At the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August, the BBC and ITN led reflections on the way the media had been suckered by Greenpeace into portraying a one-sided view of the Brent Spar debacle.
Seduced by the steady flow of dramatic images from the protesters, the media lapped up Greenpeace’s claim that the oil platform still carried 5,500 tons of oil. But when independent Norwegian consultants Det Norske Veritas were commissioned to assess the rig’s inventory, Greenpeace issued a hasty apology. Claiming its methodology had been flawed, Greenpeace now concurred with Shell that the rig was actually empty.
Whether Greenpeace would ever have come clean if the Brent Spar had been dumped as expected, may never be known, but the lesson for the media was a powerful one. The question now is, how long will they remember it?
Crocodile Tears
During the media’s self-flagellation phase that followed, it became clear that the remorse expressed by many media organisations was disingenuous.
Reports appeared casting Greenpeace as the sole villain, as if the writers were ignorant of how pressure groups work. Greenpeace had even boasted in its publications of its skill in manipulating the media, yet when the hacks found the information they had been spoon-fed to be worthless, they had the gall to cry «foul».
With the dispensing of blame now yesterday’s story, a more worrying trend is emerging. Either wittingly or because the passage of time clouds memories, certain media organs have now become accomplices in helping Greenpeace rewrite an inglorious episode in its history.
Historical Revisionism
The prize for the most brazened endorsement of revisionism by a major publication goes to the New Scientist (Dec. 23, 1995).
For editorial reasons Harpoon cannot imagine, New Scientist gave Greenpeace UK executive director Peter Melchett two pages of free advertising in the guise of an annual report, to explain how Brent Spar was actually a «defining moment for the environmental movement.» And so it was, but not for the reason he proposed.
While begrudgingly admitting «Greenpeace made mistakes too,» Melchett whines that this was only because «we allowed ourselves to follow the agenda set by the [Department of Trade and Industry], Shell and the media — too often getting into arguments about the potential toxicity of the Spar.»
Greenpeace had been sucked into following the agenda of the media? Do eggs lay chickens? What could the New Scientist editors be thinking to print such nonsense?
Brent Spar was indeed a «defining moment for the environmental movement» because it opened the eyes of the world to Greenpeace’s fallibility. This was supposed to have two important knock-on effects for environmentalism as a whole.
The first is that pressure groups must be held accountable if they do not tell the truth. Rather than trying to delete its mistakes from the history books, Greenpeace should offer an unqualified apology, and consider itself on probation with the media.
The second is that the media must become more vigilant and sceptical when it comes to choosing sources. For every piece of misinformation that is exposed, how many others go undetected?
If these lessons are forgotten, the inglorious Brent Spar campaign will surely have been in vain.
Last year, Greenpeace press spokesman and marine biologist Paul Horsman was asked by the Harpoon to defend a fundraiser entitled «Are whales “almost” human?». Could it be true, as Greenpeace claimed, that «the whale finally chooses a partner for life»? Swallowing his professional pride, Horsman replied: «Yep. Most whales do.»
Shortly after, as spokesman for the Brent Spar campaign, Horsman announced that the oil rig was carrying 5,500 tons of oil.