Chris gave it to them Lock, Stock and 2 non smoking barrels .. sock it to them and stuff royal etiquette!!
Some years ago I heard the term – ‘gutter press’ and this is a classic example of it.
“Written by ‘royal correspondent’ Hannah Furness,”
… who obviously hadn’t anything else to be writing about, none of the Royals -especially not the DofE- having done anything at all newsworthy recently. [eyeroll.gif]
According to the Telegraph website she is ‘Arts Correspondent’. Private Eye reckons the Telegraphs circulation has plummeted in recent years…no surprise there as piss poor journalism is one of the reasons…and this piece about Chris Packham just about sums it up.
I’ve come to expect nothing more from our gutter press, and yes that does include broadsheets.
Another sinister (all be a very small ) move by the powerful and privileged to manipulate and brainwash – keep the plebs busy arguing among themselves while the puppet masters line their pockets and pull the strings .
Ludicrous piece of piffle, but if it was a sneaky attempt to discredit him then pretty sure it’s a waste of time. His stock is just going up and up, his CBE, his Facebook page seems to be adding a thousand plus likes every week and he’s continually on the telly being asked his opinions about pretty much everything in the conservation\environment sphere and sometimes beyond. He gets asked on to programmes like Have I Got News For You and Room 101, he’s a bit of a cultural icon and well on the way to being a national treasure – some of us think he is already the rest of the country just needs to catch up. His brutal honesty about being an Asperger’s sufferer alone made him a remarkable human being, as did paying out of his own pocket for a film crew to go to Malta to document illegal and irresponsible shooting. This will no doubt sound sycophantic, but no less than his due and a riposte to the smears, slurs and downright lies of his jealous, inadequate, pathetic detractors.
An aside, but did Michela really mean a blackbird ate a baby rabbit?