Month: February 2019

Here’s the second distorted news item from this week’s Shooting Times (we blogged about the first one here and we’ll be blogging about the third, and most perhaps most disingenuous one next).

The editor’s stated emphasis on “communicating the truth and demanding high standards” seems to have fallen upon deaf ears again.

Here’s the article:

This time the unidentified author has come late to the party on Chris Packham’s CBE and his impending visit to the Palace but has regurgitated the crap published by The Telegraph on 22 January where it was suggested that Chris was going to “interrogate” the royals about grouse shooting. We debunked the Telegraph’s fake news at the time (here) but Shooting Times has published a similarly contorted piece, not quite as contrived as the Telegraph’s article but still with an inappropriately distorted headline.

Chris has not ‘taken aim’ at the royals – on the contrary, if you read his interview with the Radio Times he praises the bravery of the two princes for speaking out about mental health and says he intends to use his CBE “to open more doors and have more conversations“, emulating their courage by speaking out about issues that are important to him.

How’s that ‘taking aim’ at the royals?

Shoddy, Shooting Times, very shoddy. And not dissimilar to the alleged ‘dirty tricks’ and smear campaigns levelled against Chris by others from within the game shooting sector.

Further to last night’s blog about the GWCT’s claim that the preliminary results of the Werritty grouse moor review will be presented at a GWCT conference in March (see here), we’ve received confirmation from the Werritty Review secretary, Karen Rentoul, that GWCT does not have any prior insight to the recommendations of the group.

GWCT has since amended the information on its website.

Here’s what it said this morning:

And here’s what it says now:

GWCT also tweeted this explanation:

 

Shooting Times is always good for a laugh but the latest edition (30 Jan 2019) is particularly entertaining.

It starts with Patrick Galbraith’s editorial where he discusses the “few rogues” (ahem) causing problems for the shooting industry and emphasises the importance of ‘communicating the truth and demanding high standards’.

Sadly, three of the six news articles that follow Patrick’s editorial can only be described as distorting the truth and meeting low standards.

We’re going to blog about each of those three news items separately, starting with this one:

The author of this news item is not identified but whoever wrote it seems to be a little bit confused.

The author argues that the petition isn’t “independent”. Eh? The petitoner (Les) isn’t claiming to be independent, but is calling for an independent study on grouse shooting economics. It’s not difficult to understand, is it?

The author then claims that Les “writes for Raptor Persecution Scotland”. Hmm. Two things here – the blog hasn’t been called ‘Raptor Persecution Scotland’ for, ooh, about five years (?) now, do keep up Shooting Times, and although several authors write this blog, Les isn’t one of them, unless you count his recent guest blog (written about his petition). The Shooting Times article implies Les writes regularly for the blog, which is a distortion of the truth. The clue is in the word ‘guest’ blog.

The author then discusses an estimate of the value of grouse shooting, using a figure from BASC. Er, BASC cannot possibly be defined as being independent, which kind of reinforces the importance of Les’s call for an independent study!

The article ends with a quote from Andrew Gilruth, who can always be relied upon for a bit of snidey spin, but he does appear to be supportive of Les’s petition. Funny, we didn’t see GWCT pushing its members to sign the petition in the six months since it was launched.

All in all, a confused distorted mess from Shooting Times.

By the way, Les’s petition ends tomorrow. He has already secured the 10,000 signatures required to trigger a response from DEFRA (which will be interesting) but if you want to support it, here’s your last chance. Please click HERE